Does my dog sense when I'm sad? Is the neighbor's cat planning its next excursion through the neighborhood? Questions like these occupy many people in everyday life. Researchers at Leipzig University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have now found out how people around the world think about this. More than 1,000 children and almost 200 adults from 33 communities in 15 countries took part in the study.
The scientists asked people of different ages whether they thought animals could feel and think. The answers were very similar, regardless of which country or culture the respondents came from.
Most people believe that animals generally have thoughts and feelings. But they make a difference when it comes to thinking. Humans are convinced that their own thinking is unique and fundamentally different from that of animals. "The belief in the uniqueness of human thought arises early in life and remains stable throughout the entire lifespan," explains first author Karri Neldner. Prof. Katja Liebal from the University of Leipzig led the study together with Prof. Daniel Haun from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
What this means for animals
This view has direct consequences for the treatment of animals. "The mental abilities attributed to animals also determine their moral status," says Neldner. People can thus justify using animals for food, medicine or entertainment.
At the same time, some animal species receive more protection than others. Species that humans perceive as sentient or human-like receive more donations and political support. "This is particularly problematic in terms of species extinction and biodiversity loss," explains Liebal. Insects are severely affected, but receive much less attention than mammals, even though they only make up a fraction of biodiversity.
The researchers discovered something else. Children from cities attribute thoughts and feelings to animals more often than children from the countryside. This could be because they often see animals portrayed as human-like in movies or books. Children in rural areas, on the other hand, encounter farm animals or dangerous animals more often.
Special method yields valuable data
The Leipzig team chose an unusual approach. The scientists themselves did not conduct the interviews. Instead, people from the respective communities interviewed their neighbors, friends and relatives. They were trained beforehand. The interviews were later translated and analyzed. "Even though the course of the study was much less controlled than if we had invited participants to a laboratory, we are convinced that the data obtained in this way is much more valuable because it was generated in the respective cultural context," says Liebal.
The Leipzig Lab's "Children and Nature" working group is currently evaluating further data and preparing new publications.
