Clever as a Fox: Animal Intelligence and what it Can Teach Us about OurselvesHarvard University Press, 2002 - 228 Seiten Dogs are smarter than cats, dolphins and chimps are more clever than both, and we who determine the rankings top the scale--or so we think. But are we thinking clearly? To appreciate the mental abilities of the owl and the pussycat, the tortoise and the hare, requires a commitment to unraveling the nature of intelligence--a tricky and controversial proposition that Sonja Yoerg sets out to explore in this learned, lucid, and entertaining book about our complicated, often erroneous notions about animal intelligence. With forays into evolutionary biology, behavioral science, and comparative psychology, Clever as a Fox reveals the promise and pitfalls inherent in any attempt to assess animal intelligence. Along with the concepts we deploy to define and compare intelligence, Yoerg looks at the expectations and prejudices that cloud our judgment of the animal mind, perceptions shaped as much by Aesop and Disney as by direct observation of our fellow creatures. And because such perceptions are inextricably linked with judgments of value--ideas about animal mentality have much to do with which species end up on our laps and which on our plates--this deeply revealing look at how we think about animal intelligence should help us use our own intelligence more wisely. |
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... evolutionary position , as conven- tionally described.'5 But what did the textbook authors mean by ' meaningfully arranged " ? Our best guess is that the learning set data aligned nicely with some preexisting ordering of the species ...
... evolutionary tree , then why would that 1960s textbook refer to a quasi - evolutionary series ( such as human - Old World monkey - New World monkey - cat -rat ) as ' meaningfully arranged ' ? The idea of a quasi - evolutionary series is ...
... evolutionary ' comparisons that were attempted , beginning in Darwin's time , in the guise of demonstrating mental continuity . Throughout history , people have had no trouble seeing how animals differed from one another , and ...
Inhalt
A Dim and Clouded Eye | 1 |
The Interspecies Cognitive Olympics | 16 |
Angels to Insects | 34 |
Urheberrecht | |
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Clever as a Fox: Animal Intelligence and what it Can Teach Us about Ourselves Sonja Ingrid Yoerg Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 2002 |
Clever as a Fox: What Animal Intelligence Can Teach Us About Ourselves Sonja Yoerg Keine Leseprobe verfügbar - 2001 |