PSY1 HAE Topic 3: Humans – From Sensing to Thinking PDF

 Topic 3: Humans – From Sensing to Thinking to Talking About Animals Sagan’s view is consistent with evidence gathered by When you have completed this topic, you will: scientists who have combed the planet loo...

 Topic 3: Humans – From Sensing to Thinking to Talking About Animals Sagan’s view is consistent with evidence gathered by When you have completed this topic, you will: scientists who have combed the planet looking for evidence of early humans. Most scientists now agree Know who and what “Lucy” is and that humans evolved from an early primate species, understand why it is important to represented most famously, but also controversially, consider the impact of human evolution by a fossilized primate called Lucy. on modern thought processes concerning human-animal relationships Lucy, also called Dinkenesh, meaning "you are amazing", was reconstructed from 3.2 million-year- Be able to describe differences between old fossil remnants found in the Awash Valley in how early humans may have viewed the Ethiopia by Donald Johanson in 1974. She is world and how modern humans do so believed to have lived as part of a small family group that roamed the large grass plains of Africa. She was Understand the Biophilia Hypothesis very small, and, one would imagine, fairly vulnerable and what is meant by the terms to predation. biophilia and biophobia Be able to discuss how our early ancestors may have communicated with one another and why animals are believed to be critical to development of this skill Understand why some theorists are convinced that animals remain critical for the cognitive development of modern children In the preceding topic we used the concepts of space, time and culture to illustrate the fact that our current relationships with animals represent only one possible form that such relationships could take. Once we realise this, it makes sense to question how we came to have the social structure that we currently enjoy. What things influenced the evolution of animals into their current forms and, just as importantly, where did our own perceptions of animals come from? As you might remember from one of the videos presented in our last topic, Carl Lucy and her family had very poorly developed Sagan depicted our early ancestors as a group of brains relative to our own, so they almost certainly ape-like creatures gathered under a tree. While the lacked our capacity for imagination. Her memory story of human evolution remains controversial, would likely have been impoverished compared to ours, since she lacked the sophisticated language Lucy certainly could. Lucy’s sense of taste was also skills and large frontal lobes we rely on to mentally important, telling her which foods were safe to eat. construct our past, present, and future lives. She also There were no food labelling laws 3.2 million years lived in a time when there were no houses, no ago and Lucy and her family were totally reliant on televisions, no iPads, no clothes, no fast food, no their own judgement. What did Lucy experience when cars, no doctors, no religion, no tools, no social she touched other animals or their products? If you security, no knowledge that there are countries or ever go camping in a wilderness area try going out habitats other than her own, no knowledge of where of your tent without an artificial light source, she came from, and no understanding of death. particularly on a night without bright moonlight. Instead, Lucy and her family may have relied for their Notice how important your sense of touch becomes. survival on their ability to detect and react to what was happening around them. Modern humans still often connect with animals (including other humans) on a purely sensory level. If you are keen to find out more about Lucy, check Millions of people enjoy watching animals at out her Wikipedia site, watch a short (4 minute) sporting events or on nature shows. Most enjoy the video about her discovery or read one of Johanson’s taste of meat and other animal products or the smell books about her discovery (Johanson & Edey, 1981; of them being prepared. Stroking pets is almost a Johanson & Wong, 2010). Details are in the national past-time (and it results in a burst of supplementary reading list at the end of this chapter. oxytocin that makes us feel good), but barking dogs, perhaps by activating an innate stress response, Take a minute to imagine how Lucy might have cause more neighbourhood disputes than any other experienced her life and what things might have issue. Think about your own experiences with been important to her. She couldn’t eliminate animals. When you visit a zoo or nature reserve is it darkness by flicking a light switch or even lighting a to learn more about animals, or do you derive candle and she couldn’t make herself safe from pleasure from simply watching them? Why do you predators at night by going indoors and locking the own a cat or dog – is it because of how they feel or door. Imagine what it would be like, even now, to smell or sound? Would you feel the same way about live in an environment where it becomes totally dark your pet if it was cool and dry like a snake? and very quiet when the sun goes down – how different would your life be? Imagining Lucy’s life is a nearly impossible task for us because we really don’t know what Lucy was capable of in a cognitive, emotional, or psychological sense. Nonetheless, we can probably imagine what would be important to Lucy and her family. Perhaps the weather and the environment; whether it was able to provide food, shelter, water and protection from predators. Lucy herself was vegetarian. Eating meat was a habit that did not emerge in early humans until about half a million years after Lucy lived. She presumably