The Cognitive Animal: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives on Animal Cognition

Front Cover
Marc Bekoff, Colin Allen, Gordon M. Burghardt
MIT Press, Jun 21, 2002 - Psychology - 504 pages
The fifty-seven original essays in this book provide a comprehensive overview of the interdisciplinary 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 of approaches is both philosophical and methodological, with contributors demonstrating various degrees of acceptance or disdain for such terms as "consciousness" and varying degrees of concern for laboratory experimentation versus naturalistic research. In addition to primates, particularly the nonhuman great apes, the animals discussed include antelopes, bees, dogs, dolphins, earthworms, fish, hyenas, parrots, prairie dogs, rats, ravens, sea lions, snakes, spiders, and squirrels. The topics include (but are not limited to) definitions of cognition, the role of anecdotes in the study of 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, and neuroethology.

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Contents

IV
3
V
9
VI
19
VII
27
VIII
35
IX
41
X
47
XI
53
XL
255
XLI
257
XLII
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XLIII
275
XLIV
285
XLV
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XLVI
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XLVII
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XII
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XIII
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XIV
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XV
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XVI
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XVII
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XVIII
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XIX
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XX
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XXI
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XXIV
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XXV
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XXVI
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XXVIII
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XXIX
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XXX
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XXXI
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XXXIV
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XXXV
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XXXVI
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XXXVII
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XXXVIII
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XXXIX
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XLVIII
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XLIX
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L
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LI
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LII
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LIII
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LIV
363
LV
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LVI
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LVII
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LVIII
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LIX
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LX
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LXI
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LXII
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LXIII
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LXIV
437
LXV
443
LXVI
451
LXVII
463
LXVIII
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LXIX
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About the author (2002)

Marc Bekoff is Professor of Environmental, Population, and Organismic Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Colin Allen is Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University. He is the coauthor of Nature's Purposes (MIT Press, 1998), Species of Mind (MIT Press, 1997), and The Cognitive Animal (MIT Press, 2001).

Gordon Burghardt is Alumni Distinguished Professor in Psychology and in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee. He is a coeditor of The Cognitive Animal (MIT Press, 2002), past president of the Animal Behavior Society, and editor of the Journal of Comparative Psychology.

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