Baboons, Bodies and Brains: How to Think like an Animal

Abstract

Seeing ourselves in other animals is a very human thing to do. Of course, this is entirely appropriate—we are animals after all. However, it can give rise to misleading view of other species if we insist on comparing them to ourselves, especially as we often consider ourselves to be above the other animals: our large relative brain size, and spectacular ability to invent and use technology, seems to place at a remove from the rest of the Animal Kingdom. How best, then, to think about how other animals might see the world, and to understand what it means to be human? In this talk, Professor Louise Barrett draws on her own studies of baboons and vervet monkeys to illustrate how animal social life can be complex and demanding in its own way, to offer some thoughts about where the similarities and differences lie between humans and other species, and discuss how to reconcile our animal and cultural natures. Her suggestion is that we need to pay as much attention to bodies as well as brains, and the manner that humans and other animals extend their biological capacities by exploiting the structure of the environment. What makes humans so very clever may, paradoxically perhaps, be found outside our heads, rather than in them. 

This lecture is free and open to all. Registration is not required to attend in person.