Meerkats and drongos interact uniquely

In the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa, meerkats act as sentinels, standing on their hind legs to watch for predators and emitting specific alarm calls. A drongo, a medium-sized passerine, often mimics these calls to startle the meerkats and gain access to the insects they leave behind. The drongo can reproduce up to forty-five different calls, varying its signals to avoid detection.

Animal intelligence is widely accepted

Loïc Bollache, a researcher and author of Comment pensent les animaux (How Animals Think), published by HumenSciences, asserts that animal intelligence is no longer debated in the scientific community. He notes that for centuries, intellectuals were divided on the subject, with views ranging from Pliny the Elder's accounts in the 1st century AD to Descartes' belief that animals were mere machines and Darwin's assertion in 1871 that there was no fundamental difference between humans and the highest mammals in terms of intellectual faculties.

Evaluating animal intelligence requires new perspectives

Bollache argues that evaluating animal intelligence requires moving beyond the human reference point and considering the full extent of their memory, language, empathy, creativity, and culture. The traditional Nature/Culture antagonism that opposed humans to animals has largely fallen during the 20th century due to scientific research.

Cultural transmission in animals

An example of cultural transmission in animals is the behavior of British blue tits in the early 20th century. They learned to pierce milk bottle caps for food, a behavior that spread among sociable blue tits but not among more solitary robins. Similarly, chimpanzees exhibit different methods of catching termites based on the group they were born into, indicating a form of animal culture.

Memory in ants

Memory is a key component of animal intelligence, even in ants. Desert ants of the genus Cataglyphis navigate using the sun and count their steps to estimate distance. In an experiment, researchers modified the leg lengths of ants to alter their stride size. Ants with longer legs overestimated the distance and went beyond the nest, while those with shorter legs underestimated the distance and stopped short. This demonstrated that ants must possess a mechanism to record the number of steps they take, despite their tiny brains, which are 14 million times smaller than those of humans.

Empathy in rats

Empathy in animals is also evident, as shown in experiments with rats. When one rat was trapped in a transparent tube and another rat was free, the free rat freed the trapped one in 77% of cases. In contrast, when the cage was empty or contained a stuffed animal, only 12% of the rats opened the trap. In further experiments, free rats were given a choice between opening a trap containing chocolate or freeing their companion first. More than 50% of the rats chose to free their companion first and then shared the food.

Animal behavior and human parallels

Bollache notes that while these behaviors may seem anthropomorphic, they highlight the similarities between animal and human behaviors. He references Frans de Waal, a primatologist and ethologist, who cautions against anthropodenism, or the refusal to see common traits between humans and animals. Recent research focuses on individual differences within species, revealing that animals, like humans, can have different personalities, ranging from conservative to opportunistic.