(Page references below are to the optional reading selection from Dr Dolittle’s Delusion.)
We were saying that plenty of animals have complex social relationships: sometimes cooperating, other times not, keeping track of and responding to the social status of themselves and others. What’s more unusual is for animals to show evidence of understanding that others aren’t just sources of behavior they like/dislike, but that other animals also have minds of some kind.
some animals do seem to attribute intentions to others, such as distinguishing between your being unable versus unwilling to give them a reward
some animals keep track of what other animals can perceive
A good example are ravens, who have the habit of making food caches, which they try to hide from other ravens — and try to raid each other’s caches when they find them. When adding food to a cache, ravens seem to be keeping track of what other ravens can see. If other ravens are visible, the one hiding food will try to disguise where they’re putting it, and will keep away from their actual cache. If other ravens are audible but can’t see them — for example, they’re in an adjacent room in a laboratory — then the raven hiding the food will no longer be so cautious. But if other ravens are audible and they know there’s an open peephole between the rooms, then they’ll again be cautious.
what’s least clear is which animals are able to attribute false beliefs — that is, representations they themselves know to be false — to others
The author of Dr Dolittle’s Delusion discusses the “broken-wing displays” of piping plovers on pp. 37, 45-8. Predators are effectively deceived by this, and drawn away from the bird’s nest. But does the bird “intend to mislead” the predators, or are they just doing something they know will result in the predator moving away?
The simplest possible interpretation of the bird’s actions would be that the broken-wing behavior is no more than a reflexive and completely automatic response to danger. Ristau shows that cannot be correct, however. When the predator does not follow the mother, she comes back toward it, repeats the display, and moves away again, until finally she attracts its attention. (p. 46)
Also, the plovers use different strategies to repel large animals like cows that aren’t predators (p. 46).
So the behavior seems to be more than just a reflex; it’s instead a voluntary attempt to engage the predator. But should we count it as “intentionally misleading” the predators?
That more sophisticated interpretation of the bird’s behavior attributes to the plovers a “theory of the predator’s mind,” that is, an understanding that predators have a perspective on the world, that the plover can manipulate into representing the world falsely (p. 45, 47-8). There does not seem to be good evidence that the birds do understand this. Also, We have no evidence that the plover deceives other animals (or other plovers) about other things in other ways
(p. 46).
The author also discusses apparently deceptive behavior in vervet monkeys. Sometimes a monkey gives a fake alarm call not because it’s itself scared or about to run for cover, but because it wants other monkeys to run away (p. 190).
Did the monkey only intend to affect the behavior of its companions, or did it understand that it was doing so by way of their having a perspective or representation of the world, that it could manipulate? (p. 190)
While the monkey’s tendency to call depends on the audience, it does not seem to depend on the state of knowledge that members of that audience can be inferred to have. If the point of calling “Leopard!” were to make sure that everyone knew there was a leopard, one monkey would not need to call if other monkeys had already called, or could perfectly well see the leopard. That is not what happens. When one calls, the others also call, regardless. There is no evidence that they take one another’s state of awareness of the danger into account in signaling. (p. 190)
Later the author concludes:
[V]ervets have a system which they use with the apparent purpose of influencing one another’s behavior. There is no evidence that they…have a theory of mind in the sense of an understanding that other monkeys have their own knowledge of the world, that this knowledge plays a role in determining their actions, and that one can influence another’s behavior by affecting that knowledge. As a result, we can conclude only that vervets intend to modify one another’s actions, not that they try to deceive or otherwise shape one another’s beliefs. (p. 192)
Humans are thought not able to attribute false beliefs to others, and thus not able to “intentionally mislead” in the sense considered here, until age 4–5. Although the author of Dr Dolittle’s Delusion argues that vervet monkeys aren’t doing this, there’s evidence that some other primates may be able to. I’m not sure any other species have clearly shown this ability.