1. KEY CONCEPT Some animals other than humans exhibit behaviors requiring complex cognitive abilities.

2. Animal intelligence is difficult to define.
Cognition is the mental process of knowing through perception or reasoning.
awareness/ adaptive advantage
ability to judge
ability to solve complex problems
helps spread cultural behavior
Other factors affecting an animal’s behavior may seem like cognition.

3. Some animals can solve problems.
Insight is the ability to solve a problem mentally without repeated trial and error.
observed in primates, dolphins, and corvids
chimpanzee retrieving hanging bananas

4. Tool use helps an animal accomplish a task.
some dolphins use sponges to protect and hunt
crows and chimpanzees make probing sticks
capuchin monkeys use rocks to crack nuts

5. Cognitive ability may provide an adaptive advantage for living in social groups.
Intelligence in animals seems to be correlated with two characteristics.
relatively large brains for their body size
live in complex social groups

6. Cultural behavior spreads through a population by learning, not by selection.
taught to one generation by another
aided by living in close proximity