Many people see animals as a side effect of evolution, which has reached its peak in humans. This view misses the fascinating behaviors of animals, which can be completely alien to us, but also very close. In her book The Creative Lives of Animals (New York University Press 2022), Carol Gigliotti deconstructs our delusion that we are the only living beings capable of a complex perception of the world. The book received much acclaim - interestingly not only from the usual suspects in animal studies, but also from the Wall Street Journal and the British Economist.*
Susanne Karr: As an artist and professor of design and media, it makes sense to study creativity. As an animal researcher and activist, it also makes sense for you to study animal behavior. But why is creativity in relation to animals so important?
Carol Gigliotti: People often want me to define creativity, or they ask how I came to be involved with animals without being a biologist. I start from my perception as a professor and from my experience with human-animal relationships. As far as biology and psychology are concerned, I refer to studies by scientists who have spent years or their entire lives working with animals.
Karr: Do you admit that animals are creative because you rely on a broader definition of creativity?
Gigliotti: One realization from my teaching is that there are different kinds of intelligence. It was obvious that some students were very intelligent, but they couldn't prove it on a theoretical level. They didn't understand anything before they started the practical implementation of a project - they had a different perception, they approached the subject in their own way.
Karr: So your interpretation of creativity has to do with intelligence?
Gigliotti: Some people learn by seeing, others by doing, still others learn only by hearing. Howard Gardner has described nine different types of intelligence, including kinaesthetic intelligence [1]. Only a few of us understand these - apart from dancers and athletes, of course. This shows how many different forms of intelligence and understanding of the world exist, even in humans. This is where I approached the topic from. Animals have to understand things in a different way to us; they make sense of the world in their own way, simply because they have different ways of perceiving it. Visual perception, for example, is very different for some animals than it is for us. We take our impressions of color for granted, even though we know that the color we think we see is physically not that color at all. Animals have seemingly fantastic senses, just think of echolocation and ultrasonic communication in dolphins or magnetic field recognition in turtles and migratory birds. We don't even know that some senses exist. And, of course, we don't really understand them either.
Karr: In your book, we encounter creativity when it comes to architecture, such as the buildings of bees or ants or the nests of birds. You also write about sexual variations in dolphins or spiders or the extravagant choreographies of birds of paradise. They also present intellectual achievements, such as those of Ayumu, a female chimpanzee in a Japanese research facility. She surpasses humans in her ability to memorize briefly flashing numbers in milliseconds and to remember their position. Memory is therefore another characteristic of creativity and intelligence.
Gigliotti: These results not only indicate impressive intelligence, but also raise the question: What kind of intelligence can animals show when they are not in captivity? How would the intelligence of chimpanzees express itself in other environments - in the forests and jungles from which we have taken them? We can assume that they remember relatives or enemies, even if they haven't seen them for a while. Chickens do this too, to mention another animal species. The chicken is one of the most underestimated and mistreated animals.
Researchers have found that a chicken can distinguish at least 100 individuals and recognize the peculiarities of their facial features. Chickens use at least 30 different vocalizations. Their group way of life becomes socially organized, some say "diplomatic", when they live in an open environment, as Annie Potts makes clear in her book Chicken [2]. People who are personally involved with chickens know this, of course.
Karr: Numerous studies have shown that certain birds, dolphins and monkeys are self-aware. Would you also apply this to chickens?
Gigliotti: Like other members of the bird family, the pigeons, chickens have an understanding of counting and basic arithmetic. They use syntax, semantics and references to others. To be able to communicate in such a complex way, they must have self-awareness and the ability to take the perspective of another animal. This makes them part of the "Theory of Mind", which was previously reserved exclusively for humans. The "theory of mind" describes abilities such as perspective-taking and the attribution of mental states, i.e. the ability to empathize with the inner psychological processes, such as wishes and beliefs, of others.
