In your opinion, are animals capable of cognitive activities, or are we attributing human functions to them that they do not really possess?
Various experiments were performed in order to test the intelligence in the animals. For example, the shuttle avoidance system was set up to condition the avoidance and the escape conditioning in the animals. Pavlov’s dogs are very famous and were used to determine the conditioned stimulus. Parrots, lemurs, dolphins, sparrows, chimpanzees and human infants were involved to study the processing system of the brain.
The animal psychologists, since, 1970, have tried to exhibit the functionality of animal mind, for example, computation, encoding, transformation and manipulation of symbolic representations. Psychologists always thought that the similar processes occur in the human mind also. Hence, the term comparative psychology came into existence.
The memory of animals is also complex like that of the humans. Some animals use to remember the places, while the others use to remember the appearance. For example, certain birds who need to store their food during winters do not memorize the color or the shape of the tree; instead these birds are good at memorizing the location of the places where they have hidden their food. The tool making is a very complex process.
This process is learned by the growing chimpanzees from the society. When the chimpanzee is about 3 years old, it starts making the tools, mimicking its elders. Sometimes, the chimps use to apply their brain to make more complex and innovative tool. This is the greatest example of the complex brains and the cognitive skills in the animals. The prior notion of animal being unconscious has now been discarded. Much of the experiments have been performed by the scientists, which clearly show the consciousness in the animals also.