Scientists in search of reason

May 23, 2013 at the State Darwin Museum as part of the exhibition “Brothers in Reason? An experimental study of animal intelligence ”was a public lecture by Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor, Head of the Laboratory of Physiology and Genetics of the Biological Faculty of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosova Zoe Alexandrovna Zorina "Scientists in search of reason."

Due to the limited time, Zoya Alexandrovna was able to dwell on only one aspect of the problem of thinking-the ability of animals to urgently solve new problems with the help of guns. Below we offer a brief presentation of this interesting lecture. Prepared by Natalia Reznik .

What do scientists seek?

We are constantly observing the behavior of animals, which amazes us with its expediency and complexity. Non -specialists attribute to animals human qualities and feelings: cunning, jealousy, amazing quick wit. As a result, myths about birds are born, which are pretended to be wounded, taking the predator from the nest, or about rats stealing bird eggs: one individual serves as a basket, and the other with a dragging force. The anthropomorphic approach to animals dominated until the end of the 19th century and still does not emerge.

The beginning of the scientific approach to the problem of the rationality of animals was laid by Charles Darwin, who claimed that the behavior of animals consists of three main components: instinct, the ability to learn and the ability to reason, i.e. thinking.

Instincts are congenital, characteristic of the whole type, stereotypical for execution by behavioral acts that adapt the animal to typical environmental conditions. Training provides the ability to gradually adapt to environmental conditions, which regularly act on this individual for some time. Thinking is a generalized and indirect reflection of reality, which allows to act adequately in a new, unexpectedly arising situation without preliminary samples and errors. If the animal acts just like that, we can talk about its rationality.

Each behavioral act includes all three components mixed in different proportions. Sometimes instincts prevail, sometimes the mind, and sometimes it is difficult for a non -specialist to understand what it is dealing with, since outwardly similar forms of behavior can have a different basis. For example, Darwinov Vyok, who wacked insects from under the bark, behaves instinctively. And the blue jay, which, sitting in a cage, cannot reach the feed with a beak and twisting it with a clog of a newspaper to him, demonstrates individual quick widespread. Before experience, the bird was not fed for several hours, it was hungry, crumbs of yesterday’s food were lying around the cage, and the bottom was lined with a clean newspaper. Jay tore off a piece of the newspaper and bent her beak and paws. Under natural conditions, soyshiks do not use any guns.

Experiments and observations

To answer the question of whether the animals have a mind, and to distinguish instinctive and acquired behavior from the reasonable, experiments and regular observations of satologists in natural or close conditions close to them allow.

Naturally, the first candidates for intelligent animals are humanoid monkeys. An experimental study of their thinking began in the 20s of the twentieth century. Wolfgang Kohler proposed a chimpanzee visible, but inaccessible bait. Sticks and boxes with which it was possible to get a treat immediately, and chimpanzees built a pyramid from the boxes, climbed onto it and knocked out the bait with a stick. They sought the goal the first time without making mistakes. Köhler called this phenomenon an insight, from the English "insight." Köhler’s experiments were repeatedly repeated by other researchers, including Ivan Petrovich Pavlov and the Soviet and Russian physiologist of the highest nervous activity Leonid Alexandrovich Firsov. The results were always the same.

Under the influence of many facts I.P. Pavlov changed his views on a conditional reflex as the only way to adapt animals to the habitat. In 1935, he wrote: “, when the monkey builds a tower to get the fetus, this cannot be called a conditional reflex. This is the case of the formation of knowledge, capturing the normal connection of things, the beginnings of the specific thinking that we are working. ”

Thinking is an important component of the behavior of anthropoid monkeys not only in the laboratory, in the face of the experimenter, but also in natural conditions. British researcher Jane Goodall (Jane Goodall) watched the chimpanzee in the jungle of Tanzania for several decades. She found that monkeys are widely used by various objects not only for eating, but also for other purposes. So, the young male Mike achieved leadership in a group, warm with two empty cans of kerosene. After several such demonstrations, he achieved a status not due to him by age. The position of leader Mike lost only in old age, a year before his death.

Observations of animals in the jungle are fruitful, but difficult. Ethologists often work with model populations that live in conditions close to natural, but quite comfortable for scientists. Great conditions for gorillas are created in the Prague Zoo. Monkeys live in a group, the composition of which is close to natural: the main male, two younger males, several females, children and adolescents. More than 10 years ago, the behavior of monkeys began to be fixed using four video cameras. Studies are guided by the student L.A. Firsova Marina Alekseevna Vonchatova, the leading primatologist of the Czech Republic.