lived in close contact with many other animals, though, so being able to detect their presence would be important. Can you imagine living in a world where there are no animals? There are millions of people in our society Lucy's sense of smell was probably far more today who have never eaten an animal they knew as developed than ours. It may provide the first clue that a living thing, never snuggled with one on the sofa, a large feline predator is hiding just out of sight. Even never drank milk directly from a cow’s teat, never now the parts of our brain that detect odours (our been overwhelmed by the smell of lions or a fear of olfactory bulbs) are closely connected with brain snakes. Do you think these people are missing out areas that influence emotions (the limbic system, on anything important? Are you one of them? Is especially the amygdala). This is why particular scents sensory contact with animals important or can are able to evoke strong emotional responses like animals be replaced psychologically by toys, fear or joy (Herz & Engen, 1996). Can you recognise computer animations, and the Discovery Channel? the scents of different animals? Probably not, but Would you be a different kind of human being, or maybe not a human being at all, if you had no derived from animals, may have been directly contact with animals? responsible for the evolution of human intelligence! From Lucy’s ancestors to prehistoric hunter‐gatherers These questions might seem bizarre, but they are important because some scientists believe that the way our ancestors interacted with animals has significant consequences for how our brains work today. This is not quite so controversial a statement as it might seem. We know that evolution of all organisms is affected by their physical environment. We also know that the social environment is just as important as the physical one in shaping how species evolve. For example, recent studies have shown that dogs make eye contact with humans much more Try to imagine again that you are one of Lucy’s readily than do wolves, and that dogs also tend to ancestors, living on the African Savannah. Your use this eye contact to ‘ask’ for human assistance senses are working overtime trying to make sense when they are confronted with a problem they cannot of the world so that you can react appropriately to solve. This suggests that the centuries dogs have threats or opportunities. This is made difficult, spent living closely with humans has shaped how however, by the fact that the environment keeps they interact with their environment. Might the same changing, so you can never be sure what you are also be true of us? Certainly, animals and other going to encounter when you wake up every humans would have been among the most important morning to start your day. Imagine how useful it things in our ancestors’ world. Here they were would be, given these circumstances, if you could moving through the world, seeing, hearing, touching, somehow create an image in your head of what you smelling, tasting, and there, in the environment, were might expect to encounter in different places. Such other moving, sensing organisms, all interconnected a skill might be of great benefit, perhaps meaning by their dependence on each other. that you were more likely than other pre-humans to live long enough to reproduce. Humans evolve a capacity to think Actually, our ability to think probably evolved long The use of tools by humans, even the simple ones before our ancestors inhabited the African described by Mithen (1996) as being used by Homo grasslands, back when we were living in dark habilis some 2.5 million years ago, seems to suggest enclosed jungle habitats like many other primates. that these ‘animals’ were capable of thinking about In these environments vision is typically less what they were doing. To see a stone and imagine important than senses like olfaction and audition. that it might be used as something else requires By the time something is visible it is generally too imagination, the ability to hold and mentally late to avoid it, but noses and ears work even when manipulate images. This represents a profound it is dark or when vision is impaired by vegetation. psychological shift in how our ancestors were able Olfaction and audition, however, depend very much to relate to the world around them. Just think for a on being able to keep track of things over time. minute about how absolutely amazing our brains Being able to detect lion scent is important, but are. They allow us not only to make sense of knowing how old the scent is and in which direction information that our sensory systems detect, but the lion was travelling is equally vital. Similarly, also to reach into the past (memory) and look into sounds are more informative when we use them to the future (imagination). Somehow, we construct determine if something in the environment is internal representations of past, present and future moving towards or away from us. Hence, in the worlds, which then drive our behaviour. Our lives, jungle we evolved the capacity to track scents and both historically and right now, would be very different if we couldn’t do this – if we couldn’t think. string sounds together in meaningful ways. Mithen argues that this profound change may not Later, when our very early primate ancestors left the have been possible without a change in diet – the trees for the grasslands, the brain areas that had consumption of high-quality proteins and fats, developed to keep track of things over time were co-opted by the visual system – which is much more important in open grasslands than it is in jungle settings. Proto humans developed colour vision and a capacity to use their mind’s eye to see into the past and future, to remember and to anticipate. Our