Animal Minds

People have strong but divergent opinions about the nature of animals’ minds. Do dogs make plans? Do they remember specific events? Do they dream? Do cats recognize their owners as unified wholes, or just as collections of parts, some warm, some capable of providing food. Could it be that whales, dolphins, elephants, and various kind of monkeys have mental lives that approach — or surpass — those of humans in subtlety and richness? John and Ken explore the nature of non-human minds with Colin Allen from Indiana University, editor of The Cognitive Animal: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives on Animal Cognition.