In the mid-1970s, I joined the first cohort of students studying biology at the newly founded university in Bielefeld. In those days there were only about 30 to 40 of us students and about three professors, one of whom was Klaus Immelmann. Professor Immelmann had recently been called to serve as the first chair for animal behaviour at a German university, and his goal was to make Bielefeld a hub of behavioural biology research and teaching. He quickly succeeded. The facilities in his department were phenomenal, even by international standards. It was an exciting time: the campus was populated by various species of finches, parrots, geese, marmosets, kangaroos, deer, and rodents living in spacious indoor and outdoor enclosures. The founders of behavioural biology, Lorenz, Tinbergen, and von Frisch, had just received the Nobel Prize. There was a spirit of optimism in our eastern province of Westphalia.

In 1975, the American biologist Edward O. Wilson published his foundational work, Sociobiology – The New Synthesis. In it, he coined the term ‘sociobiology’ as a new sub-discipline of behavioural biology based on the groundwork laid years earlier by scientists like William Hamilton and Robert Trivers.

Wilson saw the goal of sociobiology as deciphering the biological basis of all social behaviour of animals and humans alike. By systematically applying the theory of evolution to the social activities of insects, fish, birds, and mammals, sociobiology casts the ways in which animals form relationships, help one another, kill each other, and take on sex roles in a completely different light.

Hardly a day goes by without a news report on the debate over the ethical treatment of animals. Society is increasingly asking questions about what humane treatment looks like: what is the ideal environment for an egg-laying hen? How do polar bears and tigers feel in captivity? Should horses be kept alone in stables, or with other horses? How does a pug feel when its owner goes on holiday and it is left alone?

As we saw in the last chapter, instincts and learning interact in complex ways to produce the characteristic behaviours of each species and individual. So far, we have discussed learning in a broad sense: ducklings learn who to follow after they hatch; zebra finches learn what traits their future mates should have; guinea pigs learn to get along with members of their own species; and vervet monkeys learn which warning call to sound for a leopard and which to sound for an eagle. The pigeons Jack and Jill even learned (with help) to transmit information with symbols so efficiently that it appeared as though they were having a conversation. In this chapter we will take a closer look at which cognitive capacities animals possess: whether they can not only learn but also think, and whether they, like humans, can develop self-awareness.

Questions over the origin of behaviour have troubled science and society for generations. For one, does behaviour arise from instinct, or learning? What role do genes play in behavioural development? How important is environment? Much research has been done on this topic, and there is even more speculation. In recent years, however, new methods from genetic engineering have revealed exciting new answers to the old riddle. But let’s start at the beginning.

A revolution has recently taken place in behavioural biology. Its consequences are far-reaching, both for our self-image as humans and for our relationship with animals. Just a few decades ago, behavioural science was guided by two key dogmas: animals cannot think, and no scientific statements can be made about their emotions. Today, the same discipline holds both ideas to be false and posits the very opposite: animals of some species are capable of insight – they can recognise themselves in a mirror and exhibit at least a basic sense of self-awareness – and they have rich emotional lives that seem to be startlingly similar to those of humans. Situations that lead to strong emotional responses in humans, whether positive or negative – for example, when we fall in love or lose a partner – seem to have the same effect on our animal relatives.

What happens to a monkey who grows up without a mother? Had a biologist been asked decades ago, he or she probably would have answered that if the animal were kept clean, well-nourished, and disease-free it would develop relatively normally. Indeed, until the second half of the twentieth century it was widely believed that the role of the mammalian mother was primarily to provide her children with food (milk especially), warmth, and protection. That she might also play an essential role in her offsprings’ behavioural development would have been a rather unusual thought.

Behavioural biology has fundamentally changed our scientific understanding of animals. We now doubtlessly better understand their thinking, feelings, and behaviour, and in the process are discovering how similar we really are to each other, indeed to a far greater extent than we could have even a few years ago imagined.

Admittedly, the degree to which this is true is not the same across all animals: we are clearly closer to chimpanzees, dolphins, dogs, or mice than we are to ants, starfish, snails, or amoebas. We are vertebrates, and we are mammals, and we share a comparable brain, hormones, and nervous system with all other creatures in this class. Thought, emotions, and behaviour are all ultimately functions of these systems. The more comparable living beings are in this respect, the more similar they are to each other.