Do animals with brains as large as humans have equally complex higher level thoughts?

Question

My cat has dreams. About what? Whales and monkeys must also?

Answer 1

Actually the hump back whale for example have a more complexity in their communication than human speech. It's documented; just need to get a link for you.

Answer 2

No. Brain size is not an indicator of higher thoughts. Its is closely related to body size. Ex. An elephant brain is larger than a human brain. Brain size was thought to be a measure of intelligence by some "scientists" on the 19th century. They compared the size of the brains of women and men, and concluded that men were smarter than women because of their brain size. This is obviously incorrect. A smaller brain size corresponds to the general shorter bodies of women. Both male and female brains do the same functions. Complex thoughts in humans are the result of evolution and increasing sizes of certain parts of the brain. The parts of the brain that enable complex thoughts and imagination.
Studies show that other animals have complex thoughts and communication, such as chimps, who can actually "manufacture" simple tools and have a complex enough communication that enables them to hunt small monkeys in group. There are some new studies with capucchin monkeys which suggest that monkeys have a sense of "injustice" and "inequality". I have heard also about studies with dolphins who can recognize themselves in a mirror, but I'm not familiar with studies with whales. Nevertheless, their complex thoughts are far from what humans dream and think. A chimpanzee can tell another chimpanzee, "wait, the monkey is going to your right", or a chimpanzee mother can teach her young how to crack nuts the way she does, but a chimpanzee cannot say something which is not real and present at that time. It cannot say: "The moon is made of cheese" or "I wish I could fly". At least this is what studies show until now.

Answer 3

I believe the dolphins have brains as large as humans, all others are smaller, except the whales mentioned above. They do communicate, but i wonder if they can reason too???

Answer 4

of course not. though the size of the brain has been linked correlative to intelligence, is is not definitive, i can guess to this without even researching it. dollars to donuts there are animals with larger brains than humans but who lack the intelligence we do, or to paraphrase you, ' the ability to form complex, higher level thoughts.

Answer 5

Absolutely. Just because we humans haven't figured out how to communicate with them doesn't mean they can't communicate with each other or dream.

Actually, we have a hard time communicating with our own species.

Answer 6

I believe that the ability to speak makes us the dominate species. Think about it, if you work with someone else, you can create language, build things, etc......