description: The fifty-seven original essays in this book provide a comprehensive overview of theinterdisciplinary field of animal cognition. The contributors include cognitive ethologists,behavioral ecologists, experimental and developmental psychologists, behaviorists, philosophers,neuroscientists, computer scientists and modelers, field biologists, and others. The diversity ofapproaches is both philosophical and methodological, with contributors demonstrating various degreesof acceptance or disdain for such terms as "consciousness" and varying degrees of concern forlaboratory experimentation versus naturalistic research. In addition to primates, particularly thenonhuman great apes, the animals discussed include antelopes, bees, dogs, dolphins, earthworms,fish, hyenas, parrots, prairie dogs, rats, ravens, sea lions, snakes, spiders, and squirrels.Thetopics include (but are not limited to) definitions of cognition, the role of anecdotes in the studyof animal cognition, anthropomorphism, attention, perception, learning, memory, thinking,consciousness, intentionality, communication, planning, play, aggression, dominance, predation,recognition, assessment of self and others, social knowledge, empathy, conflict resolution,reproduction, parent-young interactions and caregiving, ecology, evolution, kin selection, andneuroethology.
language: English
title: The Cognitive Animal: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives on Animal Cognition
titlecomplete: The Cognitive Animal: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives on Animal Cognition
genres: Nature, Animals, Psychology, Science, Nonfiction, Evolution
ratings_count: 29
publisher: Bradford Books