The biggest difference between humans and dogs is not that we reason, and they don’t. To observe rational behavior, look to the dog. To see an emotional response, watch the owner.

Some animals, other than humans, do reason. They have well-developed brains and are goal-seeking. They acquire, store, retrieve, and process information. Additionally, research shows that other animals, besides humans, understand rules. In other words, they know that a series of events must happen in a particular sequence to produce a specific effect.

Animals of many species are capable of solving a wide range of problems that involve abstract reasoning. The problem is that most of our research projects into animal cognition either adopt a behaviorist approach—its conditioning methods nearly turning other species, except our own, into automatons—or focus on particular human characteristics, such as speaking and counting.

The standard depiction of the ladder of nature, on which the various species occupy successively higher levels, places humans at the top. However, species exhibit distinct cognitive processes, depending on how they have adapted to their different ecological niches.

That brings us back to Darwin—the difference between humans and other animals is “[…] one of degree and not of kind.” (1871 in “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.”)

Featured image: The biggest difference between them and us is not that we reason, and they don’t (by D. Myers).

References

de Waal, F. B. M. (2016). Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? W.W. Norton & Company.

Frederick R. News feature: The search for what sets humans apart. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2015 Jan 13;112(2):299-301. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1423320112. PMID: 25587106; PMCID: PMC4299222.

Suddendorf, T. (2013). The gap: The science of what separates us from other animals. Basic Books/Hachette Book Group.

Zentall, T. R. (2023). Comparative Cognition Research Demonstrates the Similarity between Humans and Other Animals. Animals, 13(7), 1165. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani13071165.