Gordon Burghardt:
(Tuesday, June 26, 11am)
The perceptual worlds of non-avian reptiles differ significantly from our own. They are a diverse group living in many different habitats with diverse life styles, diets, predators, sociality, and modes of communication. Having worked with many species over many decades I have developed and used several methods to try to understand their Umwelt and how they negotiate their environments, from birth and hatching to adulthood. Many other labs have contributed to our understanding in recent years as well, with new and unexpected findings. This presentation will overview our knowledge of reptile perception across all the major groups.
Burghardt, G. M. (1998).Snake stories: from the additive model to ethology’s fifth aim. Responsible conduct with animals in research. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 77-95.
Rivas, J. A., & Burghardt, G. M. (2001). Understanding sexual size dimorphism in snakes: wearing the snake's shoes. Animal Behaviour, 62(3), F1-F6.
Burghardt, G. M. (2017). Anthropomorphism. Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior, 1-4.
During this conference, I've realised how similar my dismissal of reptiles ''emotions'' was to the general dismissal of animal sentience. Let's all stop being ''mammalo-centric'' or ''limbico-centric''.
ReplyDeleteM. Burghardt brought forth some pretty convincing evidence for parental care, kin preference and even play, which I foolishly believed to be impossible in reptiles.I also took for granted the absence of oxytocin in reptiles, a mistake that was fixed with a quick Google Scholar search. The value of an enriched environnement for captive snakes really changed my view on these incredible animals.
If we now can take for granted the presence of complex social behaviours in reptiles dating back to the dinosaurs, the claim that mammals are the sole inventor of ''love'' or ''social affection'' seems indeed ludicrous. We need to take into account the ''reptilian brain'' role in the evolution of our capacities previously believed to be mammal-exclusive. There is more to reptiles than my childhood dated fascination of them; they are most interesting candidates for further research in comparative psychology and across-speices cognitive continuity.
I also must commend the courage of M. Burghardt: I would never be alone in a cage with a Komodo dragon, but once again, I think that it's just mammalo-centrism at play because they ultimately seemed to be a really playfull bunch.
I admit that I too under-estimated reptiles. I even said in courses that if humans had descended directly from reptiles we would all have been psychopaths and there would be no hope for our victims. That may be truer for precocial species that do not nurture their young, but clearly not for birds, who are indeed direct descendents of reptiles.
DeleteI asked Gordon about the Komodo, and he noted that there were dangers (especially from their toxic saliva) but much less if you know what you are doing. (I also suspect it is advisable to make sure they are very well fed...
Perhaps not so much courage as a genuine love for these animals and a passion to understand their Umwelt. But I view my talk a success if it altered attitudes to this much maligned, and misunderstood, group. It seems to have with a least some listeners!
DeleteApparently "Unknown" is Gordon Burghardt's blogger login!
DeleteThis conference led me to rethink the way I see reptiles, especially about their social interaction and the way they take care of their babies. We can see behavior that are typically associate with mammals (nurturing babies, playing, etc.) among them. As said M. Green, we have to try to think like reptiles if we want to understand them, one way to do so is to study them according to their umwelt, their “inner world”. On that point, I would have like to have some more information about the model of communication that merge two animals minds: how are we supposed to interpret it? Does this model take in account that two minds of the same species have the same umwelt?
ReplyDeleteLater talks gave examples of shared and unshared contexts.
DeleteHow do you explain from an evolutionary perspective the altruistic behaviour of the little reptile steping on the back of his sister during an attack by a predator, considering that the male who don’t do that will have better chance of becoming the dominant male of the lek?
ReplyDeleteInclusive fitness.
DeleteThis is the topic of my recent book: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-philosophy-of-social-evolution-9780198733058?cc=ca&lang=en&
DeleteI have to say this conference was very interesting. I was really impressed with the way reptiles can act as parents, but also as brothers and sisters. I agree with M. Burghardt when he says 'do you know any animal who would hold food in their mouth for their babies without eating it?’. I couldn’t believe how gentle that crocodile mom looked. Despite anything anyone can say, that was an admirable moment. Also, I found myself wondering why reptiles where playing with balls, toys, shoes in the videos we saw during the session, without any food being involved. I never thought reptiles could play or that they would feel the need to play! I didn’t know reptiles were so similar to mammals.
