Testing the limits of behavior analysis: A review of Frans de Waal's Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?

Abstract

In “Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?” de Waal (2016) summarizes field studies and experiments that demonstrate a huge number of examples of complex behavior in many animal species. His avowed aim is to challenge the views of both lay people and scientists about the limits of intelligence of other species and to demonstrate much closer similarity in the achievements of other species to those of humans, thus undermining claims of human uniqueness. His general explanatory scheme is to infer human‐like cognitive processes in other species to explain complex behavior, at least when this is supported by other evolutionary considerations. This review suggests how behavior analysis might explain some of the phenomena outlined by de Waal, indicates where its explanatory system may need to expand and develop to encompass a wider range of behavior, and points to similarities as well as differences between the explanatory scheme used by de Waal and that of behavior analysis.