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Animal cognition encompasses the mental capacities of non-human animals, including insect cognition.

The study of animal conditioning and learning used in this field was developed from comparative psychology. It has also been strongly influenced by research in ethology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary psychology; the alternative name cognitive ethology is sometimes used. Many behaviors associated with the term animal intelligence are also subsumed within animal cognition. Researchers have examined animal cognition in mammals (especially primates, cetaceans, elephants, bears, dogs, cats, pigs, horses, cattle, raccoons and rodents), birds (including parrots, fowl, corvids and pigeons), reptiles (lizards, crocodilians, snakes, and turtles), fish and invertebrates (including cephalopods, spiders and insects).

These speculations led to many observations of animal behavior before modern science and testing were available. Nonetheless, interest in animal mental abilities, and comparisons to humans, increased with early myrmecology, the study of ant behavior, as well as the classification of humans as primates beginning with Linnaeus.

In no case is an animal activity to be interpreted in terms of higher psychological processes if it can be fairly interpreted in terms of processes which stand lower in the scale of psychological evolution and development.

Speculation about animal intelligence gradually yielded to scientific study after Darwin placed humans and animals on a continuum, although Darwin's largely anecdotal approach to the cognition topic would not pass scientific muster later on.

Watson set the direction of much research on animal behavior for more than half a century.

The acceleration of research on animal cognition in the last 50 years or so has led to a rapid expansion in the variety of species studied and methods employed.

Human and non-human animal cognition have much in common, and this is reflected in the research summarized below; most of the headings found here might also appear in an article on human cognition. Evolutionary approaches to animal cognition have emphasized that learning and other cognitive abilities are shaped by the structure of environmental change.

For example, several studies have shown that performance is better on, for example, a color discrimination (e.g. blue vs green) after the animal has learned another color discrimination (e.g. red vs orange) than it is after training on a different dimension such as an X shape versus an O shape.

In this task an animal sees one stimulus and then chooses between two or more alternatives, one of which is the same as the first; the animal is then rewarded for choosing the matching stimulus.

Introduced by Hunter (1913), a typical delayed response task presents an animal with a stimulus such as colored light, and after a short time interval the animal chooses among alternatives that match the stimulus, or are related to the stimulus in some other way. A commonly used variation of the matching-to-sample task requires the animal to use the initial stimulus to control a later choice between different stimuli.

In a radial maze test, an animal is placed on a small platform from which paths lead in various directions to goal boxes; the animal finds food in one or more goal boxes.

Spatial cognition is used in visual search when an animal or human searches their environment for specific objects to focus on among other objects in the environment.

The animal is then tested by being given an intermediate stimulus C, e.g. a 500 Hz tone, and observing whether the animal presses the lever associated with the positive or negative reward.

When the encephalization quotient is plotted as a curve, an animal with an EQ above the curve is expected to show more cognitive ability than the average animal of its size, whereas an animal with an EQ below the curve is expected to have less.

Some biologists argue that humans are not, in fact, the smartest animal, and that no animal can be characterized as the smartest, given that some animals have superior cognitive skills in certain areas.

Quick Facts

• Many behaviors associated with the term animal intelligence are also subsumed within animal cognition.
• The study of animal conditioning and learning used in this field was developed from comparative psychology.
• Researchers have examined animal cognition in mammals (especially primates, cetaceans, elephants, bears, dogs, cats, pigs, horses, cattle, raccoons and rodents), birds (including parrots, fowl, corvids and pigeons), reptiles (lizards, crocodilians, snakes, and turtles), fish and invertebrates (including cephalopods, spiders and insects).
• Human and non-human animal cognition have much in common, and this is reflected in the research summarized below; most of the headings found here might also appear in an article on human cognition.
• Speculation about animal intelligence gradually yielded to scientific study after Darwin placed humans and animals on a continuum, although Darwin's largely anecdotal approach to the cognition topic would not pass scientific muster later on.

Source material: Wikipedia - "Animal cognition". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.