Do Animals have Imagination?

[xchrom]

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/Do/Animals/have/Imagination/elpepusoc/20110909elpepusoc_11/Tes

The above quote is the closing paragraph of Wolfgang Köhler's classic The Mentalities of Apes, published in 1925. Köhler was a psychologist who conducted experiments and observations on chimpanzees, and is considered one of the founding fathers of cognitive primatology. He chose to look at chimpanzees' performance with pictures after having observed their fearful reactions to stuffed toy animals and cardboard face masks. He observed that it seemed necessary for the toy animals to have some likeness to real animals, "nearness to life," in order to invoke fear. The stuffed animals invoked even stronger responses than did most real animals. He concluded that the stuffed animals, not being fully real, played on the imagination in a way that real animals did not.

Interpreting, or "filling in" what is not there, is one definition of imagination. Animals have long been thought not to be able to move beyond what is directly in front of their senses, and proving imagination has thus far-reaching importance.

Pictures have been used as stimuli since the early days of animal cognition research to assess questions of for example categorisation; which objects do animal group as "similar" at the expense of other objects? Pictorial stimuli have been used with such success that few scientists have asked the questions of why they work, and what it means. Since animals of all kinds readily accept pictures as examples of real-world objects, it must mean that pictures are simple and intuitive phenomena. This idea easily lends itself to the conclusion that there are only two ways of viewing pictures: you either recognize them or you do not. This destiny was apparent already in the quote above.

Köhler's picture experiments were simple. He developed a photograph of an empty crate and another photograph of a crate full of bananas, and pasted these on two boxes baited with fruit. Results were mixed. Only one chimpanzee reliably chose the banana photograph. Köhler then created two new photographs: one of bananas and one of a rock. The subjects now performed much better, which Köhler ascribed to the superior quality and nearness to life in the second pair of pictures.

[MineralMan]

1. My cat has an imagination. She imagines I care whether she likes

the flavor of the catfood I just put on the floor. She turned up her nose at it and looked at me, as if to say, "Well, I imagine you're going to open a different can, now..." Imagine her surprise when I didn't. :rofl:

[ret5hd]

2. I believe you are totally misinterpreting your cats reaction...

What really happened is YOU IMAGINED that she imagined. What she really thought was "Stupid human! I despise this kind of cat food (she just calls it "food") and next time i see you carrying several large boxes i am going to purposefully weave between your feet!"

[MineralMan]

3. Ah, but as soon as I walked away, she ate that food.

She's always hoping for the sardine flavor of Fancy Feast. Little does she understand that my method for selecting the cat food du jour is to grab the nearest can. My wife, on the other hand, carefully considers flavors at each feeding, evaluating the most recent feedings and selecting a flavor she's certain the cat will eat with gusto.

I have watched. The silly feline gives her selection the same precise treatment she gives mine. Invariably, she'll turn up her nose at any offering. Once you leave, she eats it, whatever it is. I am smarter than my cat. My wife, however, is easily manipulated by small furry animals that purr.

[Wait Wut]

6. Easy solution.

Another cat.

I have three and there is no sticking up of noses to any kind of food I put down. I could put down a big bowl of grape jelly and they'd rush to see who could eat it all first. They each get their own bowl of food in the morning, but it's like musical chairs. They have to try all three bowls even though I feed them all the same thing. They "imagine" that the other two have a better bowl.

[smokey nj]

10. The kitty buffet - I know it well.

[udbcrzy2]

7. My cats do that too

I have even bought very expensive canned cat food. They like it the first couple of times and then they want real food - MEAT. They love chicken and turkey. The other cat, is not picky and will even nibble on the dry dog food. I guess I should be glad he doesn't talk to the other cats. LOL

[tularetom]

4. Our dog when on a leash imagines she is a Rottweiler

She barks and growls at every dog that comes by in a truck or car.

When she is in the house the cats corner her, hiss at her and make her pee.

She weighs about 20 lbs.

[Diclotican]

8. tularetom

tularetom

You made me laugh there..

I had the pleasure of keeping for a dog for 2 weeks now, and she also was like that.. A rather small dog, but her mind was set to be a BIG dog, even tho she are not. She are a "buehund" a old, norwigian dog type, who goes all the way back to 500-600 AD.. And are used as a farm dog, and they are a dog type who are not afraid of to mutch thing.. http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norsk_buhund (sorry it is in norwigian, but I guess google translate can do the trick)

Even tho the dog I was keeping for, was afraid of thunder.. Not just umpleasent with thunder, but scared as hell, if the heavens was tundering.. Then under my office desk for protection, and the poor dog was sitting there, shaking and scared.. She even was sitting om my leap, and shaking as an osp and was really afraid poor dog.. I don't know about the reactions for cats, even tho I think she is little curius rather than afraid of them.. But dam if anyone was going any near my home, then she sounded like a big dog...

Diclotican

[hue]

5. We know that they dream,

Our dog had REM when sleeping and her paws would move a little as if she were running. Sometimes she would whimper a little also.
I think animals' intelligence is underrated. They may have a form of imagination. It's interesting!

