Chapter 8: Communication as Evidence of Thinking
 

1. What adaptive advantages would the ability to communicate likely confer on con-specifics? On animals of different species? On predators and their prey?
 

2. What do you make of Griffin's claim that "If we recognize that such basic subjective feelings and thoughts [e.g., whether the animal wants to attack, or intends to charge, or fears harm to itself] may occur in animals, we can often make much better, and more parsimonious, sense out of their behavior."?
 

3. What hay does Griffin try to make of the idea expressed in Bertrand Russell's statement that "perception or imagery which does not issue in action must remain unknown to us, unless of course the subject can in some way communicate such perceptions and images to us"?
 

4. What Griffin calls the GOP (groans of pain) view of animal communication is the dogma that "all animal communication is a direct result of internal physiological states that are not under any sort of conscious control", thereby equating animal communications to "human eye blinks, blushing, gasps of surprise, or groans of pain." How does this GOP view relate to the view that animals are simple-minded 'behaviorists' concerned only with predicting what other animals will do, e.g., by taking threats as behavior that demands a fight-or-flight response?
 

5. Griffin thinks that the fact that "the communicative signals of many social animals are often dependent on the presence of other animals, and ... are often modified in response to communicative signals received from others" tells against the GOP view. Why does he think this? Is he right?
 

6. Describe the alarm-call behavior of vervet monkeys, including the apparently deceptive use of these calls to hoodwink conspecifics. Are their alarm calls injunctions (imperatives) or informative statements? Does it make any difference which they are? How do vervet monkeys evaluate the reliability or trustworthiness of the monkeys who give the alarms? Does the 'Boy who cried wolf' parable apply unrestrictedly to vervet monkeys? Does their alarm-call behavior support the hypothesis of conscious thinking?
 

7. In what ways do the alarm calls (screams) of juvenile free-ranging rhesus macaque males diverge from the GOP theory of animal communication?
 

8. Describe the two kinds of alarm calls given by domestic chickens? How similar are these calls to the alarm calls of vervet monkeys? What conjecture is suggested by an evolutionary perspective on the fact that, in response to moving overhead hawk models, bantam "cockerels gave significantly fewer aerial alarm calls when alone than when their mate or another familiar female was clearly visible and audible in an adjacent cage; but when this experiment was repeated with unfamiliar females, the male called no more often than when he was alone. Familiar males elicited almost as many alarm calls as familiar females. Young chicks were almost as effective an audience as familiar females in eliciting alarm calls, but the presence of bobwhite quail did not increase the frequency of alarm calling."?
 

9. Describe the remarkable guidance behavior of the African greater honeyguide (Indicator indicator) in concert with the Boran people in northern Kenya. Which of the Boran claims about honeyguides have yet to be confirmed or refuted? Are the ethologists who conducted this study skeptical about these unadjudicated claims of the Borans? Compare the guidance behavior of these birds to the communicative behavior of scout honeybees. Which is more suggestive of conscious planning and thinking? How suggestive are these behaviors?
 

10. Describe the apparent achievements of Alex, Irene Pepperberg's African gray parrot. Where might each of the two types of experimenter effects have affected the reported results of the observations on and experiments with Alex?
 

Chapter 9: Symbolic Communication
 

1. What is the significance of the fact "weaver ants [of the species Camponotus serviceus] show a significant difference in their recruiting behavior [of sister ants] according to whether recruitment is for food gathering or fighting off intruders." What do you make of the fact that the "gestures used in recruiting for fighting resemble in some ways the movements employed in actual combat" and so is iconic rather than symbolic? What adaptive value might this duality of recruitment behavior possess? How significant and unusual is the 'chain communication' behavior of these ants? Does it support Griffin's contention that "the ant that has been stimulated by recruiting gestures and then repeats these gestures may be expressing a simple thought that has been conveyed to her through the communicative process itself rather than by some external stimulation"?
 

2. It has been claimed by Jolly and Humphrey that "consciousness arose in primate evolution when societies developed to the stage where it became crucially important for each member of the group to understand the feelings, intentions, and thoughts of others." How might this conjecture apply to weaver ants?
 

3. Describe in detail the symbolic dances of honeybees. Is Griffin right to call them "[t]he most significant example of versatile communication known in any animals other than our own species"? What novel investigative technology has been introduced by Michelson, Kirchner, and Lindauer? What does this show about the dependence of scientific progress on theory and instrument development? How much support does the communicative behaviors of honeybees confer on the hypothesis of conscious thinking in animals?
 

Chapter 10. Deception and Manipulation
 

1. Committed to viewing animals as machines designed to preserve and propagate the genes that ride inside them, Dawkins & Krebs "interpret communicative signs as means to manipulate others, rather than to inform them. From this perspective it seems likely that the information transmitted by communicative signals is often inaccurate, and serves to misinform the receiving animal." Dawkins & Krebs argue "against what they call the classical ethological analysis of animal communication, which emphasizes cooperation between individual animals facilitated by transmission of accurate information about the sender's dispositions to behave in particular ways." Given that ethologists who study "animal communication have almost always considered that communicative behavior is adaptive, that it has resulted from natural selection, and that it often enables one animal to alter the behavior of another to the former's advantage", how much do these two approaches to animal communication differ?
 

2. Which is more likely to require conscious thought, deceptive or non-deceptive communication? Why?
 

3. Fireflies are luminescent beetles that "engage in fantastically complex social communication mediated by temporal patterns of their self-generated flashes." Describe their communicative behavior and discuss its relevance to conscious thinking and planning in animals. Is it reasonable nowadays to hold the view that "insects behave in rigid, stereotyped ways that are genetically predetermined"?
 

4. Describe the communicative behavior of mantis shrimps with emphasis on the role of reputation, bluffing, and the recognition of individual animals. Is Griffin right when he asserts that "It is quite reasonable to speculate that mantis shrimps may experience very simple conscious feelings or thoughts about the fights by which they gain or lose the cavities that are so important to them and the antagonists whose odors they learn to recognize from previous encounters. Perhaps they do no more than feel fearful on sensing the odor of a larger shrimp that has defeated them previously. But we have no firm basis for dogmatically denying any subjective experience at all" to these marine crustaceans?
 

5. Describe the apparent deceptive behavior of the male Anna's hummingbird called Spot who drives other male hummingbirds into mist nets. What does this example show about the difficulties of documenting instances of animal deception?
 

6. Describe the predator distraction behavior of plovers like the North American killdeer. How adequate is the "customary explanation of these distraction displays ... that the bird is in severe conflict behavior, being motivated both to flee and to attack, with the result that it is thrown into a state bordering on an uncoordinated convulsion"?
 

7. Discuss the sexual deceptions practiced by chimpanzees and bonobos. Do they support the hypothesis of conscious planning and thinking?