ancestors could picture in their heads what their family members were doing and, just as importantly, what the other living things around them were doing. If they saw a predator in the distance, they did not have to respond automatically, but could think about what it meant last time they saw a similar sight. They could also imagine where a predator might hide and the location of good sources of food, even if they were only available on Wilson argued that, although modern humans tend a seasonal basis. For the first time, animals lived to be able to survive in practically any environment, inside our heads just as surely as they lived outside this is really just a function of how good we are at them and we could make decisions about whether changing the environment to resemble the habitat to react to stimuli or not. that we were designed for over millions of years of The Biophilia Hypothesis evolution. Based on knowledge that humans spent most of the last two million years living in African What else do you think might have been happening grasslands, Wilson proposed what is now known as inside the heads of our ancestors? We developed the biophilia hypothesis – the idea that humans all kinds of amazing cognitive abilities, of course, should psychologically prefer certain types of but another possibility that is particularly environments. In particular, he proposed that interesting in the context of thinking about the humans should prefer environments comprised of psychology of human-animal relationships, is one park-like grasslands dotted by scattered trees and that was proposed by a famous entomologist with some kind of topographical relief, such as cliffs, called Edward O. Wilson. Entomologists study hills and ridges. He also thought we should like to insects and Wilson, now in his 90s, worked at be close to a body of water, preferably containing Harvard University. He is like the David additional food sources, but also providing Attenborough of the ant world, and was named protection on at least one side of our camp. one of the 100 leading environmentalists of the century by Time Magazine. He has also written Now of course it is difficult to test this hypothesis more than 30 books and has won two Pulitzer using modern scientific methods, but there is quite prizes for his written work. a bit of evidence that is consistent with it. Consider where really rich people choose to live, where we Wilson did a great deal of travelling during his career go for holidays and where we build our most and he noticed that he felt most comfortable in important buildings. Why is it that many people certain environments. This made sense to him surround themselves with lovely gardens and water because, as an entomologist, he knew that habitat features, and why do people in hospital recover selection was a crucial first step for survival of all faster if they can see trees from their window? animal species. As Wilson asserts “In the right place, food becomes easier to find, appropriate shelter is Wilson also proposed that humans have an “innate available, and predators can be more easily avoided. tendency to focus on life and life-like processes”. It Animals are therefore typically born with an innate is easy to imagine that this would have been tendency to find the right environment, often within important during our history. Even though we a few minutes of birth” (Wilson, 1984, p. 107). probably wanted to avoid predators, if we didn’t Turtles that hatch in nests on beaches immediately choose to live close to where other animals were we head upwards and then towards water. Salmon and probably would not have lasted very long. Also, migrating birds return to their birth places to modern humans appear to have a strong tendency reproduce. Even kangaroos and other marsupials, to get close to animals. More people visit zoos born in a very undeveloped state, the size of a every year than go to all major sporting events peanut and totally blind, nonetheless migrate across combined. Many more own pets, feed birds or their mother’s stomach to find tiny nipples, buried possums in their yards, visit nature reserves, and deep within a pouch. attend sporting events involving animals.  fear in the case of the snake. Even other primates acquire snake fear more rapidly than other fears, even if they are raised in a laboratory with absolutely no exposure to snakes. It is also easy to condition fear of snakes and spiders by having monkeys watch other monkeys who act frightened of these things. Hence, there is probably a learning bias towards what used to be a biologically adaptive response (LoBue et al., 2010). Most primates do not appear to be scared of guns at all, even though they are much more likely to be shot these days than to be bitten by a snake. There is also some evidence to suggest that humans Humans also tend to grossly over-estimate the tend to focus on particular kinds of animals. In the possibility of being attacked by animals like sharks first topic we considered whether all animals are and dogs. Maybe this occurs because our human equal, or whether some are more ‘animally’ than ancestors had very good reasons to be terrified of others. It turns out that most humans are large animals with big sharp teeth. Often, when we particularly attracted to what are called ‘charismatic have nightmares, they include large, dark mega-fauna’. These are animals that are big enough mammalian predators like bears and/or slithery, to either eat us or be eaten by us. Humans also have scary reptiles. Scary movies often focus on the same a very strong preference for warm blooded fluffy themes. If you are interested in these ideas, you animals like puppies and kittens, koalas, guinea might like to explore Wilson’s book or a great little pigs, and rabbits, and even