Animals thinking.

anti-christ of suburbia:

Lucifers Angel:

anti-christ of suburbia:

Lucifers Angel:

if animals can think why is it then when i bought my sons hamster (magne) that the pet shop said that they were best lving alone has they dont live with other hamsters very well.

whats that got to do with them thinking? thats more about communication, not thought

they have to think to have communication though dont they?

yes but they dont have to communicate to think do they?

No, because mute people still think

I_worship_tre_Cool:

You know, I was thinking about the pot I made earlier and I don't think thats always true anymore, it was a generalization. What about animals that save their owners lives and such, you watch those shows on animal planet all the time about dogs that wake their owners up when there is a fire in the middle of the night. Their instincts tell them thats bad, and they should avoid fire, but they think "I care about that person" they want to help them. That is thinking, that takes alot of thinking to do something like that.

You were thinking about the pot you made earlier (sry, found that funny)

Anyway, I agree that that has to be classified as thinking. They are thinking and making a choice. If they would simply react according to their instincts they would flee right away. So actually staying and caring for the owner trying to save her/him is a most certainly a choice, and to make such a choice thinking would be required, because the animal hasn’t had any training to do such a thing (were not talking about specially trained animals here) and is going completely against its instinct. If that’s not thinking, then I have no idea what it possibly could be.

Bloodraine:

Hamsters fare better along because the majority of time, they can get very territorial.
They think "Oh. Here's some competition for my food. Rawr."
So you're right. Hamsters do think.

lmao. since when do hamsters roar?

Well, animals think, but they don't have the same level of intelligence as us, so I don't think we are on 'equal ground'.

Forever~Fallen:

Bloodraine:

Hamsters fare better along because the majority of time, they can get very territorial.
They think "Oh. Here's some competition for my food. Rawr."
So you're right. Hamsters do think.

lmao. since when do hamsters roar?

those well known killer hamster roar!!

Alright, so after all my crazy googling, I wrote this.
P.S.- If you want dead cat Foetus's, I can tell you where to get them

So, we can, for a fact, prove that animals think, and to an extent, we know how they think. How do we do this? Neuroimaging. Neuroimaging allows us to take pictures of the differnet part of the brain, and study it, so that we can know how it functions. We have structual and functional neuroimaging. Cognitive Neuroscience is the study of more how things think and the emotions they feel. They work alot with the different lobes and how they funtion. In people for example, when we have a stroke, we can lose certain functions, and we can identify where the damage in the brain was, to know how that lobe of the brain functions, this same science is applied to animals.

We can use neuroimaging to study animals brains, now I can't really make a statement for all animals, they all have differnet brains, so I'll use cats as my example. Using neuoriming (and sadly probably animal dissection as well) we have discovered that Cats have an Olfactory membrane(what allows them to smell) about 14 sq. cm., while humans have an olfactory membrane of about 4 sq. cm. How often do you see humans smelling things to detect the danger in a situation? Maybe the smoke from a fire, but not often. Animals like cats are constantly smelling, because their sense of smell is so keen, they have adapted to use that in ways humans can't. To associate different smells with differnet things requires thinking. You can try and say "oh thats just instinct" but smells we have today weren't even around for animals to have instincts about. Cats also have a much more keen sense of sight, they've adapted and learned to use that as well. Using neuroimaging, we can study which part of the brain is active while animals are perforimg certain actions to pinpoint which part of the brain is even thinking. This is a detailed science. Their brain is functioning, this we can prove. How do we think? With the funtions of our brain, as do animals. So how can anyone say they don't think, unless they also feel that humans don't think?