As a current college student we’re not allowed to have pets in the dorms, so that prompted me to start feeding the crows that live outside my window. These are now my three pets: Edgar, Allan, and Poe. As a part of my orientation I attended a seminar that discussed whether or not animals are conscious, if they experience the world and remember their lives as humans do. There are times where humans space out and “de-personalize,” these are the times that you start at one place when you’re driving or simply walking, and you end up at your destination with everything going well, but you don’t remember the trip. It’s been proven that some animals have an idea of fairness and memory, but we don’t know for sure if they experience their lives as a movie in their minds that is set out for them as humans do. One of the major questions we were asked to ponder in the seminar was: do dogs really sense when you’re sad or do they just sense a change in your behavior and realize that they’ll get more affection if they come over to you while you are in that mood? Lots of people would argue that their dog loves them and wants to care for them, but the real question here is do they love you because they appreciate and know you or do they love you because you give them affection and food?
A lot of people would argue that their pets remember who they are, which is true. Social behavior in animals is a cue to whether they experience reality or not, let’s look at the social order of my crows for example. Edgar seems to be the leader of their group of three, Allan is the fat one that gets Edgar’s leftovers when he gets first pick at the food, and Poe is the last one in the group who is sort of left behind and more than often gets little to no food as Edgar and Allan take most or all of it. So by observing this we have established that they have a ordered society (sort of like a pecking order if you will). But this does not answer the question of consciousness. It may be near impossible to tell, but if they have memory and an organized social system, we should look at the structure of the crow central nervous system. That is hard for me to do especially since I’m a pacifist who doesn’t have access to a lab, but I believe the answers to consciousness live in the brain structure. Hopefully some scientist will help me out with this one day, but I hope to have the answer to the question at some point, as it is interesting to think about whether or not animals actually live as we do.