Video surveillance turned out to be a storehouse of information. As in the laboratory, the gorillas in the aviary add pyramids of improvised means and take out the bait with sticks, the researchers saw that monkeys without a hint use the same subject to solve different problems. So, plastic boxes serve them with steps, a nest, tray, weapons. To achieve one goal, you can use different objects: the role of steps was played by boxes, a basket, a ball, pieces of wood, another animal. The chips served as the filler of the basket (the gorilla slept in it) and a pillow for sitting. A young female Moya hooking chips with her legs several times and moved along the snowy floor of the aviary, as in galoshes. The most amazing innovation is the use of shavings to block a photocell on a fountain for drinking. As a result, the fountain did not turn off, and the gorilla splashed for his pleasure. Over the years of observation, researchers registered hundreds of episodes of the use of different guns, but only three gorillas were distinguished with their minds and quick wits. The rest did not study anything from them. The difference in the abilities between representatives of one species is huge. When experts say that the highest monkeys are characterized by thinking and gun activity as a manifestation of thinking, we are not talking about the form as a whole, but about individual individuals. This is true for other species.

Fukidid and birds

The gun activity is characteristic not only of humanoids, but also to some birds. Their brain has neither grooves, nor convulses, nor a six -layer bark, which is considered the highest department of the brain. The front limbs that you can grab the object do not have. But, despite this, birds often use tools and even manufacture them.

The first description of bird thinking (and animal thinking in general) belongs to the Greek historian Fukidid, who lived in the 4th century BC.

He wrote about how a raven threw pebbles in the hollow, at the bottom of which water accumulated. The water level rose, and the raven was able to get drunk.

Already in our days, these observations have been checked in the laboratory on other vulgar birds - rooks. A little water was poured into a narrow transparent cylinder, on the surface of which the worm floated. The rook examined the cylinder and immediately realized that he would not reach the treat, he did not even try. Then the experimenter laid out a bunch of stones next to the cylinder, the rook immediately began to lower them into the cylinder one at a time, until the water rose to the desired level. The birds that have already solved this problem optimized the process, choosing larger stones.

The parrot of the cocoon made sticks to get a nut, stuck in an uncomfortable place. Each time were different, sticks, respectively, too.

The Novocaleled crowds in the Laboratory of Oxford University thought of bending a wire to hook to pick up the bait - it was laid in a small bucket placed in a narrow cylinder. In nature, the Novocaledonsky ravens pick out the prey from under the bark with different sticks and hooks, which are bitten from the branches of trees, in the laboratory they had to work with other materials. If the bird was given a billet for the hook, it invariably improved its shape. It seems that the raven imagined in advance what kind of gun it should have.

In natural conditions, rooks do not use any tools, but when they were offered a bucket with a bait in the cylinder in the laboratory, they quickly coped with the task, bending the hook.

Problems of tools

The gun activity is not inherent in all animals. The lower monkeys on their own initiative will never use a stick to get a treat, although they can be taught this.

Predatory mammals of this behavior, in general, is not characteristic. Their brain in structure is much simpler than the brain of lower monkeys, it contains fewer grooves and prisoners. So far, the only exception is known from this rule. In 2012, the specialists of the Dingo study center (Australia) proposed a treat for animals, hanging it out of reach. Dingo were in the aviary. One of the dogs pulled a light table with her teeth, the other immediately jumped on him, but immediately jumped. Alas, they moved the table unsuccessfully, it could not reach the bait, but the dogs began to correct anything. The inventor eventually reached the food, balancing on the edge of the table.

It is interesting to compare the activities of Dingo with the behavior of some listeners at the lecture of Z.A. Zorina. Toward the end of the lecture, several people decided to leave for some reason. The audience was clogged to the limit; To get to the exit, people had to maneuver between the chairs, and a stool came across in the way. Someone stepped over, someone went around, but not one removed one from the road, pushing under the table, although it was not difficult to do this.

The gun tasks are not available to everyone, not every animal is physically able to bend the wires and build pyramids, but this does not mean that it is devoid of reason. To investigate thinking in any type of vertebrates, Soviet biologist Leonid Viktorovich Krushinsky developed the task of extrapolation. The animal is shown the bait, which then disappears from the field of view. If the animal mentally imagines how the feeder becomes invisible, and will go in the right direction, then he will be able to enjoy it. It turned out that fish and amphibians do not solve this problem, and reptiles, birds and mammals to one degree or another cope with it.

At the same time, animals, obviously, do not sort out the options, but mentally analyze the conditions of the problem, represent causal relationships between its elements, draw up a solution plan.

Thus, scientists found the mind at a wide circle of vertebrates. Although in many cases it is present in an embryo form, but it is certainly. The degree of its development depends on the level of the mor-phophisiological organization of the brain. The ability to reasonable activity depends on the personal characteristics of the animal and manifests itself much later than the ability to teach