baby lambs, calves, and book by Stephen Kellert, called Kinship to Mastery: tigers. Studies have shown that most people are biophilia in human evolution and development. drawn to animals with high foreheads, flat faces and Details are in the supplementary reading list for this large, widely spaced eyes – exactly the features we topic. love to look at in human infants. Also interesting from a psychological perspective is the intense fear many people have of animals like snakes and spiders. If you ask people what they are most afraid of, they tend to say public speaking and death first, but then they put snakes and spiders much higher on the list than guns, fast cars, salmonella, bird flu, bankruptcy, and plane crashes – all of which are more likely to be a threat in the modern world. We don’t know why this is the case, but perhaps it reflects the fact that, for millions of years, humans who were afraid of spiders and snakes were more likely to survive and reproduce. Humans as super thinkers Scientists have done quite a bit of research into this One important point to take out of the preceding aspect of biophilia, called biophobia, and the results discussion is that animals were probably critical in have been quite amazing. While it does not look like determining the evolution of our ancestors’ capacity fear of potentially dangerous animals is innate, in to think. They appear to have been critical in two that it is there when humans are born, we do seem ways. First (and later), they were important as a to have a bias towards acquiring these fears, source of high-quality food, which early humans especially during childhood. In experiments where required to keep their huge brain ticking over. the appearance of an object like a snake or a gun Second, and much earlier in the evolutionary has been paired with a small electric shock, for process, they served as the objects we needed to example, people tend to become more fearful of the think most about – primarily so that we could live snake than they do of the gun (Ohman & Mineka, comfortably and safely in our shared environment 2001). They also become fearful more quickly and and avoid being eaten. Later in this subject we will it takes much more work to eliminate the learned consider whether humans are alone in being able to think. Before we delve into this topic, however, we need to explore the recent evolution of humans in more detail, considering whether animals may have played other important roles in our own species’ development. There is no doubt that modern humans are unique in many important ways, including the degree to which they are capable of using symbols to think and to communicate and the degree to which they are self-aware. Why is it that humans excel at these skills? According to Stephen Mithen, humans were not so To understand the enormity of this shift in our different from other animals until about 40,000 thinking ability, let’s go back to Africa for a minute, years ago. At this point there is archaeological somewhere between Lucy and the revolution that evidence of a rapid change in how our human took place about 40,000 years ago. Here you are, a ancestors interacted with the world. Mithen (1996) new age pre-human, collecting food with your family believes that before this time human brains were members, and you stumble across a symbol you left complex but modular in structure, so that our behind last time you were in this same area. It is a ancestors had four different kinds of intelligence mark you dug in a tree trunk to remind you that this that operated quite separately and did not really is somewhere you do not want to go – maybe the influence each other. He describes these different symbol brings into your mind the image of a types of intelligence as: particularly grumpy predator. Using your developing Social Intelligence – a module that helped capacity for imagination, you think about what might us deal with our social group by using happen if you enter the danger zone and decide not knowledge of our self to predict the to do so. But of course, your family members keep behaviour of other humans moving. You are strongly psychologically attached to Natural History Intelligence – a module your family members and your survival depends on adapted to processing information about the whole family doing well. So, what are you going resource availability, including the activities to do? You could scream hysterically and run off in of other animals another direction, hoping they will follow. This is Technical Intelligence – a module developed what most animals do when threatened – panic and to cope with material parts of the world, sound a nonspecific and automatic alarm call. This including tool use works reasonably well but, at this point in our evolutionary development, two really important General Intelligence – a module for general changes took place. problem solving These various cognitive skills all came together Development of theory of mind and sophisticated about 40,000 years ago, leading to an enormous communication skills increase in cognitive fluidity, the capacity to take information from one setting and apply it to another. First, early humans developed something called a This led to representational art, technological theory of mind. What this means is that each one of advances and the expansion of social intelligence to them worked out that, if they are able to think and include other species. Somehow our ancestors remember and plan, then possibly those around figured out that we could use the part of our brain them are capable of the same feats. This is amazing that had developed to make sense of our social – even though we can’t see or hear it, we imagine interactions with other humans to also make sense that maybe our family members have minds