Animal's ability to plan future events

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the ability of animals, particularly dogs, cats, and elephants, to anticipate future events and plan their actions accordingly. Participants explore various examples and anecdotes related to animal behavior, including instinctual actions and learned behaviors, while questioning the extent of animals' cognitive abilities regarding future planning.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants suggest that animals can plan for future events, with varying degrees of complexity and timeframes.
  • One participant describes their cat's behavior as largely reactive, raising questions about whether animals think ahead or simply respond to immediate stimuli.
  • Another participant shares an anecdote about their dog intentionally seeking out forbidden objects to receive treats, which they interpret as planning.
  • Examples of clever behaviors in goats and dogs are presented, indicating potential planning or awareness of future consequences.
  • Some participants argue that certain behaviors, like burying bones or storing food, may be instinctual rather than indicative of advanced planning.
  • One participant references a chimp that appears to plan for future emotional states, suggesting a level of cognitive complexity in some animals.
  • Discussions also touch on the limitations of animal cognition compared to human children, with some participants expressing skepticism about the depth of animals' future-oriented thinking.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express a range of views on whether animals can anticipate future events, with some supporting the idea and others questioning the extent of this ability. The discussion remains unresolved, with multiple competing perspectives present.

Contextual Notes

Participants note that behaviors may be influenced by instinct, learned habits, or environmental cues, and there is uncertainty regarding the cognitive processes behind these actions. The discussion does not resolve the complexities of animal intelligence or the definitions of planning.

Who May Find This Useful

Readers interested in animal behavior, cognition, and the philosophical implications of intelligence in non-human species may find this discussion engaging.

  • #31
It's difficult to say exactly what future sense is involved, but mules bear grudges and will patiently bide their time (I've seen them wait for months) until their target let's down his guard and then they kick or bite the offender. And, they seem to have some sense of proportionate response as they will drop the grudge once they get payback.
 
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  • #32
baywax said:
I'd have to agree. However, never having been a crow I wouldn't know for sure. But, behaviours that support survival are observable throughout the animal and plant kingdom. And the best way to explain them is to attribute the behaviours to the natural selection of genes that express in terms of certain neuronal pathways that, in turn, predispose the subject to behave in certain ways. A good example being the bee, with no brain to speak of, doing interpretive dance as a form of communication.

Remember that the bee is a social creature interacting more or less directly with 100,000 sisters, a few drones and a queen. The (an)entropy and altruism of the hive is much greater than those of the individual bee.
 
  • #33
CRGreathouse said:
I think of most animals (apes, dolphins, and some relatives excepted) as simple finite state automata. I don't think it takes much complexity, and no planning at all, for a crow to do that:

1. Pretend to hide object
2. Go to #1 with 80% probability
3. Hide object
4. Pretend to hide object
5. Go to #4 with 80% probability

There are natural evolutionary benefits to developing these kinds of behavior, and they're simple enough that it's not hard to imagine a process developing them. Of course in this example just starting with #3 would work pretty well, the other steps being useful as competitive behaviors are developed in others.

I think it shows some bit of forethought. To realize the need to hide food for future use is fairly simple and common among animals. To realize that others may find the hidden food and take it requires a bit more thought though is still relatively common. To carry out a charade of hiding something in multiple different locations so as to confuse observers though is pretty unique and requires some thought. Especially when the crow continues the charade long after hiding the food to make sure they take their competitors well off the trail. I would think this behavior would also have to be learned, I doubt it would be instinctual.

And as I mentioned crows use tools. They have been observed to fashion tools by bending bits of metal like paper clips and even putting a small hook on the end. To observe an object that you are unable to get to, go looking for something to use as a tool, fashion a tool with the material you find and even create a hook on it to better serve your endeavour I think shows some forethought.
 
  • #34
Loren Booda said:
Remember that the bee is a social creature interacting more or less directly with 100,000 sisters, a few drones and a queen. The (an)entropy and altruism of the hive is much greater than those of the individual bee.

Yes but the each individual bee is imbued with the genetic make-up that supports the overall activity of the hive.

Question too here:
humans have traits borne of the natural selection of certain genetics/behaviour and these mutations are what give us the ability to plan the future or re-visit the past.

Is this just as significant as the genetically determined behaviours of bees or chimps or birds?

What I mean to say is, the tools we have developed through natural selection are just that... tools. They do have some advantages over other genetic arrangements in other species, but they can also prove to be detrimental to our own survival. This is because, we can be mistaken about how our future plans fit into... the actual future.

Animals better adapt to the changing of their present awareness, on the day. Humans can become hormonally and psychologically devastated when the future does not present the conditions they assumed would be presented. This seems to show a lessening of the flexibility of human adaptation. We could learn a few things from our cousin species.
 
