Dogs and Cats and Birds -- How similar is their thinking to ours?

Animals have no conscious, thinking thoughts like humans do. That’s because animals have only one mind, the subconscious. They react to stimuli, to instinct, to learned behavior. They have no concept of “I, me, myself, you, etc.” They “do” stuff, they don’t “think” about it.

That’s hard for a human to comprehend, Kritper!

We humans think in concepts and words. Other animals, while they can certainly LEARN to do things, even “read” humans—really just do what they’re “programmed” instinctively to do. Bonding with humans may be a form of “pack” behavior, but I, personally, do not doubt that certain domestic and companion animals love us, in a family/companion way

They don’t think. They want, they pursue, they react.
Parrots, I dunno. They live long, they talk, and sometimes they get to a point of constructing their own sentences.
Some of great apes have been taught to communicate with humans, and have expressed emotions.
Mostly, animals don’t think, but some show unusual comprehension.

@Yellowdog Yes, but they can do that without thinking about it. By thinking I mean words or sounds going through their brains like in how we think. If they had conscious minds they could reason and possibly talk, amongst other things.
I doubt if animals can realize that the sun comes up in the East and sets in the West, that there is a passage of time during both night and day and other that it being light or dark, or whether it’s overcast or not.
They don’t think about what they want to eat later. They simply react to the moment and what they need at that moment being it food, water, or shelter.

To understand why it’s difficult to correlate human and animal thought, just consider what your own “thinking” would be about if you lacked language.

Animals act instinctively and do possess problem solving ability and certainly experience all the same emotions as a human. Love, fear, anger, joy, but not worry, rumination and past/future thinking ability. In other words ego. They live in the moment but do not have the mental capacity to create mind stories and hold grudges and plot revenge or replay a good or bad experience over and over in their minds. These are all traits of the human ego and it’s endless ability and need to try and make sense of everything.

While your dog, cat, bird may know what time their dinner is served every day they are not lying around thinking ” I can’t believe he/she has not fed me yet, what kind of bullshit is this, it is 20 minutes past dinner time now, WTF…I am so pissed off! ” lol
They just dwell in the present moment and wait minus the inner story telling.

@Coloma, I would agree with you except the part about plotting revenge.
My dad was on the road all the time. When I was in my teens, we got a dog.
One day before my dad would get home each time, the dog would go pee in his man cave.
That was the only times he did it in the house.

@Patty_Melt Yes, dogs and cats can act out, but their acting out is stress related, they are “marking” the absent persons belongings or space to re-establish that they belong to them. haha

Here we go again with the anthropocentric racism.
More similar than you think.

@ragingloli Animal behavior is animal behavior and while there are many similarities there are also many disparities.
Scent marking territory be it an object, human or space is a common animal behavior that is scientifically well documented. The animal is not peeing out of premeditated anger or revenge, it is purely a natural or stress related behavior to establish or re-establish territorial boundaries. Nothing anthropocentrically racist seriously, haha in that statement whatsoever. Just fact supported by evidence.

Several animals recognise themselves in a mirror, ergo they have at least some level of consciousness and sense of self.
Several understand human language to some extent, show social behaviour, and sorrow at the death of their kin.
Several show sophisticated problem solving ability.
And still you worthless humans continue to belittle animals as nothing more than instinct driven automatons.

@ragingloli I am the animal person of the planet here, quite informed and have 50 years of experience with everything known to man. Dogs, cats, birds, horses, rodents, burros, goats, cattle, poultry, peacocks, parrots, geese, fish, you name it. Everything you say is true, but that is not what I am talking about. I am simply saying animals do not possess the equivalent of human ego.

The ability to express emotion, recognize self in a mirror, solve problems, complex social behavior, understanding/associating their names or certain words with certain objects, actions, rewards/punishments is all well documented but ego is strictly a trait of the human animals psyche.
Animals do not create complex stories in their minds, ask “why” things are the way they are, lie, cheat, seek revenge, hold grudges, plot to destroy the world, experience envy, rage against injustices committed or talk to themselves as I mentioned above, making up stories about how bad, wrong, unfair it is that their dinner is 20 minutes late. They live in a constant state of present moment awareness not past and future. The concept of right/wrong, good/bad, fair/unfair and “should/shouldn’t are all concepts of the human animals ego.

The dog that has been beaten does not think to itself how bad, wrong, unfair the beating was, it simply feels the according emotions of the abuse, fear, confusion, pain minus any story. Do not insinuate we are all worthless humans without including yourself into that category as well. There are SOME worthless humans but there are also plenty of really good humans, like myself. I just spent 20 minutes hand feeding a new rescue horse here her first taste of delicious grain and building trust.

You can take your human hatred that you so freely spew on many of us here and piss off @ragingloli .

They do seek revenge, and hold grudges. I’m not saying all, or many, but some do. It has been documented, and I have seen it.

@Patty_Melt Sorry, I disagree. They may act out of association, not liking or fearing a person, they absolutely possess memory and a bad memory/association with a person/place/thing could certainly cause aggressive or acting out behavior but it is about the emotional memory/association not premeditated thought processes and certainly not ego driven.
By all means share your source of documentation, if it’s credible I’ll listen. haha

I can’t post links with my phone.
I would refer you to studies into the behavior of crows.
Crows in the wild recognize people they have seen before.
They have been observed attempting revenge.
Where do you think the saying came from, “Elephants never forget”? Also, I would point out the compassion showed by an elephant in Indonesia when the tsunami was about to hit, when she scooped up children and carried them to high ground.

@Patty_Melt

Of course, I already mentioned memory, and emotion, which encompasses love, fear, concern, joy etc. no doubt. Add in protective instinct behaviors, absolutely, and recognizing familiar people even after months or years, yep, but “revenge” would fall into the category of aggressive behavior based on negative association, not actual “revenge” in the egoic sense.
The exception is the higher Primates that are much more likely to show more complex thought processes.

Wow, you can twist it around however you like, okay.

@Patty_Melt No twisting, just discussion. Nothing else to say anyway.

A homing pigeon can be shipped to a place miles from home and have no difficulty returning. How many people could do that? Most animals have a good homing instinct. Is that something we once had but which most of us have lost?

@LostInParadise Intriguing question, I just found a Nat. Geo article that doesn’t want to link for some reason that says a new theory on homing pigeons ability to find their home after being released miles away may have to do with ultra-low frequency sound detecting, called infrasound.
These extremely low frequency sounds are beyond human capacity to hear/detect so in answer to your question, it’s unlikely we were ever to utilize this ability.
You can look up ” new theory on how homing pigeons find home.”

Thanks for the info. Maybe homing pigeons are an extreme example. Would you want to test your homing instinct against a cat or dog or deer? I sure wouldn’t.

^ Haha, probably not but I think human ability to recognize landmarks helps us a lot.
The ultimate tracking challenge, pit a human against a Bloodhound. lol

I wonder if we were better when we ran around in small tribes. To get around, I think people would have had to have been much more observant of the local environment.

This is my favorite story about animal homing. A worker at an orangutan rescue center in Indonesia went for a walk in the surrounding forest. It was a nice day, so he wandered off the trail. He lost track of the time and it got dark before he realized. He had no idea of how to get back. Fortunately, he ran into an orangutan who he recognized as one of the visitors to the center. She took him by the hand and led him back. She was no doubt thinking how stupid humans are, not even being able to find their way back home.