The intelligence of animals

Cows are gentle and intelligent animals. Many people say "cows are stupid" in this country, but this is simply untrue. First, cows have been selectively bred to be docile. Cows were not originally so docile. Second, these people see cows in the bad environments. I remember that the feral cows in India were quite smart, smarter than dogs or cats. If cows were placed in a healthier, more intellectually-stimulating environment, they would not be unfairly categorized as stupid.

I saw a show on TV about how zoos are being restructured. Earlier they simply put animals in cages - the animals would often exhibit obsessive or anomalistic behaviors - like repeatedly kicking cans, or pacing. Nothing much was thought about it at the time. Some animals would also escape from their cages and attack and sometimes kill people, for no apparent reason. It was not out of hunger, since the animals in those cases were well fed. Then someone started doing research on the psychology of animals. They found the zoo environments to be unhealty for animals, because they didn't provide intellectual stimulation. When they studied animals that were placed in environments with toys or other forms of intellectual stimulation, they found that the animals did not exhibit the obsessive behaviors like pacing, and that the animals seemed normal and healthier.

I wish that cows and pigs and chickens would also get extended the same common sense and same right to be considered living beings and not exploited and treated as less than animals. But then that would be mean no farms, which I hope will be the case some day :) No need to hurt animals in such ways when there are far better ways to get animal products (like chemical engineering). I hope the scientists in University of Maryland find a way to make industry cruelty-free.

I would love to find more about the intelligence and psychology of animals. I believe they are more intelligent than they are generally believed to be, because our understanding of their intelligence is limited to what we can understand of them, and for the most part, we do not give them the benefit of the doubt. For example, parrots are considered to be much more intelligent than most birds - but this is only because parrots have the ability to control their vocal cords so that they can form human-like sounds and communicate with us.