Animals behave too – a lecture by Jan van Hooff
Author: Marjolein Essink
He is the most famous Dutch biologist, and at 87 year old, still very passionate about animal behaviour. Jan van Hooff*, an emeritus professor at the University of Utrecht is best known for his research involving primates. During a lecture at the Apenheul, a zoo with over three hundred primates, he explains to what extent we can understand the behaviour of animals.
As a zookeeper’s son, Jan van Hooff’s fascination for animals started at an early age. He decided to study biology at the Utrecht University where he focussed on social behaviour and communication of primates. In 1980 he became a professor for ethology and socio-ecology at the Utrecht University.
On the 14th of November, he gave a lecture for the nature education foundation in the Apenheul to educate about animal behaviour.
While seated, Jan begins his talk with his favourite French philosopher Descartes. While he shows a picture of the scientist on his PowerPoint, he says: “He was the first to acknowledge that humas are able to think rationally, something an animal would not be able to.” Therefore, humans were seen as superior to animals since animals were not able to apply previously acquired knowledge in new situations and express their thoughts.
Well-known behavioural researchers such as Pavlov and Skinner showed that animals can learn, but only when given a reward. “Therefore, his behaviour is more like a reflex based on a routine, it lacks the consideration to express the requested behaviour, due to the reward.” He shows a picture of a bird feeding a fish, just because the pink mouth of the fish triggers the feeding behaviour in the bird. Only because it looks the same as the inside of the mouths of baby birds.
Edward Tolman, the supervisor of Jan, was the first person to confirm that animals actively consider their options to get a reward. His research in rats showed that they have a sense of direction and are therefore aware of where they are in a maze. This makes them able to choose a shorter route in the labyrinth when this option was made available (even if they have never walked this alternate route before). The audience reacts astonished when Jan shows us the video of the rat taking the shorter route to the treat. “It showed that the behaviour of animals is not just based on reflexes, routines or instincts” he stresses.
Jan raises the question whether animals can apply previously acquired knowledge in new situations (like Descartes said, animals were not able to). He emphasizes that this type of research focusses on higher non-human animals such as primates. Experiments on chimps with limited access to tools showed that these animals can plan ahead and take tools with them, knowing that they will need it at a later moment to reach the treat. This refuted Descartes’s statement and confirmed the ability to apply previously acquired knowledge in new situations.
The next challenge was to find contradicting evidence for Descartes’s second assumption; animals are not able to express their thoughts. During his talk, Jan underlines the broad meaning and complexity of this assumption. Using several video’s, he shows that related concepts such as empathy and self-awareness have been found only in several big primates, dolphins, and elephants.
Jan ends his lecture with a hypothesis undermining Descartes’s second assumption. He explains: “The self-awareness suggests that chimps are also aware of the behaviour of their peers. This would result in a moral responsibility since you can be taken accountable for your behaviour by your community. Therefore, you would expect that these animals are able to communicate their thoughts. However, clear evidence is still lacking.”