ReplyDeleteNow you know! Seriously, our preconceptions and biases often limit both the questions we ask, what we see, and how we interpret observations.
DeleteReally appreciated the emphasis that was put throughout the presentation on going beyond (as being critical of) an anthropocentric perspective when trying to understand other animals behaviors and cognitive particularities. This presentation showed the importance of considering other animals as complex, evolved life forms to better study their experiences and learning processes.
ReplyDeleteIn his talk about dogs and MRIs, Gregory Berns brought up the idea that we share a similar sentience with animals in conjunction with the Darwinian conception of evolution. This was also mentioned briefly in the talk about reptiles in reference to what branches of a phylogenetic tree would contain consciousness, and in connection with the degree of similarity anatomically between human and reptile brains. My twofold question is: how important do you think anatomical similarity to humans is for establishing facts about what animals feel, and what degree of this similarity do reptiles generally posses s?
ReplyDeleteThanks
Consciousness is something that is so complex, I think, that it not something that will either be fully there or completely absent in a taxa. Something as complex as this cannot evolve in single bound in my opinion, so we are bound to see various components of it scattered around the animal kingdom. It is obviously hard to tell whehter an animal can be half-conscious and I have personnally no idea how we could explain that. I think this goes back to the famous argument of “how can you have only half of an eye or a quarter of an eye?”. Some across the phylogenetic tree, the more we scatter from the primate branch and the mammal branch, maybe some taxa are only half-conscious and we get to the point where we get to “simpler” organisms where there is no consciousness whatsoever.
DeleteI really like this critical anthropomorphism approach to non-human cognition. Seems to work fine for vertebrates, or at least those that share some sensory systems. What about jellyfish?
ReplyDeleteI was not surprise by ANY of the complex social behavior presented during the talk. Maybe my love for dinosaurs has reversed the usual bias? I don't know…
Von Uexkull, in his 1909 book and later writings actually discussed jellyfish. He compared two species with rather different lifestyles and how they 'perceived' and acted in their habitats.
DeleteI also like the concept of critical anthropomorphism against the belief that pure objectivity is reachable in science and that therefore we should abandon such subjective interpretation. Whereas the naive dimension of anthropomorphism is harmful to the conclusions we draw, it can be surpassed in the way a more reflexive and critical anthropomorphism uses the human internal states to formulate hypothesis while wearing the non-human animal "shoes". In that way, anthropomorphism can help us cautiously reach the meaning of certain behaviors and make bridges between species. It would also be unreasonable, considering the evolution, to think that human traits, internal states, are fundamentaly and essentialy different from every non-human animal, that those traits magically emerge with the human specie.
DeleteThank you for this distinction Mr. Burghardt
Thanks for this presentation Mr. Burghardt, it was eye-opening and I think such work is useful, not only because it can open eyes to what you've been (for 50 years) trying to convince the scientific community about, but also because as you slowly succeed, those you do manage to convince are also much more likely to think "Hey, those lizards aren't so different to us after all... THEREFORE why would this "insert other poker-faced, yet potentially sentient being here" not possibly be sensitive as well? Kind of a "positive slippery slope" if you see what I mean.
ReplyDeleteA question I have, regarding ethics in the study of animal cognition, has to do with the level of restraint we should ethically allow ourselves to impose on the animals we're studying. Jon Sakata's birds were kept in cages as far as I know, but that seemed understandable since they're domesticated birds and releasing them would lead them to their death (someone correct me if I'm wrong here, please). Gregory Berns' dogs were given as much freedom as possible and lots of care was put in making sure they were treated ethically, which I found admirable. But I guess at some point, the more dangerous the animals we're hoping to study are, the less obvious it gets figuring how to study their cognition without putting ourselves at high risk of getting hurt. When we study venomous snakes, I'm pretty sure no animal rights activist would insist on disregarding basic safety measures (involving temporary restrictions on their freedom) just for the sake of "letting them be free and happy". So I guess this question is directed at all of today's panelists, whoever feels like answering it. How do you feel about this issue? Thank you!
