The Importance of Difference in Studying Animal Cognition

Source: zsolt bodnar/pexels

Studies of animal ethology began long ago, but today’s popular animal cognition books largely began with Stanley Coren in 1994, the year he published The Intelligence of Dogs. Coren had been a highly respected cognitive psychologist for decades, specializing in human vision, hearing, and handedness. My professors used his textbook Sensation and Perception when teaching me, and I used later editions of it when teaching my students: it was an institution. In the 1990s, I was fascinated by Coren’s ability to unlock the world of popular adult nonfiction and bring dogs to the fore.

Since then, animal cognition has spawned bestsellers on clams, prairie dogs, hummingbirds, snakes, whales, cougars, snails, apes, bees, cats, dogs, wolves, crows, spiders, bears, coyotes, beavers, turtles, owls, koalas, octopuses, and even mosquitoes. In every case, the similarities between humans and animals were emphasized. Whales have languages, kind of like ours. Owls have excellent depth perception for hunting, as we do. Wolves have complex social lives, like us. Apes make and use tools, octopuses camouflage themselves, crows delay gratification, elephants grieve. Authors have been working very hard to prove that animals are as smart as, as social as, as linguistic as, humans are. We are not unique!

I’ve studied equine cognition informally all my life, but began in earnest to really dig into the scientific literature sometime around 2010. The same emphasis on similarity was prominent—horses can solve problems, like humans do. Their memories are as good as ours, they rank social individuals in hierarchy as we do, they learn by observation and testing. They interpret the world through body language and facial expressions, just like us. One would think the point was to make horses into humans.

My work has gone against the grain by focusing on the differences between equine and human brains. There are several reasons for this: First, I already know from working with them for a lifetime that horses are smart. They have excellent memories, social hierarchies, problem-solving skills, powers of observation, group cooperation, strong emotions, and use of body language. Their brains don’t yield these products by the same routes that ours do, but the outcomes are no less adaptive or intelligent. Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that animals are smart in many ways. We don’t have to continue proving the obvious.

Second, the vast majority of animals that humans study are predator species with predator brains… just like ours. But the horse is a prey animal—one of very few that have been studied and certainly the only prey species to contribute so much to human civilization. There are strong differences between predator brains and prey brains, yet humans and horses have collaborated with each other somehow for at least 6,000 years.

Third, humans work with horses much more closely and often than with oh, say, clams or cougars or hummingbirds. At an average of 1,200 pounds, horses are much larger than most domesticated animals, plus they have the skittishness and agility of prey animals. With that kind of size, speed, and mind, they can hurt or kill human handlers very easily with no intention to do so. If horses see barn aisles differently than we do—and they do—we need to know that in order to stay safe leading them through those aisles. Understanding the differences between equine brains and ours helps to keep us alive.

Fourth, confirmation bias (finding the evidence you seek) and the similarity effect (drawing toward those like us) support the fact that human brains are biased to detect resemblance. In fact, that might be part of the reason so many animal cognition authors have focused on it. By contrast, difference has to be illuminated. Our attention naturally goes to similarity but must be directed toward difference.

Finally, and perhaps most important, differences enrich life. We do not benefit by avoiding disparity, plunging our heads in the sand and pretending we—and even our animals!—are all alike. Ed Yong’s book An Immense World does a great job of showing people the rich differentiation among species’ perception of our joint environment. There are all sorts of interesting facts about animals that we never knew, simply because we weren’t looking.

Similarity is comfortable, but we need to learn to appreciate differences. Doing so will enrich our personal lives, create a more honorable human society, and improve the welfare of our animals.