Among the World’s Animals, We’re Not That Exceptional

Growing up, you probably learned some version of the following: in the animal kingdom, humans are exceptional and unique. Among the one-of-a-kind qualities that we possess are a higher intelligence than all the other creatures on the planet, the ability to use tools and empathy.

More “evidence” of our superiority on Earth is offered, too, such as our creative abilities, our complex languages, our various cultures, our capacity for joy, our problem-solving skills, our sense of self-awareness and our feelings of sorrow.

But gorillas can come up with creative strategies to thwart poachers, prairie dogs have been shown to use complex language, whales have cultures, crows engage in activities solely for pleasure and problem solve, New Zealand robins can count, fish show self-awareness, chimpanzees mourn and scrub jays have beliefs.

Another common criterion thought to demonstrate human’s ultimate mentality is our understanding that others may have different points of view from our own. In human beings, adopting another person’s visual perspective is a complex skill that emerges around the age of two. But a new study suggests that this ability first arose in dinosaurs, at least 60 million years before it appeared in mammals.

All these findings challenge the idea that humans were the originators of novel and superior forms of intelligence in the wake of the dinosaur extinction. I call that a recipe—and a reason—for our taking a big piece of humble pie.

Run-of-the-mill mammal

Today, in our modern society, it’s common for one parent, for example, to take a child to ballet class and fix dinner so the other parent can fit in an exercise session before picking up another child from baseball practice. To any observer, this couple would seem to be cooperating in their very busy, co-parenting, monogamous relationship.

We would also tend to think that they are part of an evolved society that is vastly different from how other mammals live in groups. But our day-to-day behaviors and child-rearing habits are not dissimilar from those of other mammals who forage for food, hunt, and rear and teach their children, suggest researchers from the University of California, Davis.

Collaborating with more than 100 scientists from several institutions throughout the world, the UC, Davis, study—which was published in the science journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in May 2023—is the first to look at whether human males are more egalitarian than males among other mammals, based on the numbers of offspring they produce.

The researchers amassed data from 90 human societies comprising 80,223 individuals from many parts of the world, both contemporary and historical. They compared those records to lifetime data for 49 different, nonhuman, free-ranging mammals. They found that humans appear to resemble mammals that live in monogamous partnerships and to some extent, those classified as cooperative breeders, where breeding individuals must rely on the help of others to raise their offspring.

Somewhat unexpectedly, when focusing specifically on women, the researchers found greater reproductive egalitarianism in societies that allow for polygynous marriage than in those where monogamous marriage prevails. In polygynous systems, in which men take several wives at the same time, women tend to have more equal access to resources, such as food, land and shelter—and parenting help. This is because women, or their parents on their behalf, favor polygynous marriages with wealthy men who have more resources to share.

Researchers observed something else in their work: monogamous mating (and marriage) can drive significant inequalities among women. Monogamy can promote large differences in the number of children couples produce, resulting from large differences in wealth.

Exaggerated exceptionalism

The fact that men are relatively egalitarian compared to other animals reflects our patterns of child-rearing. Human children are heavily dependent on the care and resources provided by both fathers and mothers—a factor that is unusual, but not completely absent—in other mammals, the researchers said.

The critical importance of the complementary nature of this care—that each parent provides different and often noninterchangeable resources and care throughout long human childhoods—is why we don’t show the huge reproductive variability seen in some of the great apes. (Primates can exhibit an annual reproductive pattern that ranges from strictly seasonal breeding to giving birth in all months of the year, but factors mediating this variation are not fully understood.)

In conclusion, say the scientists, it appears that even though we’ve argued for a long time that humans are an exceptional, egalitarian species compared to other mammals, this exceptionalism may have been exaggerated.

Point-of-view late bloomer

When someone near you turns his or her head toward something in the environment, you likely can’t help following the gaze direction. This reaction is observed in birds, mammals and even reptiles. It’s an effective way to gather information about what caught the attention of your fellow, which you might otherwise have missed.

However, a far more advanced behavior is to track someone’s gaze to a location that is initially obstructed from your view. By repositioning yourself to see what the other person is looking at, you demonstrate an understanding that the other person has a different perspective. This ability, known as visual perspective taking, develops in children between the ages of one-and-a-half and two years, and serves as the foundation for later comprehending referential communication and that others have minds that differ from your own.

Visual perspective taking has, to date, only been found in very few species; mainly in apes and some monkeys, but also in crows and dogs. However, there is limited knowledge regarding the evolutionary origins of this crucial social skill. So, a team of researchers from Sweden’s Lund University recently investigated the potential, early emergence of visual perspective taking in dinosaurs. Through a comparison of alligators with the most primitive existing birds, known as palaeognaths, they discovered that visual perspective taking originated in the dinosaur lineage about 60 million years or more prior to its appearance in mammals.

Crocodilians are the closest living relatives to birds. Their neuroanatomy has remained largely unchanged for hundreds of millions of years and is like that of their common ancestor with dinosaurs. Palaeognath birds comprise the ostrich family of birds—such as emus and rheas—and the flighted tinamous. Their brains are largely comparable to their forebearers, the non-avian Paraves, a widespread group of theropod dinosaurs that originated in the Middle Jurassic period and which feature such celebrities as the velociraptors. Comparing these two groups of animals creates a bracket around the extinct lineage of dinosaurs leading up to modern birds.

The study, which was published in the journal Science Advances in May 2023, revealed that alligators do not demonstrate visual perspective taking, although they do follow a gaze to a visible location. In contrast, all tested bird species did exhibit it. Additionally, the birds engaged in a behavior called “checking back,” where the observer looks back into the eyes of the gazer and retracks the gaze when unable to find anything in that direction the first time. This behavior indicates an expectation that the gaze is referring to a target in the environment. Previously, this had only been observed in apes, humans, monkeys and ravens.

Palaeognath birds emerged 110 million years ago, predating the two mammal groups endowed with visual perspective taking—dogs and primates—by 60 million years. Considering the neuroanatomical similarities between these birds and their non-avian forebearers, it is plausible that the skill originated even earlier in the dinosaur lineage. However, it is less likely to have been present among the earliest dinosaurs, which had brains more like those of alligators.

Future research might show that the ability is more widespread among mammals than currently known; but even if that is the case, it will most probably still be predated by the dinosaur origin. Nevertheless, it is not surprising that visual perspective taking emerged earlier in the dinosaurs—including birds—given their superior vision compared to most mammals that historically relied on nocturnal adaptations. It was only with the emergence of the primates and certain carnivores that our visual capabilities improved.

This is yet another finding that calls into question the prevailing view that mammals drove the evolution of complex cognition and that they are the mental-activity yardstick by which other animals should be measured. An increasing number of studies show the remarkable neurocognition of the avian dinosaurs, the birds, which might prompt a rethinking of the natural history of intellection.

Uniquely human

I think that these two studies show us that, perhaps, there isn’t much that makes us uniquely human. Maybe we need to pay more attention to how animals act and to how complex they are—and try, once in a while, to view the world through their eyes.

And that could wind up being our best and most uniquely human trait.

Here’s to finding your true places and natural habitats,

Candy