Animal Intelligence
There is a book, written by Frans de Waal, the eminent primatologist of the 20th century who popularized the bonobo, titled, Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?. I haven't read the book, but I'm quite taken by the title alone. The little aspie that tends to govern my brain, always the literalist, insists that we humans must be that intelligent, otherwise someone couldn't have written the book...but, of course, the question is posed about human beings more broadly, and not just those who study animal behavior and intelligence.
The answer I've so far come up with: probably not. People seem to think that animals are born with senses, they stumble awkwardly through the world in search of food or mates, and some of them find what they're looking for and some don't. They can do little more than react to what presents itself in their immediate circumstances. In this way, people think of an animal as something akin to a Roomba: when you turn them loose, they move forward blindly until they hit something, then clumsily work their way around it. If you've ever seen a Roomba at work, then you understand that this picture of intelligence is something of a reductio ad absurdum. If that's all there were to animal intelligence, animals would be less capable of surviving than we observe in nature.
I've spent the past year or so living back at home with my parents, as support during these COVID times. In my first year of high school, my family got a pet cockatiel, who I named Sprite. The name itself was stolen from the name of the pet cat that Bill Watterson, the author of "Calvin and Hobbes", owned back when the comic was still being produced. (Sprite, the cat, was the inspiration for how the character of Hobbes was rendered in the comic.) For you fellow Zoomer's out there, Zoom has a built-in filter that features a cartoon rendition of a bird on a branch in the foreground; Sprite looks exactly like that bird.
Cockatiels are a lone species in the genus that they occupy. They are small parrots, falling into the order of Psittaciformes, that are indigenous to Australia and are common housepets around the world. In the wild, their life expectancy is 15 years. In captivity, a well-treated one may live 20 years. Sprite, my family's bird, is now inching up on 25 years of age.
Before returning home for COVID last summer, I hadn't seen much of Sprite in the last 15 years. After high school and college, I moved out of my parents house and left Sprite behind. As is so often the case with pets, the children wanted the animal, but it's the parents that end up inheriting most of the caretaking duties once the children lose interest or move on with their lives.
My parents got a pet housecat about 3 years ago, and since them, for his own safety, he had been relegated to a remote room in the house and had spent most of his time alone in his cage. I was sad to learn that this amount of isolation is somewhat distressing for cockatiels. In the vacuum of stuff to do during COVID, I decided to befriend Sprite and spend the winter socializing him.
His age shows. He used to be able to fly, but for one reason or another (probably birdie arthritis in his wings), he can no longer flap his wings hard enough to soar through the air. I've taken to calling him Buzz, short for Buzz Lightyear, because he can flap his wings just enough to "fall with style". He is, however, generally immobile. Since I'm working from home and don't have much else to do, I've taken to acting as his wheelchair. If he's not happy where he is, he'll let me know by looking agitated and raising his wings as if he wanted to fly, then I'll go over and take him on my finger, and let him guide me where he wants to go next by how he is leaning. (The downside of all of this is that cockatiels need to take a shit every 15-20 minutes, which often ends up on my clothes.)
More often, he'll get my attention by being vocal and squawking. He seems to need to be in the room with someone else from 8 in the morning until 8 at night. I've learned that squawking might mean he needs water, food, or the desire to leave my shoulder and perch somewhere on his own. Time was, he could fly to these things when he needed them on his own, but now he has to use the imprecise squawking, and I have to use a kind of trial and error, taking him to things until I hit upon the one that he wants.
Very quickly, I learned that he was bonded to my father. My parents were generally confused by his incessant shrieking, which was seemingly placated by nothing. I found the answer was simple: if he was within sight or earshot of my father, if he saw him or heard his voice, he would cry out until he was sitting with my father. My father is his touchpoint HUMAN, so to speak.
I'm typically up a few hours before my parents, and I take Sprite out with me from the first. He learned quickly that when he hears faint stirring from my parent's room, that means the HUMAN is awake and he wants to go see him. I learned to quiet him down by walking him around the house, taking him into every room except for my parent's room, so he could see that the HUMAN wasn't around. Once he confirmed that the HUMAN wasn't present, he would settle down...at least until he heard more rustling from my parent's room. The same drill applied when my parents would leave the house to go out; I'd have to walk him around to convince him that the HUMAN was gone, and then he'd settle for chilling with me.
