- Santino’s mind at work
I am working on a series of posts in which I propose that the concept of 3-sigma is a key to how humans think. In a nutshell, I argue that theory and prediction are the cornerstones of consciousness. In his writings, Walter Shewhart, W. E. Deming’s statistical thinking mentor, devotes much discussion to the implications of his work for understanding the nature of the human mind. Whenever I put forth my ideas on this subject, the subject of animal minds comes up.
One friend was fond of reminding me that every day his dog, Rosie, walked up the road to meet his son arriving home from school at 3 p.m. Did Roise have a predictive mind?
My dog, Jackie, used to find her ball in the back yard, bring it into the house and drop it at my feet, as if to say, “Hey Marc, ready for a game of fetch?” Did Jackie have a predictive mind?
Now comes NEWS from Sweden’s Furuvik Zoo that a chimp named Santino is absolutely, positively thinking ahead. It seems Santino has, over many yeas of captivity, developed a profound dislike for gawking zoo visitors. To express his displeasure, he began gathering and stockpiling throwing stones. Whenever the gawkers would gather, he would draw ammunition from his stockpile and begin hurling them at the visitors.
Osvath says Santino’s behavior shows that chimpanzees—like people—can plan for the future. “He is not driven by an immediate physical or physiological need …[but]… by an image of his future mental and physiological state,”
Local Monkey Business in San Blas Islands
When my family and I sailed down the Central American coast, our jungle walks often elicited similar behavior from the bands of Howler monkeys we stumbled upon. Instead of stones, they threw their own feces at us. They didn’t like uninvited visitors either!
Observations such as these are certainly thought provoking (no pun intended), but I can’t help thinking that it is our anthropocentricity that causes us to impute to animal behaviors, our own mindfulness. I have no doubt about the complexity of animal awareness. As I mentioned in my previous post “Apology to the Animals“, I do think that they possess a “genetic wisdom” that in us, has become overwhelmed by our largely unexamined belief in our own mental constructions.
The bottom line is that I cannot know what it’s like to be a dog, chimp, eagle, or amoeba, but I do not think it is like my experience of being me.
