Can Animals Really Think

Can animals really think? Can they make decisions based on information? For years, scientists have debated these questions. Now, many of them believe that some animals have the brain power tounderstand new situations, make decisions, and plan ahead. The following are just a few of the many examples of animal intelligence that scientists have observed.
A hungry chimpanzee walking through hisnative rain forest comes upon a large Panda oleosa nut lying on the ground under one of the widely scattered Panda trees. He knows that these nuts are much too hard to open with his hands, these toughPanda nuts can only be cracked by pounding them with a very hard piece of rock. Very few stones are available in the rain forest, but he chimpanzee walks 80 meters straight to another tree where severaldays ago he had cracked open a Panda nut with a large chunk of granite. He carries this rock back to the nut he has just found, places it in a crotch between two buttress roots, and cracks it openwith a few well-aimed blows.
At the University of Arizona, a gray parrot named Alex surprised his trainer, Irene Pepperberg. She has been working with Alex for 15 years, teaching him to talk, name andcount objects, and answer simple questions about them. He is very good at these tasks. He even says, "I'm sorry" when he makes a mistake answering a question. But what Alex once did outside of thelaboratory was even more impressive. When he had to go to the veterinarian's office for lung surgery, he became upset. As Pepperberg started to leave, Alex said, "Come here. I love you. I'm sorry. I wantto go back." Alex thought he was being punished for doing something wrong. He seemed able to use language to express his thoughts.
Experiments with rats have shown that they will not take food if theyknow their actions will cause pain to another rat. In lab tests, rats were given food which then caused a second group of rats to receive an electric shock.
The rats with the food stopped eating...