We have already mentioned in some of our earlier posts that animals are superior relatively in certain terms. We are still trying to comprehend unique animal behavior and abilities like sophisticated communication in tiny marmoset monkeys or bacteria influenced smell based networking in hyenas. We are also fascinated about the way elephants communicate through seismic waves or echolocation in dolphins.
As per Dr Arthur Saniotis, Visiting Research Fellow with the University’s School of Medical Sciences:
For millennia, all kinds of authorities – from religion to eminent scholars – have been repeating the same idea ad nauseam, that humans are exceptional by virtue that they are the smartest in the animal kingdom.
He further adds that animals have an inherent power, which makes them superior to humans. However, the impression that the humans are more intelligent than the animals is due to the particular competence to reason and question that humans possess. This notion established itself some 10,000 years ago when humans started cultivating and domesticating animals for their benefits. The idea of superior intellectual was further promoted with the advancement and development in religion. Support from thinkers and philosopher like Aristotle the belief was encrypted in our books of science in philosophy hence further strengthening the belief.
Another professor of anthropological and comparative anatomy from the School of Medical Sciences, Professor Maciej Henneberg says animals capabilities are often under-rated by humans. He says,
Animals offer different kinds of intelligences which have been under-rated due to humans’ fixation on language and technology. These include social and kinaesthetic intelligence. Some mammals, like gibbons, can produce a large number of varied sounds – over 20 different sounds with clearly different meanings that allow these arboreal primates to communicate across tropical forest canopy. The fact that they do not build houses is irrelevant to the gibbons.
Though human posses a relative larger brain than the animals, these unique abilities make animals superior than humans in many different aspects.
You may also refer to books for more understanding, like:
- “Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know” by Horowitz
- “The Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book That Everyone Uses But No One Reads” by Shea.
Both the authors have explained how the animals have become proficient in the environment surrounding them.
Nevertheless, these finding does not mean that the animals are planning to treat us the way we treat them and neither are they planning to conduct any test on humans like we perform. Rather we should start respecting animals and try to put an effort in saving them and their environment.
Source: Nature World News
