What animals can do: some are hunters as fast as arrows, others have an astonishing ability to orientate themselves. But there is one thing that we humans are miles ahead of them: consciousness. After all, animals don't write poems or think up complicated physical theories. But does that mean that they really have no consciousness of themselves or the world at all? For a long time, people were relatively unanimous on this: animals are little more than biological machines. This view gradually changed, especially with the groundbreaking work of the naturalist Charles Darwin: Darwin believed that consciousness is a fundamental property of life in general. In his opinion, even simple creatures have a rudimentary inner life of feelings and impressions that is not so dissimilar to that of humans. But how do we find out what animals really think and feel? You can't ask them, and you can't look into their heads either. For a long time, researchers tried to solve the problem with the so-called mirror test: if a creature recognizes itself in the mirror, it must have self-awareness. Chimpanzees and dolphins pass the mirror test, but dogs do not. Does that mean that dogs are not conscious? Today, many researchers believe that the mirror test is only partially meaningful, because the sense of sight does not play a central role in the lives of many animals. In order to better understand animal consciousness, science is breaking new ground: How did brains develop, and where does consciousness arise in the complex network of neurons? Behavioral researchers are testing how animals discover their environment, how they learn, solve problems, and overcome challenges. These studies are already leading to astonishing findings: flies may already have rudimentary self-awareness. The emotional life of mice is not all that different from that of humans. Puffer fish have a sense of beauty, ravens act purposefully. The evidence for consciousness is diverse and widespread across the entire animal world. It is becoming increasingly clear that thinking and speaking are not characteristics that only apply to humans. Humans are also animals - and this also applies to consciousness. Magazine (D 2022, 25 min) Sources and further links: Do animals have an ego? The Israeli researcher Eva Jablonka has developed a new theory of consciousness that includes animal consciousness: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262039307/ When did the first living beings with consciousness emerge? Researchers are trying to answer this question by deciphering the evolution of the nervous system - Detlev Arendt, among others, is researching this at the EMBL Research Center in Heidelberg: https://www.embl.org/groups/arendt/ What intellectual abilities do organisms as simple as fruit flies have? The neuroscientist Björn Brembs from the University of Regensburg is investigating this with the help of complicated experiments: http://lab.brembs.net For a long time, the so-called mirror test was the yardstick for animal self-awareness. But how meaningful is the test really if even fish pass it? https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology... What does a theory of consciousness that includes animals and humans look like - this is a question that the philosopher Jonathan Birch also asks himself: https://www.lse.ac.uk/cpnss/research/... Even monkeys have a strong sense of justice - this is shown by an experiment by the primatologist Frans de Waal: https://www.qlanguage.com.hk/monkeys-... #animals #me #people Video available until 03/12/2025 Subscribe to the ARTE YouTube channel: / artede Follow us on social networks: Facebook: / arte.tv Twitter: / artede Instagram: / arte.tv