[Uncle Joe]

12. That's exactly what I was thinking,

I've had dogs do that in their sleep as well.

To me it seems highly improbable if not impossible for animals to have the ability to dream, but not to imagine.

Furthermore when you get a puppy, they tell you that in order to help it sleep easier for the first few nights to place a ticking clock or hot water bottle in bed with them, this comforts the puppy reminding it of the mother. It seems to me the comforted puppy must be using imagination to accept this pseudo mother in order to sleep.

[kickysnana]

9. Casey Jones, mama was a cockapoo daddy was a doberman traveling salesman..

You could see him thinking. He was a rascal.

"Should I do it? If I do it I will be in trouble I am going to do it!"

Then "I am sooooo sorry. Please, please forgive me?"

He would hit the wooden screen door once and it would cause the hook and eye to fly open. He would hit again and let the cat out. Then he would hit it and let himself out. I have never seen an animal or person who loved life so much.

The 90+ year old swede boarder who lived upstairs would take him the two blocks to the drugstore for "protection". As soon as he was a few yards away he would let him off the leash. I was walking Casey past the drugstore and he pulled on the leash and it broke at the clip and he dashed into the drugstore when someone opened the door. I went in, mortified and found out he was in there all the time and everyone thought he was great.

Of course we were in the inner city in a two block strip of mixed families between the "ghetto' and the dividing line. They were doing the final neighborhood clearances before they stopped that so there were a lot of empty lots and most people were live and let live people.

[kas125]

11. I have a Casey Jones, too. He's half golden retriever and half

Siberian Husky. And his nose turns pink in the winter -

[kickysnana]

14. I had a golden who we called Barney, (long before the purple one) loved everyone...

but druggies. Limited the number of beaus my youngest sister could bring home. (She cleaned up her act eventually). He showed up on my grandmother's front porch, in bad shape during hunting season, so bad we thought he was an old dog. The vet told us he was under age 2.

We put an add in and someone who was deaf came looking for a trained dog but they just looked at him and said no. I don't think they recognized him. He wagged his tail but did not act his age as he was still to weak and traumatized. He appeared to be trained. He expected us to do somethings but we didn't know what those things were so he finally gave up and just became one of our family.

[beac]

15. What a handsome fellow!

My Jindo also gets "snow nose"-- apparently it's common with spitz-type breeds.

[MissDeeds]

17. What a beautiful dog!

Love his peace collar, too.

:loveya:

[Hawkowl]

13. Animals couldn't function without imagination!

How could a lion plan a hunt? How can a deer decide where to feed? First they have to image (imagine) where the food is before they can go get it!

Anyone who has pets or worked with animals closely knows that they are far smarter then mainstream modern America gives them credit for. I can just imagine animals wondering if modern Americans have any intelligence at all as we destroy our planet!

[nolabear]

16. I know the feeling. Dolls scare the hell out of me.

[Demeter]

18. I have doubts about most people possessing imagination

and, when I get old enough, I plan to become a curmudgeon.

[distantearlywarning]

19. I have seen my cats engage in a form of "imagination" on many occasions

In fact, I think it's a behavior cats as a species are particularly predisposed towards, for whatever reason.

Sometimes when they play with furry mice toys, they will toss the toys around in ways that make them move like they are real mice. They will back away from the toys and hide around a corner and very quietly stalk the toy and then POUNCE on it like it is a real mouse who might run away if they aren't careful and sneaky. They're not confused about whether mice toys are real mice - it seems to me that they sometimes 'pretend' that the toys are real mice because it's fun for them to do so. (I was a nanny to very small children for a number of years, and I noted similar behaviors in the under-5 group).

Everyone who owns a cat has also seen them attack something that isn't actually there. Sometimes I think they honestly get confused (because they mistook a shadow for an insect, for example), but other times I've been sure that they were deliberately "imagining" something to amuse themselves for a moment.

Ours also sometimes 'pretend' that we have done something scary and then dart away in an exaggerated manner, sometimes stopping to peer back at us as if to say, "Play this game with me where you chase me and I pretend to be afraid and run away!"

[NJCher]

20. yes, those definitely seem like signs of imagination

I've seen that kind of behavior with my 3 cats, too. It's very funny, seeing one of my skinny black cats "pretending." They get so caught up in it that they almost convince me.

What do you think: is this a sign of imagination or is this just "smart?"

My neighbors have two dogs whom I walk on a regular basis. One time the neighors were away, and I left them in the gated-in pool area.

The next morning I looked out the door and both dogs were standing up against the window with their leaches in their mouths. They had dug a tunnel under the fence and came to my house because they wanted to go for a walk. They each brought their own leashes, which had been lying on a chair on the way to my house.

THEY BROUGHT THEIR OWN LEASHES!!

Now, if they were just dumb, unimaginative animals, they would have gone on their own walk without me. I'd have been calling animal control, scared and worried about where they were.

But they are well-trained, disciplined animals who are used to getting at least one walk a day. They knew I was in charge of the walks for that time.


Still amazes me when I think about it.


Cher