My home office at my parent's house is on the second floor, and overlooks a large patch of woods out behind the house. The basement opens up in the back, and there are two very sharp drops from basement level to the floor of the woods. Hence, the view from the second floor to the woods looks more like you are five stories above where the trees sprout from the ground. It is, as my aunt put it, very much like the view you'd get from living in a treehouse. Sprite likes to sit on the windowsill and peer out at the trees. He scans them for threats, looks curiously at the other birds perched in the trees, and gazes up at the sky with something that seems like wonder.
One thing I noticed is how he reacts to other animals outside. Once, while sitting on my shoulder by the window, he started squawking bloody murder. I looked at him, followed his fixed gaze down to the ground outside below, and saw a possum strolling along the perimeter to the woods. I got the sense that he was sounding the alarm for me, in response to a threat. He does that whenever he sees a possum. There is also a neighborhood cat that walks by regularly, and he'll shriek when he sees it. And yet, when he sees deer, chipmunks, squirrels, and such prowling around, he's a mute. He'll passively observe other birds in the sky, but as soon as hey spots the outline of a bird of prey soaring overhead, he starts freaking out, and silently, as if to avoid drawing the attention of the potential peril from above. I'm not sure what comparable wildlife is native to Australia, but he seems to know, without having been taught, which animals are predators and which are benign. (The exception is ducks, which he'll scream about, but as far as I know ducks don't pose much of a threat.)
As tends to happen with elderly people, you eventually have to move them "somewhere". Last week, we moved my father to one of those places, since he now needs more care than home life can afford him. Sprite hasn't quite figured this out yet, why the HUMAN is suddenly completely gone. He knows that my mom and him are a pair, and so he'll often make me take him to my mom, since he's learned that if he rides on my mom's shoulder, chances are good that she'll take him to the HUMAN. One day he jumped off my shoulder, flopped to the ground, and walked along the floor, out of the kitchen and into the living room, and started walking in circles around in front of the couch, looking at me to be lifted onto the couch itself. He knew this is where the HUMAN had spent a lot of his time as of late, and so wanted to wait for him to return. Yesterday, he caught the sound of the HUMAN's voice on the phone while he was speaking to my mom, and he got very excitable where he heard it. This is the brand of heartbreak that made the ending of the Futurama episode "Jurassic Bark" such a reliable tearjerker.
Mostly, though, he is just tired these days. He's content to just sit close to or on me, and drift off to sleep for long stretches of time. He's at that point where all you can really do is keep him comfortable, and soothe him when something alarms him.
My return trip to California is imminent. I'll miss this little guy when I go.
The answer I've so far come up with: probably not. People seem to think that animals are born with senses, they stumble awkwardly through the world in search of food or mates, and some of them find what they're looking for and some don't. They can do little more than react to what presents itself in their immediate circumstances. In this way, people think of an animal as something akin to a Roomba: when you turn them loose, they move forward blindly until they hit something, then clumsily work their way around it. If you've ever seen a Roomba at work, then you understand that this picture of intelligence is something of a reductio ad absurdum. If that's all there were to animal intelligence, animals would be less capable of surviving than we observe in nature.
I've spent the past year or so living back at home with my parents, as support during these COVID times. In my first year of high school, my family got a pet cockatiel, who I named Sprite. The name itself was stolen from the name of the pet cat that Bill Watterson, the author of "Calvin and Hobbes", owned back when the comic was still being produced. (Sprite, the cat, was the inspiration for how the character of Hobbes was rendered in the comic.) For you fellow Zoomer's out there, Zoom has a built-in filter that features a cartoon rendition of a bird on a branch in the foreground; Sprite looks exactly like that bird.
Cockatiels are a lone species in the genus that they occupy. They are small parrots, falling into the order of Psittaciformes, that are indigenous to Australia and are common housepets around the world. In the wild, their life expectancy is 15 years. In captivity, a well-treated one may live 20 years. Sprite, my family's bird, is now inching up on 25 years of age.
Before returning home for COVID last summer, I hadn't seen much of Sprite in the last 15 years. After high school and college, I moved out of my parents house and left Sprite behind. As is so often the case with pets, the children wanted the animal, but it's the parents that end up inheriting most of the caretaking duties once the children lose interest or move on with their lives.
My parents got a pet housecat about 3 years ago, and since them, for his own safety, he had been relegated to a remote room in the house and had spent most of his time alone in his cage. I was sad to learn that this amount of isolation is somewhat distressing for cockatiels. In the vacuum of stuff to do during COVID, I decided to befriend Sprite and spend the winter socializing him.