Not quite sure how to answer, except that many animals that we need to know more about cognitively are potentially dangerous and hard to study, such as bears, crocodiles, sharks, and Komodo dragons. Still, the great apes fall into this category also but much money and effort has gone into developing ways of keeping and studying them using state of the art knowledge. It is time to get beyond the anthropocentric fixation on them and other nonhuman primates, IMHO.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI would like to thank Mr. Burghardt for his presentation and say that my intuitions seem to be supported by his works, especially the care relationship of some reptiles for their offspring. I would also like to take the opportunity to ask Mr. Burghardt how relevant the idea of Mr. MacLean's triune brain is for the currently study of the neurobiology of emotions. Thank you so much!
ReplyDeleteI think MacLean's triune brain concept has some heuristic value but is simplistic, certainly given work in the last 30 years, and the 'reptile brain' label was especially unfortunate. I suggest looking at Jaak Panksepp's Affective Neuroscience book (Oxford, 1998) for a far more nuanced approach, especially to the emotions.
DeleteI'm very grateful for your answer, and I've already studied Panksepp's books, "Affective Neuroscience" and "The Archaeology of Mind" (2012, the one he wrote with Lucy Biven). They are the main source of my research, I've personally told you at the Summer School last week. If If look for you at Research Gate, will I find your articles about PLAY in reptiles? Thank you in advance!
DeleteOn a tendance à voir les reptiles comme étant des êtres froids, n’agissant que par instinct, solitaires et sans capacité sociale. Par exemple, on nomme chez l’humain “cerveau reptilien” la partie primitive du cerveau qui serait responsable des réflexes, de l’instinct de survie et de l’homéostasie ; bref, il s’agit d’un “cerveau” sans mémoire, sans émotion, sans possibilité d’apprentissage. Or, la présentation de Gordon Burghardt nous a bien montré que cette manière de voir les reptiles est fausse. En effet, on a vu que les mères “s’occupent” de leurs bébés, qu’elles en prenaient soin. Aussi, on a vu que les reptiles sont capables d’interactions sociales non seulement avec leurs pairs, mais aussi avec d’autres espèces. Ils sont capables de s’amuser, de jouer. Bref, il y a plus dans le monde subjectif des reptiles que ce à quoi l'on pourrait s’attendre à première vue.
ReplyDeleteI've read on this blog I'm not the only one to be interested in the Komodo dragons' cognition!I've found the reference of an interesting book about the Komodos you can partly read here on the web:
ReplyDeletehttps://books.google.ca/books?id=MqFfBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT452&lpg=PT452&dq=cognition+of+komodo+dragon&source=bl&ots=ZFmEkGGP2j&sig=sAvxz7qjZGCbSrN-0pAQkBNoWQ4&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiF8NeMlZXcAhXQT98KHSM7DjkQ6AEIfTAN#v=onepage&q=cognition%20of%20komodo%20dragon&f=false
Komodo Dragons: Biology and Conservation, edited by James B. Murphy, Claudio Ciofi, Colomba de La Panouse and Trooper Walsh for the Smithsonian Institution, 2002. An additional interesting fact for us is that Mr Burghardt is cited among the contributors.
For the other ones also interested in reptile play, I found out Mr Burghardt has written a whole 507 p. book on the topic of animal play in 2005- I guess he also talks about reptiles:
ReplyDeletehttps://books.google.ca/books?id=kWR6AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA415&lpg=PA415&dq=cognition+komodo+burghardt&source=bl&ots=HSni6gstl9&sig=F8ajiX-IUXFwhI1Joa6Sxaow0Gw&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjj9aTBmZXcAhXOVN8KHVZEAUMQ6AEIPTAD#v=onepage&q=cognition%20komodo%20burghardt&f=false
It seems to me much more difficult to have an anthropomorphic understanding of reptiles and it was with great interest that we saw that reptiles communicate (vocalizations), get in touch (courtships), provide parental care, have for some a real social organization and possess complex cognitive skills (spatial learning, sensory discrimination, habituation ...).