  • #35
baywax said:
Yes but the each individual bee is imbued with the genetic make-up that supports the overall activity of the hive.

Question too here:
humans have traits borne of the natural selection of certain genetics/behaviour and these mutations are what give us the ability to plan the future or re-visit the past.

Is this just as significant as the genetically determined behaviours of bees or chimps or birds?

What I mean to say is, the tools we have developed through natural selection are just that... tools. They do have some advantages over other genetic arrangements in other species, but they can also prove to be detrimental to our own survival. This is because, we can be mistaken about how our future plans fit into... the actual future.

Animals better adapt to the changing of their present awareness, on the day. Humans can become hormonally and psychologically devastated when the future does not present the conditions they assumed would be presented. This seems to show a lessening of the flexibility of human adaptation. We could learn a few things from our cousin species.

This is one of the reasons, I like eastern religious philosophies. Living present (Zen and mindfulness in Buddhism)

As for response to the future, I think it it just that animals respond differently to scarcity/future. It is one of the reasons that we have developed sophisticated processes to deal with scarcity while animals use simple. Parents pass the known processes down to their children and I don't think they try to improve or optimize much if food supply stays constant (looking at the time since beginning and their simple techniques and processes)

Other thing that struck my mind was that if American crow/bee/ant uses different processes or same than that of African/European/Asian. They must have developed techniques at once point in their evolution.
 
  • #36
A year or two ago, there was an article in the New York Times about experiments on animals' thought processes. It included a picture of a squirrel monkey, with a "thought balloon" that read something like, "When is one sweet juicy date better than two sweet juicy dates? Because I have LEARNED FROM EXPERIENCE that when I take only one date, I get more water later on. It makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE, but when you live in a lab, you get used to this."
 
  • #37
TheStatutoryApe said:
I think it shows some bit of forethought. To realize the need to hide food for future use is fairly simple and common among animals. To realize that others may find the hidden food and take it requires a bit more thought though is still relatively common. To carry out a charade of hiding something in multiple different locations so as to confuse observers though is pretty unique and requires some thought. Especially when the crow continues the charade long after hiding the food to make sure they take their competitors well off the trail. I would think this behavior would also have to be learned, I doubt it would be instinctual.

And as I mentioned crows use tools. They have been observed to fashion tools by bending bits of metal like paper clips and even putting a small hook on the end. To observe an object that you are unable to get to, go looking for something to use as a tool, fashion a tool with the material you find and even create a hook on it to better serve your endeavour I think shows some forethought.

Making and using tools does seem to show abstract reasoning -- I wouldn't usually call this forethought, but that's a mere matter of semantics. This is a task that requires little reasoning and would be complicated to develop evolutionarily as a FSM (call it what you will), so I tentatively accept it as reasoning.

Claiming the hiding of food as learned behavior (or to be more extreme, novel and intentional behavior) seems entirely unwarranted to me. There's always been a need to hide food, and it would be much easier to encode instructions for hiding food than for flying, mating habits, and other things accepted as instinctual.
 
  • #38
CRGreathouse said:
Claiming the hiding of food as learned behavior (or to be more extreme, novel and intentional behavior) seems entirely unwarranted to me. There's always been a need to hide food, and it would be much easier to encode instructions for hiding food than for flying, mating habits, and other things accepted as instinctual.

One can point to how ants store food in their nests, as do bees. Is this forethought or a naturally selected behaviour trait? I'd tend toward the idea of it being a product of natural selection amongst the genetics determining neuron development.
 
  • #39
CRGreathouse said:
Claiming the hiding of food as learned behavior (or to be more extreme, novel and intentional behavior) seems entirely unwarranted to me. There's always been a need to hide food, and it would be much easier to encode instructions for hiding food than for flying, mating habits, and other things accepted as instinctual.

My point wasn't the hiding of food in and of itself but the strategy of using trickery to throw off other animals.
 
  • #40
My dog is planning her birthday party, which is next week. And she says your all invited!
 
  • #41
TheStatutoryApe said:
My point wasn't the hiding of food in and of itself but the strategy of using trickery to throw off other animals.

Thus my finite-state program showing that, once you know how to hide food, it's very easy to deceive others. It's much harder (and no more helpful) to envision other animals, determine their wants to be similar to yours, determine that they will search for the food you hide, and realize that pretending to hide will cause them to possibly look in those places to the exclusion of the true hiding place.
 
  • #42
hypatia said:
My dog is planning her birthday party, which is next week. And she says your all invited!

An obvious ploy for gifts. :rolleyes:
 
  • #43
hypatia said:
My dog is planning her birthday party, which is next week. And she says your all invited!

It would be pretty interesting if she really knows that her birthday is coming in some dog time units ...
 

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