Wild Minds
Wild Minds
Ludwig HUBER(Messerli-Institut, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna)
Evolutionary biology has uncovered remarkable anatomical and physiological similarities among animal species (including humans). The most parsimonious assumption is that they may also share some cognitive and behavioural traits. This idea was put forward by Charles Darwin, who suggested that humans are not separated from the animal kingdom in terms of cognition, but rather, that there is mental continuity across species. This hypothesis has now transformed into the flourishing field of Cognitive Biology, which examines the cognitive and communicative abilities of nonhuman animals (the "wild minds") from a comparative perspective. Emphasis is laid on what is missing in most accounts to cognition (in the wide field of the cognitive sciences), namely on the importance of studying a behaviour at four different levels: phylogeny (history), adaptation (ultimate function), proximate mechanisms and development (ontogeny) before it can be entirely understood. In this talk I will briefly review a selected subset of recent results and discuss their implications for our understanding of the evolution of cognition. Examples are provided from perceptual cognition (eg categorization and concept formation in pigeons), technical/physical cognition (eg invention of tool use in kea), social cogntiion (eg imitation in marmosets and dogs) and the evolution of cognition (eg social learning in a solitary reptile).
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