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Do animals think like autistic savants?


Some birds have a savant-like ability to remember where they hoarded thousands of seeds to see them through winter (Source: iStockphoto)


But an international team of researchers say this intriguing idea is unlikely and is undermined by available scientific evidence.

Australian animal behaviour expert, Professor Lesley Rogers from the University of New England in Armidale, and colleagues take on the savant hypothesis in the current issue of the journal PloS Biology.

"You may find some animals are autistic but it's not characteristic of animals in general," says Rogers.

People with autism tend to focus on detail at the expense of other abilities.

Autistic savants have an extreme case of this and often have exceptional skills in music, maths or art but often have poor social skills.

In 2005, animal behaviour expert Professor Temple Grandin of Colorado State University co-wrote the book Animals in Translation, in which she argues her own autism enables her to recognise autistic behaviour in animals.

She says her understanding of animal autism helps explain otherwise puzzling animal behaviour.

For example, when a herd of cattle heading down a darkened stockyard corridor suddenly scatters in fright, Grandin says her attention to detail is able to identify the trigger. This could be a spot of light glinting through a hole in the roof or a leaf on the ground.

Grandin argues that people without autism are unlikely to notice these details. But people with autism, and animals, are.

Then there are birds that have a savant-like memory for remembering accurately where they stashed thousands of different seeds to get them through winter.

Grandin thinks such birds have this highly developed skill at the cost of other cognitive abilities, just like human autistic savants.

Right and left brain differences

But Rogers and colleagues aren't convinced and have prepared the first scientific argument against Grandin's hypothesis.

They say her observations about animal behaviour may be explained by the role of the left and right brain in responding the world.

"In all brains the right side is more savant-like than the left side and that's true in humans as well as in animals," says Rogers.

Rogers says the right brain attends to detail and is good at noticing anything new in the environment.

But the left side ignores new things and focuses on things it's seen before.

This enables us to categorise what we experience, build up rules of thumb about how the world works and ultimately learn from experience.

Animals and humans alike need both sides of the brain to survive well in the world, says Rogers.

Inducing savant-like behaviour

Professor Allan Snyder at the University of Sydney's Centre for the Mind contributed to the critique of Grandin's hypothesis.

His experiments show that humans with a suppressed left brain tend to show greater savant-like ability.

Snyder, Rogers and colleagues suggest Grandin may have reached her conclusion based on looking at animals whose environment has led them to act in a savant-like way.

Rogers says the farm animals that Grandin has experience with are likely to be in a stressed situation.

"If an animal is fearful or stressed it will be right hemisphere dominant. This is true for humans as well," she says.

"They'll be attending to the little details of the environment because that's what they're attuned to."

As for wild birds with savant-like memory for food storage sites, Rogers says there's no evidence that such birds have sacrificed other cognitive or social skills to boost their memory skills.

Grandin agrees more research is needed before the question can be settled.

Tags: environment, animals, animal-welfare, animal-behaviour, neuroscience