His age shows. He used to be able to fly, but for one reason or another (probably birdie arthritis in his wings), he can no longer flap his wings hard enough to soar through the air. I've taken to calling him Buzz, short for Buzz Lightyear, because he can flap his wings just enough to "fall with style". He is, however, generally immobile. Since I'm working from home and don't have much else to do, I've taken to acting as his wheelchair. If he's not happy where he is, he'll let me know by looking agitated and raising his wings as if he wanted to fly, then I'll go over and take him on my finger, and let him guide me where he wants to go next by how he is leaning. (The downside of all of this is that cockatiels need to take a shit every 15-20 minutes, which often ends up on my clothes.)
More often, he'll get my attention by being vocal and squawking. He seems to need to be in the room with someone else from 8 in the morning until 8 at night. I've learned that squawking might mean he needs water, food, or the desire to leave my shoulder and perch somewhere on his own. Time was, he could fly to these things when he needed them on his own, but now he has to use the imprecise squawking, and I have to use a kind of trial and error, taking him to things until I hit upon the one that he wants.
Very quickly, I learned that he was bonded to my father. My parents were generally confused by his incessant shrieking, which was seemingly placated by nothing. I found the answer was simple: if he was within sight or earshot of my father, if he saw him or heard his voice, he would cry out until he was sitting with my father. My father is his touchpoint HUMAN, so to speak.
I'm typically up a few hours before my parents, and I take Sprite out with me from the first. He learned quickly that when he hears faint stirring from my parent's room, that means the HUMAN is awake and he wants to go see him. I learned to quiet him down by walking him around the house, taking him into every room except for my parent's room, so he could see that the HUMAN wasn't around. Once he confirmed that the HUMAN wasn't present, he would settle down...at least until he heard more rustling from my parent's room. The same drill applied when my parents would leave the house to go out; I'd have to walk him around to convince him that the HUMAN was gone, and then he'd settle for chilling with me.
My home office at my parent's house is on the second floor, and overlooks a large patch of woods out behind the house. The basement opens up in the back, and there are two very sharp drops from basement level to the floor of the woods. Hence, the view from the second floor to the woods looks more like you are five stories above where the trees sprout from the ground. It is, as my aunt put it, very much like the view you'd get from living in a treehouse. Sprite likes to sit on the windowsill and peer out at the trees. He scans them for threats, looks curiously at the other birds perched in the trees, and gazes up at the sky with something that seems like wonder.
One thing I noticed is how he reacts to other animals outside. Once, while sitting on my shoulder by the window, he started squawking bloody murder. I looked at him, followed his fixed gaze down to the ground outside below, and saw a possum strolling along the perimeter to the woods. I got the sense that he was sounding the alarm for me, in response to a threat. He does that whenever he sees a possum. There is also a neighborhood cat that walks by regularly, and he'll shriek when he sees it. And yet, when he sees deer, chipmunks, squirrels, and such prowling around, he's a mute. He'll passively observe other birds in the sky, but as soon as hey spots the outline of a bird of prey soaring overhead, he starts freaking out, and silently, as if to avoid drawing the attention of the potential peril from above. I'm not sure what comparable wildlife is native to Australia, but he seems to know, without having been taught, which animals are predators and which are benign. (The exception is ducks, which he'll scream about, but as far as I know ducks don't pose much of a threat.)
As tends to happen with elderly people, you eventually have to move them "somewhere". Last week, we moved my father to one of those places, since he now needs more care than home life can afford him. Sprite hasn't quite figured this out yet, why the HUMAN is suddenly completely gone. He knows that my mom and him are a pair, and so he'll often make me take him to my mom, since he's learned that if he rides on my mom's shoulder, chances are good that she'll take him to the HUMAN. One day he jumped off my shoulder, flopped to the ground, and walked along the floor, out of the kitchen and into the living room, and started walking in circles around in front of the couch, looking at me to be lifted onto the couch itself. He knew this is where the HUMAN had spent a lot of his time as of late, and so wanted to wait for him to return. Yesterday, he caught the sound of the HUMAN's voice on the phone while he was speaking to my mom, and he got very excitable where he heard it. This is the brand of heartbreak that made the ending of the Futurama episode "Jurassic Bark" such a reliable tearjerker.
Mostly, though, he is just tired these days. He's content to just sit close to or on me, and drift off to sleep for long stretches of time. He's at that point where all you can really do is keep him comfortable, and soothe him when something alarms him.
My return trip to California is imminent. I'll miss this little guy when I go.