Many people regard 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 idea that we are the only living beings capable of a complex perception of the world. In the following interview, Gigliotti explains the reasons behind this and sheds some light on the multi-faceted creativity of other species.

Susanne Karr: As an artist and professor of design and media, it makes sense to investigate creativity. And for you as an animal researcher and activist, it’s clear that you also study animal behavior. But why is creativity so important? You’ve probably been asked this question many times.

Carol Gigliotti: People either want me to define creativity, or they wonder how I came to be involved with animals. They would understand if I were a biologist. But no, I start from my perception as a professor and, of course, from my experience with human-animal relationships. As far as biology and psychology are concerned, I am referring to studies by scientists who have spent years or their whole lives dealing with animals.

Karr: It is immediately noticeable that you have a broader interpretation of creativity. Do you therefore concede animals to be creative?

Gigliotti: One of my experiences from teaching is the belief that there are different kinds of intelligence. It was obvious that some students were very intelligent, but they couldn't practice at a theoretical level, they didn't understand anything until they got into the practical implementation of a project. They had a different perception, approached things in their own way. Some people learn by seeing, others by doing, still others learn only by hearing. Howard Gardner has described nine different types of intelligence, including kinesthetic.¹ Few of us understand these – except 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 it from: animals have to understand things in a different way than we do because they have all these different senses that we don't have. They understand things and make meaning out of the world for themselves, through different ways than we do. The visual senses, for example, are very different in some animals than they are in us. We take our color perception for granted, even though we know that physically the color we perceive is not that color at all. Animals have all kinds of senses that enable echolocation and ultrasonic communication in dolphins, for example, or magnetic field detection in turtles and migratory birds. Some of them we don't even know exist. And, of course, we don't really understand them either.

Karr: Reading your book offers amazing examples of creativity in animals, whether in architecture, music or dance. One such story is about Ayumu, a chimpanzee in a Japanese research facility. She surpasses humans in his ability to memorize numbers in milliseconds.

Gigliotti: These results not only point to her impressive intelligence, but also raise the question I pose in my book: What kind of intelligence might animals exhibit if they were not living in captivity? Imagine how this intelligence of chimpanzees would show itself in their native environment – in the forests and jungles from which we took them? It’s probably safe to assume that they remember relatives or enemies, even if they haven't seen them for a while. So do chickens, to name another species. The chicken is one of the most underestimated and mistreated animals.
Researchers have found that a chicken is able to distinguish at least 100 separate individuals by recognizing the peculiarities of their facial features. They use at least 30 different vocalizations, which have been interpreted and documented in research. Their way of life in groups is organized in a very social and communicative, some say “diplomatic” way. This is evident when they are able to live in an open environment, as Annie Potts shows in her book.² People who know chickens personally know this, of course.

Karr: Numerous studies have made it clear for other birds, dolphins, and for monkeys that they have self-awareness. Would you apply this to chickens as well?

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 complex ways, they must have self-awareness and the ability to take the perspective of another animal. This brings them into the Theory of Mind, which used to focus exclusively on humans. The Theory of Mind describes abilities such as perspective taking and mental state attribution, which is the ability to empathize with the inner mental processes, such as desires and beliefs, of others.

Karr: One of the side effects of your way of presenting these facts is like a boomerang – it leads to questioning the human perspective. Why should animals succeed by human standards?

Gigliotti: When I was doing research in the field of genetic engineering and animals, it was important for me to realize that scientists working on transgenics and biotechnology consider themselves very creative. So do artists in bio-art. I asked myself: Why change the genetics of a certain animal to make it do what you want? This made me think about creativity and progress. About the topos that it’s very creative to progress, which by implication means if you're not progressing, you're not creative. Like me, a few researchers in biology and psychology were critically concerned with this concept of creativity. It wasn't until later in this new book that I began to write not only about animals, but also about biodiversity and the contribution that animals make to biodiversity as individuals, groups, cultures, and species. That they really are the engine of biodiversity. And that without them, we’re screwed.

Karr: You get the overwhelming impression that there are many realities that we don't perceive with our anthropocentric attitude and therefore destroy so much – even unconsciously. This means not only destruction for nature and the animal world – and thus also the human living world, which is mostly suppressed – but also an enormous loss of perceptual possibilities for humans. As if we could not sense that there are other kinds of life worth living.

Gigliotti: For the attribution of agency, it is necessary to see animals as individual personalities, independent of attributions that mostly refer purely to the benefit for humans. The idea that animals create meaning for themselves is crucial. After all, to create meaning for oneself, one must be intelligent, creative, and self-aware, all things we value in people, if we value them.
Unfortunately, we also often treat people as if their only value is what they can do for us. The relationship with the other is not one of equality, but of hierarchy. One must understand as an animal activist that devaluation also exists towards other people. Sometimes you yourself are the devalued, exploited person. You can think about how you feel when you are exploited or considered inferior. Women usually understand this in a different way than men. There is still this disparity of power, we are still not an equal society. A lot of good things are happening, but it's still very difficult.

Karr: This is the moment when some people start to realize how the discussion about our relationships with animals has an essentially political character.

Gigliotti: Social ideas shape research. Strongly hierarchically influenced, for example, is the still widely held belief that there are alpha, beta, and omega personalities in wolf packs, although it has been shown many times that this is not true. Roles in packs are more fluid, more like moods. Each individual is influenced by both temperament, i.e. inherited tendencies, and character, i.e. learned coping styles. Wolf packs are composed of family members. Situations and outcomes of family dynamics can change the overall personality of an individual. There are also studies of fish personality that I describe that show how some shy fish can change into bold fish when surrounded by shy fish. As in human societies, individuals sometimes change their behavior to adapt to circumstances.

Karr: Perhaps now is a suitable time to make this change of mind, away from traditional hierarchical thinking, in society. There is a lot of talk about the younger generation not fitting into the capitalist system and not just wanting to function. Possibly there is a gap opening up here that is not filled with linear progressive thinking, where you can simply provide other images and other experiences beyond the mainstream, and try to include the consciousness or emotions of others.

Gigliotti: I agree. A lot of young people have experienced things that have changed them. First, they're used to technology, it's not a big deal, not so exciting. Second, and this is more true for the U.S.: all the shootings, the propensity for violence. And they have a sense of the environment and understand that we're probably going to be out of some certain plant and animal species soon. They're witnessing that, and they're changing things right now. A lot of young people are involved in the environmental movement and, again in the U.S., the anti-gun movement. That's a whole other thing again.

Karr: If you think about it, it really seems paradoxical. It's like fighting your own society to make money. Not only with the arms deals but also the normal extraction economy that destroys everything.

Gigliotti: Yes, extraction is an apt word. Because that is still the common way of production. Basically, we want from the other beings their life force. But you can't just extract what you need, you have to see and include the whole. There are always effects on the whole system. This is where creativity can help us. I believe that creativity is not unique to animals or humans. It is a universal quality, something that runs through all the universes we know. It is not only interesting but also important to know that there are things that make you feel small – something astrophysicists understand more about. The feeling that there is something more than human, or more than the life we can see and experience, something greater, is quite important. And it’s interesting that prominent scientific figures say these things. Then you start to see the world in a different way. Sometimes I think religion did that for us for many years. Today, we have enough scientific knowledge about connections between our livelihoods and our behavior, and we can realize that we are part of a larger universe.

¹ Howard Gardner, Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice. New York 2006.
² Annie Potts, Chicken. London 2012.

Carol Gigliotti is Professor Emeritus 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/.

 

 

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