"We speak openly about culture in animals and their empathy and friendships. "We hear that rats may regret their decisions," de Waal notes, "that crows manufacture tools, that octopuses recognise human faces, and that special neurons allow monkeys to learn from each other's mistakes. He cites examples of animals proving to be more sophisticated than even scientists have been prepared to credit. Increasingly, de Waal says, animals are revealing to us that they possess cognition. "It seems highly unfair to ask if a squirrel can count to 10 if counting is not really what a squirrel's life is about." The tester or observer has to have a subtlety of mind that matches that of the subject. "We think of flight as something that birds do naturally, but it is actually a skill that they have to learn." Similarly, it may take young chimpanzees, animals we rightly regard as highly intelligent, years to truly master the skill of cracking nuts.
They also have to struggle with the world as they find it. They can remember things and plan ahead, just as we do. Under test conditions and when observed in the wild, animals can show us that they aren't just instinct machines seeking opportunities to eat and mate, and that they possess attributes such intelligence and empathy as well as emotions. A Dutch-American ethologist and primatologist, de Waal considers different aspects of a variety of species and outlines the structures of scientific knowledge that have assisted, and at times hindered, our growing awareness of the wonder and complexity of the animal world.
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