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Psychologists concoct some absurd situations to plumb the depths of chimp insight. For instance, one experiment has the apes observe two handlers deliver cups of juice. One accidentally spills juice on the floor; the other overturns the cup deliberately. When asked to choose a handler to deliver their next cup of juice, chimps prefer the clumsy person, suggesting that they are aware they are better off with a klutz than with a helper with evil intent. Again, in analogous experiments capuchin monkeys appear to be less shrewd. The animals will, pitiably, continue to put their trust in a human helper who eats rather than delivers their food, even after he or she has stuffed himself 150 times with the monkeys' treats.
To Andrew Whiten, the striking difference between monkeys and chimps supports the notion that within primates there is a "mental Rubicon -- not the familiar one with humans on one side and everyone else on the other, but with man and at least the apes on the same side."
Even if some other creatures have crossed this mental Rubicon, human analytical abilities remain vastly superior to anything demonstrated elsewhere in the animal kingdom. In virtually all studies of animal intelligence and language skills, performance plummets as more elements are added to a task and as an animal has to remember these elements for long periods. By contrast, humans can call on vast working memory.
Many evolutionary scholars suspect that as ancient human groups became larger, the need to keep track of ever more complex social interactions was what really pushed the human brain toward superiority. Both dolphins and chimps have very complex interactions, but the intricacy of their social world pales beside the lattice of entanglements that characterized human society as early Homo sapiens banded together to gather food and defend themselves. In Somalia today, warring clans identify friend or foe by demanding that those accosted recite their ancestry going back many generations. It is easy to see how similar challenges in antiquity might have driven the development of brainpower.
It does not lessen the grandeur of the human intellect to argue that it evolved partly in response to social pressures or that these pressures also produced similar abilities in "lesser" creatures. Instead, the fact that nature may have broadly sown the seeds of consciousness suggests a world enlivened by many different minds. There may even be practical applications. Studies of animal cognition and language have yielded new approaches to communicating with handicapped and autistic children. Some scientists are pondering ways to turn intelligent animals like sea lions and dolphins into research assistants in marine studies or into lifeguards who can save the drowning upon command.
If the notion that animals might actually think poses a problem, it is an ethical one. The great philosophers, such as Descartes, used their belief that animals cannot think as a justification for arguing that they do not have moral rights. It is one thing to treat animals as mere resources if they are presumed to be little more than living robots, but it is entirely different if they are recognized as fellow sentient beings. Working out the moral implications makes a perfect puzzle for a large-brained, highly social species like our own.