Week 3 Reflection

This week I read Safina’s “Whines and Pet Peeves” chapter, and I found it interesting how he used his own dogs to disprove scientist’s belief that only humans have a “theory of mind”. Throughout the chapter, Safina was presenting researcher’s experiments and I found it interesting how most of the time the scientists somehow come to the conclusion that there is not enough evidence that animals have a theory of mind. In addition, Safina highlighted the fact that many times scientists create an experiment that doesn’t allow the animal to be who they are. Instead, Safina suggested that scientists “define the concept [they’re] interested in, then watch the animals in free-living situations appropriate to their lives” (248). Overall, Safina highlighted the fact that animals indeed have “theory of mind” and many times their understanding of the world around them is greater than ours.

During my first three weeks in this course I have become interested in the topic of intelligence. When I was writing my week 2 reflection one of the topics was my relationship with animals and I talked about my pet chickens. Chickens are often depicted as “dumb” animals but I did a little research while writing reflection and surprisingly they show many signs of intelligence. Therefore I think my topic might be chickens and intelligence. I think it's a unique and interesting topic and I’m excited to research further information on their intelligence. I have “theory of mind” to be an interesting topic and I plan to do more research on this keyword. I also found John Marzluff to be a key researcher in animal intelligence.