Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are? - Plot & Excerpts
3COGNITIVE RIPPLES Eureka! The sunny, breezy Canary Islands are about the last place in the world where one would expect a cognitive revolution, yet this is where it all began. In 1913 the German psychologist Wolfgang Köhler came to Tenerife, off the coast of Africa, to head the Anthropoid Research Station, where he remained until after World War I. Even though rumor has it that his job was to spy on passing military vessels, Köhler devoted most of his attention to a small colony of chimpanzees. Having eluded indoctrination in the learning theories of his day, Köhler was refreshingly open-minded about animal cognition. Instead of trying to control his animals to seek specific outcomes, he had a wait-and-see attitude. He presented them with simple challenges to find out how they’d meet them. For his most talented chimpanzee, Sultan, he would put a banana out of reach on the ground and offer him sticks that were too short to reach the fruit. Or he would hang a banana high up in the air and spread large wooden boxes around, none of which was tall enough for the purpose.
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