Karr: You also report on the creative development of phonetic symbolization of predators in prairie dogs: In the experiment, they were confronted with two-dimensional silhouettes that looked something like coyotes. The prairie dogs invented a new expression for this, based on their sound for real coyotes. "Describing something new or previously unseen by combining two or more familiar words or images loaded with meaning is a common creative activity," you write.
Gigliotti: Something similar can be observed in many animal species, such as coyotes - if you take the trouble to look and listen carefully. These animals live in communities - so it's clear that they communicate.
Karr: One of the side effects of your way of presenting the facts seems a bit like a boomerang: It leads to the human perspective being called into question. Why should animals conform to human standards?
Gigliotti: When I was researching genetic engineering and animals, I realized that scientists working on transgenics and biotechnology consider themselves very creative and progressive. So do artists in bio-art. But why should you change the genetics of a particular animal to make it do what you want? What's with the topos of the link between creativity and progress? By implication, this means that if you don't invent anything new, you are not creative. Like me, some researchers in biology and psychology have critically examined this concept of creativity. As the book progressed, I began to write about the contribution that animals make to biodiversity as individuals, groups, cultures and species. That they really are the engine of biodiversity. And that we would be lost without them.
Karr: One gets the impression that there are many realities that we do not perceive with our anthropocentric attitude. This often has destructive effects on nature and the animal world - and therefore also on the human world, which is usually ignored.
Gigliotti: In order to recognize agency, it is necessary to see animals as individual personalities, independent of attributions that usually relate purely to the benefits for humans. The idea that animals generate meaning for themselves is crucial. Because in order to give yourself meaning, you have to be intelligent, creative and self-confident - all things that we usually only value in humans. Unfortunately, we also often treat people as if their only value is what they can do for us. The relationship with others is not equal, but hierarchical. As an animal activist, you have to assume that there is also devaluing behavior towards other people. And how do you feel when you are exploited or considered inferior? Women often understand this in a different way to men. There is still this imbalance of power and we are still not an equal society.
Karr: This is when you start to realize that the discussion about our relationships with animals is essentially political.
Gigliotti: Traditional ideas shape society in the long term. For example, the still widespread opinion that there are alpha, beta and omega personalities in wolf packs is strongly influenced by hierarchy, although it has been shown several times that this is not true. The roles in packs are rather fluid, just like moods. Each individual is influenced by both temperament, i.e. inherited tendencies, and character, i.e. learned coping styles. Wolf packs are made up of family members. Situations and outcomes of family dynamics can change the overall personality of an individual. There are also studies on fish personality that I describe that show how some shy fish can turn into bold fish when surrounded by other shy fish. As in human societies, individuals sometimes change their behavior to adapt to circumstances.
Karr: Perhaps it's time to make this change of heart, away from traditional hierarchical thinking. Some of the younger generation do not want to fit into the existing system. Perhaps a gap is opening up here that cannot be filled with linear progressive thinking, but where other images and experiences can perhaps be conveyed or the consciousness and emotions of others can be incorporated more strongly.
Gigliotti: I agree with that. Many young people have experienced things that have changed them. Firstly, they are used to the latest technologies, it's no longer a big deal for them, not so exciting. Secondly, and this applies more to the USA, they are exposed to a high level of violence, just think of all the shootings. But thirdly, and this is crucial, they have a sense of the environment and understand that some plant and animal species will probably soon cease to exist. They experience all of this and try to change things.
[1] cf. Howard Gardner, Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice. New York 2006.
[2] Cf. Annie Potts, Chicken. London 2012.
Carol Gigliotti (https://carolgigliotti.com/dir/) is Professor emerita at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is the editor of the book Leonardo’s Choice: Genetic Technologies and Animals (2009) and published the Graphic Novel Trump and the Animals in 2020: https://graphicnovels.carolgigliotti.com/index.php/2018/12/13/trump-and-the- animals/.
*The Interview has first been published in the Austrian art magazine springerin (2/2023) https://www.springerin.at/en/2023/2/