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),
The Lowest Animal essay with these words: "Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim." The Lowest Animal The Lowest Animal is an 1896 philosophical essay written by American author Mark Twain. Twain describes fictional experiments he did with animals in which they showed greater civility than humans. In the essay Twain satirizes human nature by describing a series of experiments he supposedly conducted at the London Zoological Gardens. Twain takes Darwin's evolution theory that humans evolved from earlier ancestors, or “lower animals,” and turns it upside down. He describes deeds done by powerful people against the helpless, and states the many