animals thinking?

Question

this is kinda hard to explain (and its a stupid question), because humans use words to talk when they think they hear their own voice in there head but animals use body language to comunicate so does this mean that when they think of something they see a tail wagging or ears sticking up etc etc.

Answer 1

Not a stupid question at all. Animals do think, and yes they do use body language. If one is around an animal long enough they can learn to pick up on cues and the animals body language for what they are asking, needing or saying.

Answer 2

There's a saying that goes: "A picture is worth a thousand words"
That means trying to verbalize the picture, describe it or tell the feelings it invokes is less instant than the visual associations we instantly feel.

Try to describe the color pink to a person who is blind.

What actually goes through the mind is much more abstract, not a word language.

Animals also have their own abstract worlds that we cannot comprehend. Like migration of salmon to their birthplace, birds flying south during migration, dogs being shown an article of clothing from someone they never met, then told to 'go find', a gorilla being tender with a baby kitten.

They do think in abstract. Some people may say it's instinct and leave it at that, but what is that if not abstract?

Here's an amusing story from NEW SCIENTIST, showing that babies, dogs and other animals do perceive numbers
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2619

Abstract is real. :)

Answer 3

I don't hink so. I have no proof, and this is PURE speculation, but this is what I think:

You know how when you are hungry, you know it? Or if you love someone you just feel it? You don't have words in your brain that say "I love so-and-so" or "I am tired now" or "Those cookies baking smell wonderful." You don't use words for that. You just KNOW it. If you do think of words, you think them after your brain has already associated the smell of the cookies with concepts of contentment and sweetness.

I think it is the same with dogs. It's not that they don't think, it just that they think in concepts and memories rather than words.

However they can associate words with things. Owner says sit, dog knows that doing this makes the owner happy and its very likely something nice will follow, like a treat, a pet or that certain babytalk that the dogs like so much.

Answer 4

They probably don't "think of something" as you write. Humans are the only known "animals" with a consciousness -- we can say/think, I am here, I am a human, I am me...... What other creatures can think is pain and the outcome may be a yelp (which is heard and interpreted by other similar animals), or happiness which is shown by a wagging tail.

Answer 5

My dogs speak perfect English...they understand every word I say. They also have the ability to read my mood and body language. My Dalmatian knows where her ball is and can find it using reasoning when she doesn't know where it is (I have watched her think it out). Just because they lack language doesn't mean they don't think.

Answer 6

Surely they think, what we can say is that they haven't thoughts too complicated because they act much more simpler than us. But many times we underestimate them.

Answer 7

Human's don't only use words to think.
Try it without using words.