Everyone has read stories about animals performing amazing acts of intelligence, bravery and loyalty - the kind of qualities you might only usually associate with humans.
And we’re not just talking about our close relations, the upper primates, either. Even crows are capable of using multiple tools in complex sequences. Actually, these birds are capable of logical thinking, planning and creativity – just like people. They watch others, try ideas out, and eventually learn how to do things. Prof. Alex Kacelnik led this study some years ago and continues to work in this field now. 

Levels of awareness

He says that the nature of consciousness is tricky to understand, and suggests that there might be different degrees of it, as various species demonstrate levels of awareness about what’s going on around them.

When we talk about consciousness, it can be useful to split it into ‘primary’ consciousness: seeing, hearing and feeling pain, and ‘secondary’ consciousness, which covers things like self-awareness, reflection and abstract thinking. Lots of animals exhibit evidence of primary consciousness, such as fear: anyone who’s owned a dog on fireworks night can probably attest to that. 

Finding examples of secondary consciousness is much more difficult. One of the first steps in the search is to look for self-recognition: many members of the great ape family (to which we also belong) as well as dolphins, elephants, and some species of birds, including magpies, can demonstrate an ability to recognise their own reflection in mirrors, suggesting they have some capacity for self-awareness.

Certain behaviours can also be telling, especially if they suggest that the animal has to think about what it is doing, rather than just follow instinctual behaviour. Californian scrub jays have a habit of hiding their food. But if they catch another jay watching them, they’ll wait for the nosy observer to leave, then move it elsewhere. Are they trying to mislead their spectator?

Elephants are best known for their amazing memories, but they also show complex social behaviour that may indicate consciousness. They are one of the only non-human species known to exhibit ritual around death, and there is some anecdotal evidence that they mourn their lost herd members.

Whatever form consciousness takes in other animals, it probably lies on a spectrum. This leads to lots of other fascinating questions. Prof. Kacelnik gives the example of an ethical dilemma…if you were presented with the choice of killing one human and 20 humans, you may choose the “least-bad” option. But what if you were presented with the choice of killing one human or 20 animals?

“It’s an ethical problem, and it is for people to speculate on their own decisions,” he says. “For example, if you were to conclude that it depends what the animal is, how about a mosquito? Do you have the right to kill it or not?”

Research on animals

The next question Prof. Kacelnik raises is to do with the use of antibiotics. As we know, it’s a really helpful medicine but it’s used to kill living organisms. Plus its success has depended upon previous research on animals in a lab setting. 

“You are choosing between killing millions of bacteria for one human by taking antibiotics,” he explains. “Lots of us would consider that to be right, we take antibiotics all the time, but it can become difficult if you need to kill or harm a chimpanzee to use a vaccine that could actually save a large number of human beings. If we haven’t done research in other species, we wouldn’t have vaccines, and millions and millions of children would be dying of polio, tuberculosis and many other diseases. And so if you consider that taking an antibiotic is justified, then how about doing medical research at a cost of the lives of other species?”

“You are choosing between killing millions of bacteria for one human being by taking antibiotics...”

Prof. Kacelnik explains that animals are used in medical research to understand how cells change during illness and how they respond to treatment. 

“Animal research has already produced a huge proportion of the medicine that we are benefiting from today, and animal research today will produce a huge proportion of the benefits that future generations are going to experience as science makes progress,” says Kacelnik.

But he admits that not everyone would agree with him. Some people might say it wouldn’t be ethical to save a human being at the expense of another animal. They might also say that it isn’t right to use animals in research, or eat animals, or have pets. Prof. Kacelnik says that these people wouldn’t agree with “any other thing that establishes a moral distinction between human beings and other species”.

To conclude...

Does this mean that it’s possible to think that other animals are just as important as humans? Prof. Kacelnik says “it depends”.

“The question is for who?” he asks. “Obviously for a monkey, humans are less important than monkeys, and vice versa. So presumably this question leads to another closely related one: as humans, should we care more for humans than for other animals? My personal answer would be that yes, I care more about humans than I care about other animals. That doesn’t mean that I don’t care about other species, but basically, I work within a framework in which humans are more important to me.”

When it comes to these questions, Prof. Kacelnik thinks people need to make up their own minds, using their own principles plus scientific fact. “I think it would be wrong to expect scientists to give the final answer to this, but I do think that scientific ideas should inform the way we think about the problem,” he says.

So over to you…what do you think?

Once upon a time in the Ice Age

While it may be tempting to imagine early man living in complete harmony with nature, this was probably far from reality. Towards the end of the Pleistocene (the Ice Age), Earth was home to an incredible suite of enormous animals, known as megafauna, from car-sized armadillos, called Glyptodon, to the charismatic woolly mammoth. But, perhaps unluckily, these huge creatures shared the planet with the recently evolved, meat-hungry Homo sapiens (modern humans). 

