The New Science of Animal Minds

If we can learn about human cognition, behaviour and pathology by studying insects, how does this blur the boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’?

when we examine animal behaviour through a more collective lens, we begin to see that large portions of complex brains are hungry to work in harmony with others

“It would not be good news to learn that we are all roped together intellectually, droning away at some featureless, genetically driven collective work, building something so immense that we can never see the outlines,” biologist Lewis Thomas writes in The Lives of a Cell (1974). Humans understandably prefer to believe in their own agency, even if ... See more

"Human consciousness emerges on the interface between three components of animal behaviour:

Communication

Play

Use of tools

Behaviour, in this context, is a biological adjustment by means of movements and all kinds of movement-related physiological activity

Communication and play yields symbolic games and, more importantly, language

Interaction between s... See more

The main thing I keep coming back to is that nothing flourishes in isolation. Neurons first evolved around the same time that animals started eating each other: that is to say, the fact that we have thought at all emerges from an evolutionary necessity to be aware of the presence of other animals. That doesn’t mean intelligence has its origins in h... See more