just like of our interactions with animals. the one we are self-aware of and we use this theory to initially predict the behaviour of our family members, but then also to manipulate it to some degree – we can now plan a strategy to influence the minds of others. We might still scream and run, but it will be because we expect (imagine) our family members will follow rather than being an automatic response. Maybe, instead, we would pretend to find some really nice food somewhere else, so our family members will be distracted from the intended path. Even more amazingly, our ancestors note that the same things work with other animals. They use their theory of mind skills to predict how other animals will react in specific situations, and they find out that they can manipulate them into acting in ways that make them easier to catch or avoid. A cognitive ethologist called Marc Bekoff calls this ‘minding’ animals – we realise that animals, as well as other humans, have invisible minds that drive their This is fantastic but you might wonder what it has behaviour. Very few animal species develop a full to do with the psychology of human-animal blown theory of mind, so this is quite a unique relationships. To understand this, we need to meet achievement. another influential scientist, called Paul Shepard. Shepard was, until he died in 1996, an ecological philosopher, and he believed that the human mind, including our capacity for language, arose out of our unique evolutionary history. In his books he describes how our really early ancestors, tree- dwelling primates, developed a large intelligent brain due to two pressures. One was the need to operate in a dark and complex three-dimensional forest environment. This led to us being able to keep track of information over time. The other pressure identified by Shepard was the need to operate in a complex social environment where it was necessary to identify and keep track of very Another really important thing that occurred during subtle social interactions with numerous individuals. the evolution of our ancestors is that they acquired Think about the complexity of your relationships the desire and ability to communicate to their family with friends and family members. To be an effective members the meaning of symbols. If one human has human you need to keep track of who is friends with a mind and he or she can use it to remember the who, who owes you a favour, who might be meaning of various symbols, and if that human also dangerous and so forth. These same social understands that other humans have similar minds pressures might also explain why dolphins and and can use symbols in similar ways, then it makes some birds are so intelligent, but we aren’t going to perfect sense for the first human to try to tell or teach go there today. the second human what her symbols mean – to share her symbolic information. Think about how amazing this is. Our new theory of mind means that we can imagine being able to share the thoughts and images that are now dancing around in our heads, allowing us to plan and coordinate hunting activities and tool use, relationships with other humans, as well as many other things. When our ancestors came down from the trees to take able to vocalise the range of sounds that we can. up residence on the African savanna, they joined an Elephants seem to communicate using very low ongoing evolutionary battle between very advanced rumbling sounds that travel for miles but that we predators and prey. Because of the richness of the have trouble hearing. Birds have a distinct environment, the species living there developed very advantage in this respect. You may have heard of quickly in an evolutionary sense, with fossil evidence Alex the African Grey Parrot. Before his death in revealing rapid changes in brain size, consistent with 2007 he was learning language from a scientist a continuous improvement in the ability of the animals called Irene Pepperberg for about 25 years. Among to think about and anticipate the moves of other other things, Alex could label fifty objects, seven species involved in the battle for survival – what we colours and five shapes. We’ll talk about Alex more might call mindedness. This required the creation of in a later topic but you might like to watch this mental representations and also sophisticated short (3 min) video now. learning skills. Instead of being dependent on luck to find food and avoid predation, the developing species acquired a capacity to recognise other animals by signs such as odours, droppings, and sounds. They also became able to form mental maps. Relatively suddenly, so far as evolution goes, we find a range of species that could use this information to avoid dangerous routes, lure predators away from vulnerable young, read the behaviour of predators and, in the case of predators, counter all these moves and hunt in well organised, co-operative, packs. It is not surprising, therefore, that the arrival of our Given that the lives of our ancestors were so bound puny ancestors in this complex and dangerous up with animals, maybe our first symbolic sounds environment led to a rapid increase in the size and were imitations of animal sounds or natural events. complexity of their brains. It was probably either If I showed you a rock and imitated a lion’s roar, you that or extinction. They had already developed would probably figure what the rock was meant to unique features, such as complex social rules and represent. Later, our ancestors became more a well-developed primate vocal system. Very sophisticated, acquiring a symbolic vocabulary and rapidly, however, they evolved into what we stringing words together to form sentences able to recognise as early humans. This required that they represent quite complex thoughts and plans. We