Do animals possess the ability to reason?

Question

Now im a high school junior and the other week my english class got into an open debate on whether not animals have the ability to reason and make choices. Which ultimately spawned a debate on evolution. My question to you is: do you think they have the ability to reason in a limited capacity or not at all?

Or do you think it is instinct and instinct alone that guides them?

Answer 1

some animals are solitary,some show pack behavior.scientist have proved that elephants,ape and dolphins have limited capacity to reason.they know something more than instinct.when my dog died it sent a message that i am leaving,i came down, it died on my lap.i cannot express my feeling.

Answer 2

Your first mistake was to oppose instinct to reason. Your second mistake was to be so ill informed in this day and age. This is why I think English, the humanities and social science needs to be monitored closely. A Junior in high school and you do not know anything about animal reasoning ability. Something I knew almost 50 years ago, as a young child observing animals. Is your High School that disconnected from the real world? Or are your teachers incompetent? I suggest you need some natural science classes.

Answer 3

Crows have the ability to look at a piece of metal wire, look at some food in a tube, then bend the piece of metal wire into a hook so they can fish out the tube.

Momma hippos place thier baby hippos right in the middle of pools of crocodiles, who know not to have a baby hippo snack because mama will not be happy.

Obviously there is some reasoning going on. Just because they can't speak english doesn't mean that animals don't make choices every day. They are not the same kinds of choices we make, but they require some reasoning nonetheless.

Answer 4

If you hide a banana in a room, then show a miniature model of the room with a miniature banana in the hiding place to a chimp, he will go right to the banana. Do the same with a four-year-old human and a toy, and he will search for the toy when he goes into the room. A six year old will go right to the toy. A chimps level of reasoning on this task requiring abstaction is at least at the level of a five-year-old human.

Answer 5

Yes they do.
I have raised animals all my life & i have seen them become smarter every year.They certainly have more emotions now than back 50yrs ago.
My cats are so jealous that they do dirty tricks on one another to get back at each other.They all vie for my attention in various ways.
One stays right on top of me or right beside me,until they have to go to the bathroom or I get up.
One learned that he could get treats just by calling my name.He chatters at me all the time.Holding conversations about different intrests at the moment.He shows his scorn if I give anyone else my attention.& he will not do his little talking thing if he is mad at me.He will turn his back & scowl.

Answer 6

Or course, many do. It's how they survive. They will decide many time what the best course of action is in order to live and spead their genes. Many fights are averted by intimidation in the wild because the risk of being mortaly wounded is too great. Just to make one example. Do your research and you will be able to spot many more. Have fun!

Answer 7

is they dident reason, how would they learn? an domestics must reason to be taught things by humans.
my dog can individually get each of 20 toys by name, thats not an instinct!

Answer 8

Anecdotal evidence, I know... but we used to have a cat who was not only capable of reason, she was capable of INTRIGUE. She was DEVIOUS.

We had a dog at the same time, and the dog just could NOT figure out that when the cat scratched the dog on the nose, it meant the cat wanted to be left alone.

So the cat HATED the dog. One day I saw the cat looking at the dog, while the dog was lying still a couple yards away. The cat looked at the dog, then looked at our heavy teakwood chair, then back at the dog. I could visualise the cat drawing arcs and calculating vectors as it looked at the distance between the dog and the chair.

The cat carefully walked about two feet past the chair, then turned its back on the dog and flicked its tail, like a fly fisherman making a cast on a trout stream.

The dog LEAPT to its feet, GALUMPHED over the room, bounced a couple feet in front of the chair to try to run under it at the cat, and then it WHANGED its head on the bottom of our heavy teakwood chair, collapsing in a heap. It lacked only the animated figures of stars and little meowing cats circling around its head to complete the Looney Tunes image I had just witnessed.

The cat sauntered away with a look of absolute smugness on its face.

This cat clearly and purposely set up the dog so that it would bash its head on the bottom of the heavy teakwood chair. Now, if you've ever watched a cat hunt, you know that cats live and breathe trajectories -- that is, the path that an object takes when moving through space. Watch a cat pull down a bird in flight and you'll know what I mean.

THIS cat used that skill to set up the dog, but it also had to know that the tail-flick would excite the dog beyond any ability to control itself. It had to know that the dog would bounce once, in exactly the right place, to make it whang its head on the bottom of the chair.

It had to KNOW all this... and CALCULATE... and PLAN.

We've had a lot of cats over the years, and while many of them have been dumb as a sack of hammers, we have one now who's almost as intelligent as the dog-baiter. She understands spoken English quite well for an animal, about as well as a well-trained guide dog, and what's more amazing, actually RESPONDS to it most of the time. But intelligence is highly variable in dogs and cats... as in humans.

And actually, "guide dog" reminded me of my most recent exposure to intelligent animals: Floyd. Floyd is not only the nicest dog I've ever met, but one of the smartest. He's the guide dog for the blind director of the community-theater group I'm part of, and therefore I've had a lot of time to watch good old Floyd, every night at rehearsal for the past two and a half months.

Floyd knows not to let his master get too close to the top of the steps, to the curb, or to obstacles. I've read that guide dogs are trained to understand walk/don't walk signs and not let their masters cross the street against traffic, but I haven't witnessed this. You can probably get more useful information from a guide-dog agency, but watching Floyd stop his master from going over the edge of the stage was proof enough for me -- that dog was THINKING. He recognized that the stage was something that his master needed to be protected from, and he kept him clear of it. That's as clear a syllogism as Aristotle could draw up: edges are dangerous; my master is near an edge; therefore my master is near danger.

So I suspect that you aren't going to get a cat or a dog to translate Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" into Esperanto. But I've seen evidence that they can plot revenge on a fellow housemate, or prevent their masters from suffering an injury. I'd say this counts as at least a limited reasoning ability.

Heck, it's more reasoning ability than demonstrated by probably 80% of the drivers I'm about to share my commute with...

Answer 9

All animals have their stregthening abilities and poor abilities, they have a right to save themselves if somthing will happen and they have their abilities just like we all do.

Answer 10

No, they go on instinct