The switch to an animal-based diet was an important stage in human evolution that allowed us to evolve our characteristically large brains. However, big brains need a lot of sustenance – and an abundance of several-ton beasts was sure to be tempting. During the Quaternary period, nearly all Pleistocene megafauna went extinct – and many believe that hunting had something to do with it.

Our role in the demise of these animals is hotly debated. Many hypotheses have been pushed for these extinctions, including climate change, disease and even swarms of comets. But it is suspect that each major migration of early humans was accompanied by a large extinction: our arrival in Australia 50,000 years ago coincided with the disappearance of Diprotodon, the largest known marsupial ever to have lived; while 40,000 years later, the colonisation of the Americas was closely followed by several megafauna extinctions: including that of Glyptodon.

Interestingly, African loss was much less than elsewhere because humans evolved alongside African megafauna. Outside of Africa and southern Eurasia the loss is much more closely linked to the expansion of humans

Ultimately, the real cause was likely a mixture of factors. But it’s hard to deny that we probably played a part. 

Man's best friends

As human evolution progressed, our relationship with nature wasn’t only destructive. We’ve made friends along the way. Roughly 36,000 years ago, while humans still lived as hunter-gatherers, wolves began to associate with people, setting the scene for the first animal domestication. 

While no one is quite sure how dog domestication actually occurred, it is clear that it led to a powerful partnership: the combination of clever human hunters and their ferocious canine companions would have been a force to contend with. And the successful pairing has persisted ever since, leading to a vast diversity of dog breeds that help us fulfil very different goals: from the sledge-pulling malamute to the Chihuahua – first bred as a living hot water bottle! 

In hunter societies, dogs were the only animals we needed to work with. However, the onset of agriculture, around 11,500 years ago, led to the domestication of a whole new suite of animals.
 
Even before livestock existed, the early ancestors of the pet cat were beginning to enter the scene. The earliest known feline-human association goes back 9500 years when a wildcat was buried with a person in Cyprus. However, DNA evidence suggests cats lived alongside humans for much longer than this. 

Early agricultural settlements would have been a haven for rodents, attracted to farming waste. This surplus of potential prey would have drawn cats to human settlements and would benefit people by eradicating the pests. As well as being useful rat-assassins, many societies, particularly the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, found cats to be pleasant company. And so the domestic cat was born. 

Around this time, humans also began to domesticate animals for food. 

Sheep were likely the first livestock, appearing on the scene around 11,000 years ago. As well as meat and milk, these hardy animals would have been highly valued for their hides. Clothes made from sheepskin are believed to have allowed people to move and settle in very cold areas – expanding our migration significantly.

Horses had an important role to play, too. Originally kept for food, their domestication for riding, believed to have occurred around 3500 BCE (Before Common Era) by the Botai settlements of Kazakhstan, had a huge impact on human movement. Historians believe that shift to using horses as transport may have driven the first major migrations into Western Europe.

Lending a hand (or a hoof)

As industrialisation took hold in the late 18th century, automated machinery took over and animals became less important to agriculture. At this point, service animals and pets became much more popular. 

The first use of animals in this way dates back at least 2000 years when pigeons were used to deliver post in early Persia. Even guide dogs date back to the 16th century! However, it is only in the last century that the use of service animals has really taken off. 

One of the most successful examples of this has been the use of dogs in law enforcement. These programs originated in Belgium in 1899, where dogs were trained to track and attack criminals. Nowadays, police dogs have an enormous variety of roles: they may locate or subdue suspects; conduct search and rescue operations; detect explosives or illicit substances, or sniff out traces of arson attacks!

Many other animals are now trained to work with us; helping people, especially those with disabilities, to go about their day-to-day lives. They may alert them of impending seizures, fetch belongings or even perform basic chores. 

And just being around animals can be beneficial too. While still a new field, animal-assisted therapy can improve people’s social and emotional well-being. For example, the Riding for the Disabled Association has achieved huge success working with people across the UK to provide therapy, enjoyment and a sense of achievement through horse riding. Older people, who may suffer from loneliness, may benefit from animal companionship. Even students are reaping the benefit – many universities in the UK now host petting zoos for their stressed finalists, including several of our colleges here in Oxford! 

Throughout human history, animals have been enormously valuable, be it as an important source of food, by enabling our migration to otherwise uninhabitable parts of the globe, or by helping us maintain healthy and enriched lives. While our attitudes towards them may be constantly evolving, there is no doubt that they are every bit as important to us as they were 40,000 years ago.