Dr. Alex Taylor Interview

You and your group have been here for around a year. What are you investigating at INc-UAB?

We are currently looking at intuitive probabilistic inference in both rats and in humans. We have an automated system called the Rat Village where the rats are able to enter and exit our test chamber, at any time of the day, without handling by an experimenter. This system allows us to train rats without human intervention, day and night. We are using this to investigate the ability of the rats to solve statistical inference problems that have previously been solved by parrots, while also comparing both these species' performances to humans given the same tasks.

What does probabilistic inference mean?

Formal probabilistic inference involves using mathematical computations to update beliefs. In contrast, intuitive probabilistic inference involves making probabilistic judgements using cognitive shortcuts, leading to a range of cognitive biases. These biases were initially documented in humans by the Nobel prize winning research of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Over the last 10 years research has emerged showing intuitive probabilistic inference is not only shown in young children, but also in certain animal species, most notably chimpanzees and kea parrots. The goal  of our research is to compare probabilistic inference in humans, kea parrots and rats, to test if the convergent evolution of a similar type of intuitive probabilistic inference has occurred in birds and humans.

We have seen a piece of a documentary of your previous work with crows, where they show their capability to use tools to get food, for example. How can they be so intelligent having such a small head?

The thing is, the density of neurons in their brains is much higher. They might have a relatively small brain size compared to primates, but they have a much higher neuron event density, especially in the avian pallium, which is roughly equivalent to our cortex in its function. If you compare a parrot brain to a monkey brain, which is twice the size, you'll find that, despite the monkey brain being twice as large, the number of neurons is actually similar.

If crows are able to have this kind of reasoning, does that mean that we can extrapolate it to other human intelligence capacities?

No, it doesn’t. Just because animals solve problems in impressive ways, it doesn't always follow that they're doing things in a very sophisticated way. Even if they do show cognitive sophistication in one area of cognition, such as probabilistic inference, it doesn’t mean they will show such sophistication in every aspect of their intelligence. A lot of the early part of my career focused on demonstrating that crows and parrots can solve certain problems, such as those requiring planning or statistical inference, using complex cognition. Having established this, the big question is whether they are thinking in any way like us when planning or making probabilistic judgements? Birds and primates have evolved their intelligence independently, via convergent evolution. If they have evolved similar cognitive mechanisms independently, it would be exciting as it would suggest that the evolution of intelligence is constrained. That is, with similar selection pressures, we would expect the same type of intelligence, rather than very different intelligences, to evolve again and again. 

What studies and discoveries have your experiments on all the animals you worked with led to?

The main thing I would say they’ve contributed to is a greater and deeper appreciation of our natural world. Our research provides insight into what is going on in the minds of animals. The more we look, the more we discover there are complex thought patterns in animals. This is important because as humans we often assign greater moral value to agents that are more intelligent, particularly those that think like us, like chimpanzees. My work, and those of others in our field, has demonstrated that birds are ‘feathered apes’, in terms of the level of their problem solving. This gives us a new found appreciation, as we head deeper into the Anthropocene, of what we stand to lose if we do not value the natural world enough. This appreciation will of course grow if we show that the cognition behind avian problem solving is actually based on similar thought patterns to those seen in humans.

How has our understanding of intelligence in different species evolved in the last years?

When I was a PhD student, people were amazed that a bird could solve complex problems. Now, the question is whether they actually think like us. And if birds are intelligent, what other species might be? Fascinating discoveries have been made in mice, bees, and even plants, challenging our ideas about behaviour and cognition. These findings are beginning to suggest we live on a planet that is just not teeming with life, but with intelligence as well.

How could these advances impact the way we treat animals?

For a long time, humans have used intelligence to set ourselves apart from nature. Now research in comparative psychology is underlining how linked we are to nature. Parrots reason about probability, rats show empathy, bees show optimism, the list goes on. Each of these findings begins a discussion on how much moral concern we should have for different animal groups, which then of course impacts how we should treat them. 

And what would be the impact of your discoveries in the field of animal welfare?

By understanding the cognitive and emotional capacities of animals we get a better idea of how to improve their welfare. For example, in a past paper we showed that tool-using crows are more optimistic when using tools to get food compared to simply getting food. This opens up ways of improving animal welfare by identifying more generally which species-specific behaviours animals find positive, and then creating opportunities to express these behaviours. One new line of research in my rat lab, which is already ongoing in kea parrots, is focused on the evolution of positive affect in animals, with particular emphasis on joy. We hope to identify signatures of joy in these species, and examine how they integrate positive and negative emotions. The research on emotional integration can not only improve animal welfare, by understanding if positive emotional experiences can buffer against negative ones, but also could help develop better treatments for human mood disorders by using animal models to create drugs that target emotional integration. More generally, I am also part of a European research network on animal welfare (LIFT). We recently published a definition of positive animal welfare which will hopefully lead to research programs across Europe focusing on how to improve the quality of the emotional lives of animals under human care. 

It is super interesting. Thank you very much for sharing your work with us. 

Real pleasure talking to you.