The Psychology of Animals

Animal psychology is a partially independent branch of psychology and deals with animal behavior and cognition. Animal psychology attempts to explain the psychology of animals, especially their behavior, their intelligence, their logic and perception. It analyzes their roots of motivation and action, to gain breakthrough information on their abilities to perceive, select, discriminate and categorize information or stimuli. It attempts to gauge their ability to learn and perform.

Basically, animal psychology attempts to answer questions like: Can animals show emotions, like shame? Can animals act according to reason or are they just performing a repetitive act seen before, or just acting on a stimulus, like hunger and thirst? Read more on animal adaptations. Let us have a look at the various animal behaviors and come up with our own animal psychology conclusions.

The Animal Psychology Roots

Initially, animal psychology was basically 'behaviorism', a branch of psychology that is based on observable animal behavior. It measured conditioned responses in response to stimuli. This branch was based on the premise that animals do not possess cognitive and thinking capabilities and act solely on stimuli. Later on, ethology came into the picture. It was basically the study of animals in their natural habitats. Though an original branch of zoology, ethology came up with many breakthrough propositions, that refuted the foundations of behaviorism and proved animals to possess mental capabilities. In their book, ethologists Jane Goodall and Dian Fossy concluded that primates were capable of the same spectrum of emotions, that we loudly proclaim to be human emotions. Their study reveled that these primates could actually show love, sorrow, jealousy, deceit and most surprising of all, humor. Such interesting findings lured many animal lovers into the field of animal psychology. Today the conclusions of animal psychology have revealed to the world, that animals do indeed have varying degrees of intelligence.

Animal Psychology Evidences of Cognitive Behavior in Animals

Learning Behavior in Animals
Many animals show learning tendencies. To give the examples of chimpanzees, that learned to communicate with humans through sign language, by learning over 200 signs, would be too artificial when one can go into their domain and see the same. When studying the same chimpanzees in their natural habitat, many researchers have sworn by their use weapons, to do their jobs. They have been known to use levers, pulleys and even wheels. Since no one taught them this, where did it all come from? While some argue it to be imitation behavior or a result of trial and error, they cannot deny their cognition in thinking that it may be useful in the first place. In fact, it may be too dismissive to state that chimpanzees use their weapons as they have seen other chimps use them, for it is also a known fact, that newer generations of chimps come up with newer weapons and 'equipment'. When African wild dogs hunt in packs, every player knows the strategy and his role in it. Their hunting success ratios are far higher than most other predators because of their successful planning and implementation. Is this not the fiercest example of cognitive capabilities in animals?

Social Behavior in Animals
The social behavior in animals is an amazing evidence of their intelligence. There are social hierarchies in many animal species. For example, a lion pride has a patriarch, a matriarch and several other lower grade females. What makes everyone stay in line and adhere to this social structure? While for lions, it can be argued that this is a necessity for successful hunting, it doesn't make sense.

For, the leopard are the smallest and the weakest big cats (with no lion power neither any cheetah speed). Wouldn't a pack of about two or three help them hunt better, bigger prey and increase their chances of survival and progeny? What makes them loners? In the social hierarchies, no one strays out of line, everyone does their allotted jobs and everyone knows who's the boss. All of them are fully aware of the practicability of their social structure and stick to it. Even in chimpanzee or orangutan hierarchies, it is easy to see someone sucking up to the leader. What makes him think that he should do so and that it would be beneficial to him in the long run, if he stayed on the good side of his leader?

Communication Behavior in Animals
Leaving pack behavior aside, let's take animal communication for instance. Inter animal and intra-animal communication is also highly developed in animals. Even during aggressive stints, animals rarely go beyond certain boundaries amongst themselves. For examples, when two lions are fighting for a pride, these powerful fighters rarely use their claws, teeth and and power to its full potential.

Is it a mutual understanding because they both realize that either one could kill the other or at least fatally injure him, leading to a slow painful death? If so, how did they reach that conclusion? If not, what is the mystery behind this. Taking another example, the dreaded skunk rarely sprays on a member of his own species and they fight with an understanding to use only claws and teeth. Both know that they have a limited stock of this weapon and they need not waste it on each other, even in gruesome territorial or mating battles. Who teaches them this? Is it instinct or deliberate thought?

Emotional Behavior in Animals
Animal emotions can be seen from daily examples as well. Every morning when I leave for work my pet dog gets really upset and tries to make me stay at home, by hook or crook. When I come back in the evening, I have to sit with him for half and hour and reassure him that it's alright and I won't be leaving him again. Isn't this behavior highlighting 'pet separation anxiety' an emotional outburst?

Baby giraffes have a high mortality rate, for they rarely survive the more than 5 foot fall from their standing delivery. Why do mother giraffes hover around a dead offspring, protecting him from predators and trying to nudge it awake, even when it has been made sure that it is dead? Is this not motherly love? I have seen this myself, when in Africa and believe me, if you were to witness this, it'd bring you to tears. Even the other so called 'human emotions', like bravery, sacrifice, aggression, anger and depression are seen in animals.

All the questions asked above, form the basis of animal psychology. A human being only used a fraction of his total brain capacity, still being the smartest of all the animals on Earth. Who's to say that the dolphins, chimpanzees, orangutans and other animals do not do the same? I leave you with a very interesting account of a late 1990s true incident.

A study specimen at the Arizona State University, an African Gray Parrot named Alex, suddenly fell ill. When he was being left with the vet, by his keeper, he actually cried, "Come here, I love you. I'm sorry, Wanna go back." Amazing no?! Most argue that he picked this up from the snippets of conversation he overheard over the years. While this may be true, one can still ask how he got the exact relevancy of the statement and also the structure that applied itself perfectly to the incident. If these questions interest you, animal psychology is the field for you, my friend.