Animal cognition Animal cognition Animal cognition describes the mental capacities of non-human animals and the study of those capacities. The field developed from comparative psychology, including the study of animal conditioning and learning. It has also been strongly influenced by research in ethology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary psychology, and hence the alternative name cognitive ethology is sometimes used. Many behaviors associated with the term "animal intelligence" are also subsumed within animal cognition. Researchers have examined animal cognition in mammals (especially primates, cetaceans, elephants, dogs, cats, pigs, horses, cattle, raccoons and rodents), birds (including parrots, fowl, corvids and pigeons), reptiles (lizards and snakes),
Animal psychopathology animal models because it is difficult to know what animals are thinking and because animal models used to assess psychopathologies are experimental preparations developed to study a condition. Can a monkey effectively communicate that he is sad or that he feels overwhelmed? Lacking the ability to use language to study behavioral disorders like depression and stress questions the validity of those studies conducted. It can be difficult to attribute human afflictions to non-human animals. Obsessive compulsive behavior in animals, often called "stereotypy" or "stereotypical behavior" can be defined as a specific, unnecessary action (or series of actions) repeated more often