develop the capacity to use their vocal system to also evolved the cognitive skills necessary to tell symbolise different concepts. stories about our experiences. It’s not difficult to imagine how this might have But what kinds of symbols might we use to tell our happened. Perhaps we began by using rocks and stories? It’s hard to work out what a symbol might sticks to represent objects. But imagine how much mean unless we can link it mentally to something easier life would be if we learned to use different concrete. How might we convey a concept like big sounds instead? We could carry knowledge of or hairy or dangerous or sweet? At this point, these sounds in our heads far more easily than we remember, the only really concrete things we know could carry rocks or other physical symbols and about are the other things inhabiting our natural use them to share our knowledge of places and environment. So, what do we use to tell our stories? things with family members. Most animals have a We cannot tell what very early humans used, of range of sounds at their disposal and quite a few course, but once our ancestors started keeping are known to communicate symbolically. Vervet records we can work out what they were monkeys, for example, have three different kinds of communicating about and with. alarm calls: one for leopards, one for eagles, and Early rock and cave art makes it immediately one for snakes. They seem to learn these and use obvious that our ancestors spent a lot of time them symbolically, so that troop members know communicating about animals, especially those that how to react to a specific threat. Primate studies were either dangerous or good to eat. Cave have shown that at least some animals can paintings go back more than 25,000 years and the communicate symbolically, although very few are figures in them are mostly large animals, grouped together by species or depicted as part of human Modern communication skills activities. This is not surprising. Since our ancestors’ Even now, in our ultra-sophisticated world, we use interactions with animals had such a big impact on animals as metaphors all the time. What does it whether they survived or not it makes sense that mean to describe someone as a gorilla, or a kitten, these were the images in their heads. or a goose, or a lion, or a goat or a cow or a snake? These are terms we all readily identify with because it is very common to use animal words to describe ourselves and other members of our species. Far less common is the use of non-animal terms like jet plane or cauliflower or memory stick. Why do you think animal names and pictures are so good at capturing what it is that we are trying to convey about people? Could it be that we use animal names as metaphors because they are what the symbols in our heads are already based on? In Shepard’s books he describes the development Interestingly, some of the earliest Australian of language in modern human infants. We know Aboriginal paintings depict deer, which did not exist from developmental psychologists that all human in Australia prior to European colonisation. It is infants develop physically through a series of believed that the artist who painted the deer must stages. Certain things happen at certain times and, have crossed the Timor Strait by boat, and that the if this process is interrupted, all kinds of problems exquisite paintings of Sambar deer must have been result. In a physical sense, each infant learns to painted entirely from memory. This suggests that support their own head, then their body weight. something about these animals was very important They start to drag themselves around, then crawl, to these people. Consistent with this, many scientists stand upright, walk, run, jump, dance, and skip. now believe that ancient animal pictures were often not really about animals at all, but were about The development of our complex cognitive system human activities that the animals were used to also proceeds through stages. Infants are not born symbolically represent. knowing how to think and problem solve, but nor are they born totally dependent for this skill on the To illustrate this idea, take your mind back to the input of those around them. Instead, cognitive savannah and imagine that you’ve come across a development develops through a series of stages in new type of animal that you want to describe to your the first few years of life. According to Shepard the family. How are you going to accomplish this? You first thing toddlers learn is to categorise and name can’t use words like nasty, dangerous or fast significant people – often mum, mum, mum and dad, because these haven’t been invented yet. But what dad, dad. They then focus on categorising and about if you drew a picture or used a vocal symbol naming body parts – nose, toes, eyes and belly you’d already attached to an animal showing these buttons. In their second year, most children become same characteristics – a tiger. Similarly, if you’ve totally absorbed with categorising and naming been off hunting and have come across a band of animals. First the general categories – bird, fish, dog people, including one who you think might make a (mammal), and then more specifically cow, pig, suitable wife, how are you going to describe her? robin, owl, blackbird. The words become releasers Maybe you’d draw a beautiful bird or a flower, or a for cognitive images and vice versa – infants see or cute little mouse, or an elephant with good child- hear the word fish and the image of a prototypical bearing hips. Or maybe you’d use sounds that your fish springs to mind. family associates with certain things instead of drawing on a wall. The point is that the pressure to Grammar makes its first appearance at about 18 communicate ideas and experiences is intense, so months of age, as the child learns to focus more on our ancestors went looking for objects in the natural details that differentiate within categories – big environment that they could use as symbols or dog, small dog, red fish, our cat, etc. Think about metaphors. What they found were animals! how you might explain the concept of ‘big’ to a small child. This is actually really hard to do unless you have concrete objects, like animals, to use as examples. Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, When robots are used in their place, they often have children universally acquire a large number of animal-like features. natural concepts during their early years, but have great difficulty learning artificial concepts. After infants have managed to identify and name animals, they begin to ‘verb’ them. They learn about differences amongst animals and dissect them into bits – legs, heads, ears, and tails. Now when they think fish it is accompanied by the concept of ‘fishiness’ – a symbolic representation of what a fish is, not just how it looks. What was a dog now becomes ‘dogginess’- a symbolic representation of all things doggy, and pigs bring forth the concept of ‘piggishness’. These first animal-based concepts can then be used to describe those things that are most Even as adults, animal names remain our most important to infants in their social environment – widely used reference system, a scaffold for all kinds their enemies and friends and family members. of classifying. As described by Shepard, we use They call someone a pig to differentiate them from animal names to describe everything from yoga someone who is lamb-like, and they also describe positions (the butterfly and the cobra) to different people as chickening out, worming their way up, types of pain (a cow of a headache) to dance steps wolfing their food down, horsing around, going (who remembers the chicken dance?). We drive cars cold turkey or talking bull dust. All of these terms named after animals and barrack for sporting teams are built upon the original animal reference system called the tigers or the lions or the magpies. We use and there are hundreds of them. Joseph Clark, in animals to identify specific constellations of stars, 1968, put together a collection of 5000 animal describe cloud patterns, identify years (Chinese) and phrases in a book called Beastly Folklore. give form to mythical creatures. We also use animal Modern infants also use animal names as reference forms in art, literature, songs, jokes and films to points for initially learning about totally abstract represent many different things. symbols. When children learn the alphabet animals Moreover, a cognitive system based on classifying and other natural objects play a prominent role. A natural forms is not specific to Western cultures. is for apple, B for bear, C for cow, D for dog and E One of the features that characterise all human for Elephant. If you look at internet sites or books societies is that they have an extensive, language- with alphabets for kids, you’ll find that all of the based inventory of their natural environment, letters are linked with concrete reference points that including plants, animals, habitats, modes of travel are colourful and can be easily visualised, and that and body organs. The actual categories are often many of these are animals or other natural objects. different between cultures, but it does seem that we Nursery rhymes and short stories are also often have a really strong drive to categorise something about animals. Through these our children learn the and that we fulfil this need by categorising whatever rules of society. happens to be available. Because category making Perhaps this is just an historical accident; that we based on animals was at the centre of the evolution developed language and culture around animals of the human mind and the beginning of language because they were salient in our past and that our itself, it appears to form a core reference system, alphabet learning systems reflect this almost by without which it would be impossible for us to accident. This seems not to be the case. Instead, communicate. there is something almost magical about animals, So, that’s a story of where human thought and making them able to draw-in a child’s attention and language might have come from and why animals enthusiasm and providing a platform for the may have been so important in our evolutionary development of cognitive skills. Even modern books development. According to people like Paul and cartoons use animals to symbolise characters. Shepard, language is one means by which early humans were able to evolve into modern ones, critically different from our primate ancestors. In addition, a language system based on animals is still an important means of developing our A second reason for you to know something about individual cognitive skills. Animalising the world human evolutionary development is that people like appears to be part of the mental apparatus that lies Paul Shepard and Edward Wilson very strongly beneath language acquisition and cognitive believe that if we continue to wipe out animals and development. the natural environment, our own species is going to Why is this important? suffer, psychologically and physically. Shepard, for example, argues that, while we may no longer spend The human brain, according to Shepard, evolved the bulk of our time as adults thinking about not to ponder the universe, but to think about animals, children still need a basic animal reference relationships between natural objects. And why is system as a basis for the development of thought this important for you to know? Two reasons. itself. Perhaps we can help our children acquire First, if we are going to think clearly about the language