ReplyDeleteIn this sense, I would like to know if it is possible to train snakes at some tasks and control their behaviors?
Thank you.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for the presentation. My question is for Mr Harnad. During his presentation, Mr Burghardt mentionned that you would only accept the neural analogical method to ascertain the feeling of pain in fishes. Why is the subjective analogical inference method not acceptable? We have seen that some species of animals could present behavior while lacking the neural structure normally needed for such behavior. Furthermore, isn’t the method proposed in Mr. Burghardt’s 1985 article acceptable to ascertain the presence of pain in any species (i.e. combining critical anthropomorphism and predictive inferences based on data from many sources)?
ReplyDeleteJe trouve très intéressante la façon de Mr. Burghardt d'aborder l'environnement des reptiles en essayant de pousser les observations sans tomber dans le piège d'une vision anthropomorphisme, présentant le problème central englobant "the other mind's problem". En effet, il est vrai que les comportements des reptiles ont toujours moins été considérés dans les recherches éthologiques et psychologiques et je trouve donc intéressant de voir une approche prônant des inférences biologiques qui questionnent l'inné et les impulsions des reptiles dans un contexte pouvant facilement être lié à des comportements humains. Par exemple, on constate que les crocodiles ont un système territorial très complexe et peuvent facilement communiquer de façon auditive et visuelle.
ReplyDeleteAussi, on remarque un certain altruisme biologique qui se développe chez les reptiles et s'observe par une activité de la glande pinéale, aussi appelée "troisième oeil", leur permettent, grâce à leurs cellules thermosensibles par exemple (ex. eyespot), de mieux détecter leurs pairs, proies et ennemis. De ce fait, on constate, chez les reptiles, des comportements similaires à ceux des humains, qui sont innés et pas nécessairement gérés par le système nerveux central, par exemple, dans le partage de nourriture ou la protection des pairs (anti-predator behavior), comme présenté par Mr. Burghardt.
Ainsi, on constate finalement un certain apprentissage social observé chez les reptiles ainsi que certaines différences au niveau de la personnalité et façon d'interagir chez chacun des individus.
Lorsque je passais mes cours de biologie, plusieurs de mes professeurs parlaient aussi des reptiles comme étant des animaux «froids» et trouvaient l’idée qu’un lézard aime se faire caresser par son propriétaire un peu ridicule. Pourtant, certaines recherches montrent définitivement que les reptiles ont une très grande diversité de comportements et donnent des soins à leurs petits, comme montré dans la vidéo du crocodile qui garde la nourriture dans sa bouche pour nourrir ses petits. Le «critical anthropomorphism», soit d’essayer de penser comme l’animal et d’essayer de se mettre dans sa tête, nous permettra probablement de développer de meilleures méthodologies pour mesurer les processus mentaux des animaux.
ReplyDeleteSachant que les oiseaux ont comme descendants les reptiles, est-il pertinent de faire des parallèles avec ces-derniers? La phylogénie nous indique que les oiseaux sont prêts des reptiles. Nous avons de bons indices de croire que les oiseaux sont en mesure d'opérer des catégories et faire des abstractions. Est-ce une capacité qu'on retrouve également chez les reptiles? Les expériences faites sur les oiseaux (voir Carel ten Cate) peuvent-elles être reproduites chez les reptiles?
ReplyDeleteJe crois que le nombre de petit à un lien avec la sociabilité. Si l'espèce à un petit nombre de petits, elle aura plus tendance à s'en occuper et à avoir des comportements de protection envers eux. Mais sommes-nous en mesure de déterminer si ces espèces développent ces capacités parce qu'elles ont peu de bébé ou si elles ont peu de bébés parce qu'elles ont cette capacité. Si c'est le cas, qu'est-ce qui serait à l'origine du développement de la sociabilité?
Peut-on extrapoler sur la cognition possible des dinosaures? Que possédons-nous de pertinent à l'étude de la cognition des dinosaures? Une idée plus ou moins précise de l'anatomie et un fil phylogénétique? Qu'y a-t-il chez les descendants des dinosaures que les dinosaures ne possédaient pas déjà eux-mêmes sur le plan de la cognition?