What Do Animals Think?

They feel many of the things we feel. They do many of the things we do. Will we ever know what they think?

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Rats driving cars. Source: Kelly Lambert, University of Richmond.

If you haven’t seen a rat drive a car, you haven’t lived.

I stand by that despite my recent debacle with a rat, which I documented last week. No, I do not want a wild rat living in my house. Yes, I do think tame rats taught to drive cars are extremely cute.

Do yourself a favor and check out this video (more here and here):

Notice the cars are electric; I like my rats to be environmentally friendly. Also notice I said the rats were “taught” to drive, not “trained.” I was taught to drive a car; why do we so often use the word “train” when we teach animals? Why do we insist on separating them from us — when we’re animals, too?

The history of setting ourselves apart from animals is long and storied. I’m not a scholar of history or of animals, but I’ve noticed a trend in recent times: every time we decide what makes us different from other animals, new shit comes to light to prove us wrong.

First, it was tools. (Okay, first it was souls, but you can’t prove or disprove the existence of a soul.) Then we discovered that many primates, birds, elephants, dolphins, sea otters, octopuses — and more! — also use tools. Some of my favorites: Dolphins don sea sponges when they forage, possibly to protect their snouts from sharp things on ocean floors. Elephants use logs to break electric fences. Orangutans make gloves out of leaves to protect their hands.

Then, it was language. But whales and elephants communicate in ways we don’t understand, as do birds and bees. Prairie dogs have something we could call a language, complete with adjectives; they also come up with new ways to communicate about new things.

What about self-awareness? A number of animals have passed the “mirror test” of self-recognition, which could signal self-awareness.

Surely, though, other animals don’t have culture. Except it turns out songbirds and whales have specific regional songs. Macaques learn culinary techniques from one another, like washing sweet potatoes. Some animals have even been observed to follow fashion trends, like a blade of grass in the ear for chimps and salmon hats for orcas.

Animals have homosexuality (dolphins, bonobos, penguins, giraffes, birds, dragonflies). Ritual behaviors (elephants, whales, chimps). Agriculture (ants, termites, some fish).

And rats, like us, enjoy learning new things — including driving. Researchers who taught rats to drive recount that the rats would jump up and down in anticipation of driving; they chose driving over walking and enjoyed it even when a reward wasn’t involved; and learning to drive lowered their stress, perhaps because of the enriching nature of learning something new.

Look, I’m not saying other animals are exactly like us. There are characteristics and behaviors that set humans apart, but in many cases, like language, the differences may be a matter of degree. Instead of acknowledging that many things exist on a spectrum, we tend to make everything black and white. This same inability to see gradations leads us astray when it comes to human qualities. Sexuality, gender, introversion/extroversion — none of these are as binary as we make them out to be, and neither are animal characteristics. Maybe we need to account for 50 shades of intelligence.

Whatever our differences and similarities, humans are certainly not better than other animals. For one thing, we’re unique in our ability to destroy species and habitat. We may indeed have capabilities other creatures don’t have when it comes to reasoning and awareness; they for sure have capabilities we don’t have, like the infrared vision of snakes, the electroreception of sharks, and the ability of dogs to smell cancer.

We’re learning more all the time about other animals, but there’s still so much we don’t know. That’s especially true when it comes to their thoughts, something we haven’t yet been able to decode. Do we know what rats are thinking when they drive? No, we do not. Do I know what my cats are thinking when they meow at us pitifully but don’t want food or petting? No, I do not. Did I know our unwanted rat housemate was thinking as it lurked in its undisclosed location in our kitchen? Again, no.

AI, of course, promises to change that (I mean, what is it NOT promising these days?). At least, it promises to translate animal language. I’ll believe it when I see it, but I admit I love the idea of being able to communicate better with my cats.

Will that ever work, though? It’s been said that if a lion could talk, we wouldn’t understand him. Beyond “I want food” or “Come pet me on the bed right this minute,” which our cats already make abundantly clear, what could they communicate to us? And will we ever know what they’re thinking? Given that I can speak to my fellow humans but often have no idea what’s going on in their heads, I have my doubts.

Temple Grandin claims that animals think in pictures, like she does. To the extent that’s true, it will only make their language and thoughts harder to decode.

For now, at least, all we can do is imagine and observe. Yes, there’s the risk of anthropomorphizing. I recently heard a story of someone who was sure their dog felt guilty for pooping on the rug, only to realize the dog reacted the same way when another dog did the pooping. The dog had learned that poop on the rug meant he would be in trouble, so he got nervous — not guilty — in that situation.

Still, in our effort not to anthropomorphize, we can go too far in the other direction and discount animal feelings and thoughts. We can forget that all creatures feel things, and many have feelings similar to ours. Witness a monkey’s sense of fairness in this hilarious video I’ve probably shared before:

Anyone with a pet knows animals have feelings of all kinds. It’s hard enough to decode many of those feelings, let alone animals’ thoughts; we may never know what they think. But one thing we can be sure of: other animals are as capable as we are of enjoyment — whether it’s of grapes, pats on the back, or driving cars.