through modern categories rather than psychology of human-animal relationships, we need natural ones, but this is something we need to keep to understand how human and animals are the same in mind. Wilson, meanwhile, argues that we have and how they are different. Many people dismiss innate biophilic tendencies and can only be animals as relatively uninteresting and unimportant psychologically healthy if we have a good fellow inhabitants of the planet. Others engage in relationship with the natural environment. A field of something called anthropomorphism, which is when psychology called ecopsychology has developed we incorrectly attribute human motivations, around this issue, arguing that our current characteristics or behaviour to animals, as well as to dysfunctional relationships with the natural inanimate objects and other natural phenomena. environment, including animals, may be responsible When we say that a storm is angry or a tree is sad for many of our modern mental health disorders, we are probably being anthropomorphic. On the including depression, chronic fatigue syndrome and other hand, there is a great deal of debate about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, as well as whether anthropomorphism in relation to animals is physical disorders like asthma, allergies, and cancer. problematic or not. There is a real danger in Our mental health appears to be critically dependent anthropomorphising animals because they are not on our environment and on our relationships with the same as humans, even if we give them human others, and these others can be other humans or names, dress them up and do their talking for them. other animals, so this idea is quite intriguing. However, evidence that we’ll discuss later in the Summary subject does suggest that at least some animals do have ‘minds’, and that our ancestor’s tendency to The objective of this rather long topic was for you to ‘mind’ animals was a really important turning point in start thinking about how humans may have first our own evolution. Many animals apparently do interacted with animals. According to evolutionary experience the kinds of feelings and thoughts that theory, initially our primate ancestors like Lucy were were previously believed to be experienced only by just another type of animal, and they most likely humans. Knowing this has potentially important engaged with their surroundings on a purely sensory implications in terms of how animals should be level – reacting to what they could see, hear, smell, treated. taste and feel, much like really simple animals do now. Later, humans developed from engaging with animals on a sensory level to thinking about them. This was probably at least partially due to our interactions with animals. If we were static organisms like trees, and we were not surrounded by moving animals, we probably would not have needed to develop the very rich mental lives that we now all lead. Importantly, many theorists believe that the way our brains evolved is likely to have implications for current human-animal relationships. Perhaps it is no accident that we view some animals as pets, others making is for us to rethink the relationship we have as food animals, and still others as pests. According with the natural environment and our animal to Wilson, you might recall, we are naturally cousins. Rethinking the way that we live with attracted to some animals and readily learn to fear animals in our society will be a theme underlying others. This clearly has implications for how we much of this subject, which is why we have relate to these animals within our current social wandered through so much evolutionary theory in framework. Human psychology is also likely to play the first few topics. To end this topic, consider this a pivotal role in determining the future of the entire quote by an Australian rainforest activist called John planet. Ecopsychologists believe that the only way Seed. It comes from a book called Ecopsychology. to save the planet from the mess we seem to be “It is obvious to me that the forests cannot be saved one at a time, nor can the planet be saved one issue at a time: without a profound revolution in human consciousness, all the forests will soon disappear. Psychologists in service to the Earth helping ecologists to gain deeper understanding of how to facilitate profound change in the human heart and mind seems to be the key at this point”. (John Seed, quoted in Roszak et al., 1995, p. 3).  Topic 3 References and/or supplementary resources Johanson, D. & Edey, M. (1981). Lucy, the beginnings of humankind. St Albans. Johanson, D. & Wong, K. (2010). Lucy's legacy. Crown Publishing Group. Kellert, S. (1997). Kinship to mastery: Biophilia in human evolution and development. Island Press. LoBue, V., Rakison, D. H. & DeLoache, J. S. (2010). Threat perception across the life span: Evidence for multiple converging pathways. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(6): 375-379. doi:10.1177/0963721410388801 Mithen, S. (1996). The prehistory of the mind: A search for the origins of art, religion and science. Thames and Hudson. Ohman, A., & Mineka, S. (2001). Fears, phobias, and preparedness: Toward an evolved module of fear and fear learning. Psychological Review,108, 483–522. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.108.3.483 Roszak, T. E., Gomes, M. E., & Kanner, A. D. (1995). Ecopsychology: Restoring the earth, healing the mind. Sierra Club Books. Shepard, P. (1978). Thinking animals: Animals and the development of human intelligence. Viking Press. Shepard, P. (1996). The other: How animals made us human. Island Press. Wilson, E. O. (1975). Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Harvard University Press. Wilson, E. O. (1984). Biophilia. Harvard University Press.