From: bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Estimating intelligence: anecdote (long)
Date: 31 Aug 92 03:50:53 GMT
	<1992Aug13.044325.16707@zip.eecs.umich.edu>
	<exukjb.105.715022628@exu.ericsson.se>
	<1992Aug29.143021.8163@Princeton.EDU>
	<1992Aug29.151333.24453@u.washington.edu>
Organization: ARL Division of Neural Systems, Memory and Aging, University of
	Arizona


wcalvin@hardy.u.washington.edu (William Calvin) writes:

   > Human estimates of intelligence in other animals seem, to me, to
   > be based on an animal's versatility.  Omnivores such as bears and
   > crows have a lot of ways of detecting and acquiring food; they
   > can sometimes mix and match those sensory and motor abilities to
   > undertake something novel. 

I'd like to tell a little story that relates to this.

People who go backpacking in black bear country know that bears are
very efficient robbers of food.  Everybody you run into has a bear
story, and some of them are really astonishing: my favorite is the one
about the mother bear who lifted her cub up with her paws so that it
could get at a food bag.  Anyway, there is only one reliable way of
keeping food away from them.  It's called the "double-bagging" method,
and it's a little too complicated to explain here, but basically it
involves arranging things so that bears can't get at either the food
bags or the ropes the bags are hanging from.  When you get a
backcountry permit, the ranger gives you a little brochure with
diagrams illustrating the method.  It works quite well, but it
requires a bit of manual dexterity (as evidenced by the pieces of rope
you see sadly tangled in the branches of trees at many popular
campsites), especially if you're doing it by yourself, and sometimes
when you're completely exhausted there's a temptation to forgo it for
something easier though slightly riskier.  (I have been guilty of this
sin myself, before I knew better.)

So one fine July afternoon I was hiking by myself up Bubb's Creek in
King's Canyon National Park, and I arrived, very tired, at Vidette
Meadow, where I decided to camp.  I took off my backpack, started a
campfire, etc..  There was a metal cable strung between two trees,
about twenty feet above the ground -- this makes hanging food a hell
of a lot easier -- so when I came across my rope, I tied one end of it
around a rock and threw it over the cable, leaving the two ends
dangling there for future use.  I then went over to the fire and
started thinking about fixing something to eat.

And at that moment a bear came ambling into my campsite.  Most black
bears are not actually black; this one was red, like an Irish setter.
As I stared, the bear walked right up to my rope -- dangling from the
steel cable with nothing attached to it -- and started yanking and
chewing on it.  I didn't think too much about this curious behavior --
my priorities were to keep the bear from destroying the rope and then
to get it out of my campsite, which with a lot of shouting and arm
waving I eventually did (this was my first bear encounter, so I was
pretty excited) -- but later on I realized that this action was
actually quite revealing.

In fact, I realized that it amounts to what Dennett would call a
"demoting" act.  A large fraction of the apparent cleverness of bears
can be accounted for by a very simple rule: "If you see a rope, chew
on it."  Any food protection method that leaves the rope reachable
will fall victim to this technique, and double-bagging is the only one
that does not.  Note that the technique requires no understanding
whatever of the *way* the rope supports the food -- all the bear needs
to know is that chewing on ropes is a useful thing to do.

What of the many other extraordinary bear stories, the mother lifting
her cub and so on?  I believe most of them were invented by people who
did something stupid (because they were afraid or because they were
too tired to care) and then were too embarrassed to admit it.  In
support of this contention:

The following morning, I crawled out of my tent, heard a strange
noise, looked up, and saw that the bear -- the same one -- was
standing directly underneath my food bags, looking up at them; and I
realized with dismay that one of the bags was hanging too low . . .

At this point I must briefly digress to explain the setup.  In
double-bagging, you first divide your food evenly into two bags.  You
tie one end of the rope to one of the bags, and haul it up until it
reaches the branch (steel cable, in this case) that the rope goes
over.  Then -- this is the hard part if you're alone -- you lift the
second bag as high as you can and tie the rope to it.  You then do
something tricky with the excess rope -- whatever you please-- and
finally you use a stick to push the second bag up until it's parallel
to the first bag.  Ideally they're both about ten feet above the
ground, but in practice that's difficult to achieve, and in this case
they were only about eight feet up.  I knew, when I finished, that it
was questionable, but I was just too tired to do it all over again.

So, there I was, looking at the bear, and I could easily see, in the
clear light of morning, that if it stood up on its hind legs it would
be able to reach my food with no trouble at all.  Why it had not yet
done so is a mystery.

So I started waving my arms and shouting curses and walking toward the
bear.  The bear looked at me, snuffled, and came charging straight
toward me.  I thought *oops*, stopped instantly, and started backing
away, not turning around because I remembered that that's a "bad thing
to do".  (This was a mock charge, I learned later, and if I had stood
my ground the bear would almost certainly have backed down, but I
didn't know that at the time, and maybe I wouldn't have had the
courage to do it even if I *had* known.)  The bear came within a few
feet of me, stopped, then turned and went back to the food.

It walked back and forth under my food bags a few times.  I stood well
away, shouting obscenities that were probably audible for miles in the
thin mountain air, but too intimidated to do anything else.  The bear
-- which, remember, could have reached the food at any time -- went
over and climbed up one of the trees that the steel cable was attached
to.  It got up to the height of the cable, looked out at the food
bags, well out of reach, stayed there for a little while, and then
climbed down again.  It walked over to the bags, walked around under
them for a little while, and then *finally* stood up and got hold of
one of them.

Galvanized by the reality of imminently losing half of my food, I
started throwing rocks at the bear -- which until then I couldn't make
myself do, for fear of angering it -- but with one powerful yank it
tore a food bag loose and galloped off into the woods with it.  (When
I cleaned up the remains, I saw that it had eaten, along with
everything else, a full shaker of pepper.)

Anyway, I have to admit that when I reported my loss to the rangers, I
distorted the story a little bit.  In fact, I said that the bear shook
the cable after it climbed the tree and caused one of the food bags to
shift low enough for the bear to reach it.  (The temptation to lie is
awfully strong when nobody can possibly contradict you.)

And the moral of all this, I think, is that it's not so hard to create
the appearance of more intelligence than actually exists.

	-- Bill
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy