What the Elephant Thinks

Proofreader Velimir Egorov

© Anastasia Egorova, 2026

ISBN 978-5-0070-6119-3

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Introduction

Who are we — the only ones who feel and think?

Even Charles Darwin pondered whether animals could be aware of themselves and the world in the same way humans are. The question remained contentious until 2012, when the world’s leading neuroscientists gathered in Cambridge and signed a sensational document — the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness. It asserted that consciousness is not the exclusive privilege of humans.

But what is consciousness? It is the capacity to perceive, to feel, to form subjective experience. It is not merely a reaction to stimuli, but an inner world in which pain, joy, or fear acquire meaning.

According to the Declaration on Consciousness, it is possessed not only by humans. All mammals, birds, octopuses, and even some insects display signs of conscious behaviour and rudimentary thought. It turns out that for emotions and basic consciousness, what matters more than the cerebral cortex are the deep subcortical structures shared by humans and animals.

Stimulate the fear centre in a dog, and it will react just as a human would: with a racing heartbeat, with an attempt to flee. African grey parrots eagerly solve simple logical puzzles; magpies readily recognise themselves in mirrors; octopuses use tools for their various cephalopod purposes. And sometimes one gets the impression that these are far from mere instinctual displays from our “lesser brethren,” but rather something akin to conscious choice.

The Declaration on Consciousness, as a document, is not a rigorous scientific paper; rather, such documents should be regarded as a call to humanity to study animal consciousness, to observe their rudimentary thinking, to seek signs of awareness in their actions, and perhaps even to compare the findings with what is found in humans. If animals are capable of suffering and joy, are cruel experiments justified? How will our attitude toward nature, our own consciousness, and our understanding of the world order change if we acknowledge that we are not alone in our capacity to feel?

Today, the boundaries of mind are being pushed even further. Spanish biologist Paco Calvo, speaking at the first international conference on animal consciousness in Dharamsala, India, in May 2023, declared: “What if plants, too, possess the rudiments of consciousness?” His experiments with mimosa showed that plants “fall asleep” under anaesthesia, respond to threats, and adapt to stress. They possess something akin to memory and even “biological clocks.” Calvo calls this minimal intelligence — the ability to solve problems without a brain.

The conference, organised with the participation of the Dalai Lama, brought together scientists from ten countries: neuroscientists, philosophers, and Buddhist monks. Among them were Russian academician Konstantin Anokhin, who studies the neural basis of memory, and academician Tatyana Chernigovskaya, who researches language and thought. Their goal was dialogue between science and spiritual traditions, a search for an answer to the pivotal question: where does the line lie between a living mechanism and a being with an inner world?

In May 2024, the second conference on the study of animal consciousness is set to commence in Kathmandu, Nepal, organised by Russian academician Konstantin Anokhin, head of the Institute for Advanced Brain Studies at Moscow State University. The central question of the conference: how can we find a “common language” with species whose perception of the world radically differs from our own?

At the heart of the research and discussions lies non-human consciousness. Scientists are seeking methods that would allow them to “glimpse” the subjective experience of octopuses, bees, or even jellyfish. The goal of the Kathmandu conference was to devise experiments that would prove or disprove the presence of consciousness in various species. This represents the next step after the first May 2023 conference, where participants merely outlined the boundaries of the concept: what should today be considered consciousness? A reaction to stimuli, or the capacity for reflection?

The paradox is that even opponents and critics of the Declaration on Animal Consciousness admit that the old criteria for defining consciousness — such as the presence of a cerebral cortex — have become significantly outdated. Octopuses lack a neocortex, yet this does not prevent them from solving puzzles. Even crows are capable of planning for the future; as it turns out, a skull containing a brain weighing 1.2—1.4 kilogrammes is not required for that.

If consciousness is not the exclusive privilege of the human population, and may be present in the evolutionary process in animals — perhaps even in plants — then such a state of affairs unequivocally alters ethical norms: is it permissible to experiment on beings that are aware of pain?

For instance, oysters have a nervous system that unequivocally responds to external stimuli. Does this mean that an oyster experiences pain? Would you be willing to eat an oyster alive if you knew for certain that it would feel pain and, in some way, comprehend its own suffering?

Today’s scientists are confronted with new questions: how do we communicate with a mind that is not like the human mind, but operates on a different level of biology?

“We are like blind men groping an elephant,” said Walter Veit during his address at the 2024 conference. “The octopus, the crow, the dog — each provides only a fragment of the picture. But together, they overturn our understanding of mind.”

At the 2024 Kathmandu conference, scientists attempted to rewrite the rules of the game, in which man is no longer the measure of all things, but merely one of the “sentient” species on the planet.

This book is a journey into the mysteries of consciousness, emotions, and animal thought.

The rather audacious thesis of the Declaration — that “consciousness does not require a complex brain” — throws down a challenge to anthropocentrism. Perhaps we stand on the brink of a revolution, in which not only man will turn out to be “intelligent,” but also the sparrow watching us from a branch, and even the tree in whose shade we rest.

According to the Cambridge Declaration, “The absence of a neocortex does not negate the capacity to feel. Consciousness is not a hierarchical structure, but a web woven by evolution.”

Is humanity, which considers itself the supreme being on the planet, ready for this knowledge?

Chapter 1. On Animal Consciousness

Even human consciousness is far from fully understood, so to speak of animals is even more difficult. Nevertheless, the author must somehow begin this awkward conversation.

When you look at a goldfish in an aquarium, what do you see? For most people, it is merely a small, cute creature that swims back and forth, opens its mouth, and perhaps “remembers something” for three seconds, as we are accustomed to believing. And yet, imagine for a moment that this fish might feel pain, boredom, joy, or fear. Modern science suggests that this is almost certainly the case.

The question of whether animals possess consciousness and emotions ceased to be a matter of philosophical speculation in the twenty-first century and has become one of the most actively researched areas in biology, psychology, and neuroscience.

This chapter is the first in our book, and it lays the foundation for the entire discussion that follows. Let us explore how scientists actually define “emotions” and “consciousness” in beings that cannot tell us about them in words. We will see that dogs understand our gestures better than even our closest relatives, the chimpanzees; that seagulls track your gaze when you are eating a sandwich; and that rats are capable of compassion.

But let us begin with the most fundamental question: what does it mean to experience an emotion?

For a long time, science regarded animal emotions with suspicion. In the twentieth century, behaviourism reigned supreme — a school of thought that held that only observable behaviour could be studied, and that all talk of “feelings” and “experiences” was unscientific metaphysics. Added to this was the powerful intellectual legacy of René Descartes, who in the seventeenth century asserted that animals were complex automata — machines of flesh and blood, devoid of consciousness. This Cartesian tradition is still alive in the minds of many people today, especially when it comes to “lower” animals such as fish or insects.

However, in 2025, a group of researchers led by V. Carranza-Pinedo, W. Cross, and S.H. Richter proposed a new, integrative approach to defining emotions in animals, one that combines three key mechanisms: innate, appraisal-based, and network-based. What does this mean in plain language?

First, every animal possesses innate, instinctive reactions to certain stimuli — for example, fear of a predator or disgust at bitter food. These reactions require no learning.

Second, the animal appraises the situation: the same stimulus can evoke different emotions depending on context. For instance, encountering another dog may be joyful on one’s own territory but frightening on unfamiliar ground. An elephant, before crossing a turbulent river, assesses its own capabilities and undoubtedly experiences certain emotions about the endeavour.

Third, an emotion is not an isolated process but the operation of an entire network of neurons in the brain, involving perception, memory, and bodily responses. Carranza-Pinedo and her colleagues emphasise that emotion cannot be reduced to any single one of these components; it emerges from their interaction. And this approach applies equally to humans, to rats, and, in all probability, even to crabs.

But a theoretical definition alone is not enough; we must also understand how society perceives animals, because this determines whether we will fund research into their emotions at all.

People’s attitudes towards animals are shaped by a complex mix of cultural traditions, personal experience, economic factors, and even how “cute” or “useful” an animal is. A cow that provides milk elicits far less sympathy than a dog that sleeps on the sofa, even though neurobiologically they differ little.

This “cognitive dissonance” is highly significant: we readily acknowledge emotions in mammals, but resist recognising them in fish, chickens, or insects, because that would be inconvenient for the fishing industry or pest control. Alas, scientific evidence often retreats before human prejudices.

One of the most striking examples of animals demonstrating a complex emotional and cognitive life is the domestic dog. Any dog owner will tell you that their pet “understands everything” and “shows empathy”; however, science demands proof. There exists a canine emotional reactivity questionnaire that allows owners to systematically assess how their pets respond to various situations — from thunderstorms to separation from the owner. Dogs display reliable, consistent individual differences in emotionality: some are easily frightened, others remain calm. But the key point is that they clearly experience emotions, rather than merely exhibiting reflexes.

And what about empathy — the capacity to share another’s feelings? Many owners are convinced that their dog feels sad when they are sad. Dogs do indeed respond to the owner’s emotional state, and this response involves not only behaviour — approaching, licking — but also physiological changes, such as an increased heart rate. However, it is important not to overstate the case: canine empathy most likely operates through simple emotional contagion (as we shall see in rats in the final chapter of this book), rather than through a complex reflection of the kind “I know what you feel.” Nonetheless, this still qualifies as empathy.

Even more impressive are the data concerning the ability of dogs — and other animals — to understand human gestures. This is essentially a test of theory of mind. When a person points at an object, a dog understands that this indicates the direction of attention, and looks there. One might think: what is so remarkable about that? But try doing the same with a wolf.

In one study, researchers compared the ability of dogs and human infants to understand different forms of pointing gestures — using a finger, an elbow, or a gaze. It turned out that dogs raised among humans understand these gestures almost as well as one-year-old children, and even better than chimpanzees. This is a striking result, suggesting that during domestication, dogs evolved to read human signals.

Moreover, another study found that young wolves raised by humans — that is, socially accustomed to people — understand pointing gestures less well than dogs, although wolves are in principle capable of learning. This means that dogs possess something innate, not merely learned — a kind of “social intelligence” geared towards cooperation with humans.

But dogs are not the only ones who understand our gestures; similar experiments have been conducted on horses. And horses, to many people’s surprise, also understand the human pointing gesture, even without specific training. A horse looks at the hand, then turns its head in the direction the person is indicating. This suggests that the ability to read human gestures is not unique to dogs — it can emerge in different species through interaction with humans.

Other researchers extended these studies to African grey parrots. Parrots — these astonishing birds with brains the size of a walnut — also understand pointing gestures and follow the experimenter’s gaze. Yet parrots have not been domesticated in the way dogs have; they had simply lived in captivity and interacted with people.

It appears that the ability to interpret human social signals is not a specialised adaptation of dogs, but a more general cognitive capacity that can manifest in any animal motivated to interact with humans — for example, in search of food or attention.

But what if we take not a domestic animal, but a wild one living right in the city? Scientists have studied herring gulls that, in coastal towns of England, have learned to steal food from people. It turned out that gulls use human behavioural cues to find food: if a person looks at a packet of crisps, the gull is more likely to approach that packet rather than another. Moreover, in a separate study, the same authors showed that gulls respond to the direction of human gaze: if you look directly at a gull, it keeps its distance; if you turn away, it approaches. This understanding of human gaze is a highly complex cognitive skill that requires distinguishing between “looking at me” and “looking away.” Gulls do this brilliantly. The researchers suggest that this is a result of urbanisation: gulls living near people quickly learn to exploit our behavioural signals to their own advantage. This is further evidence that consciousness and cognitive abilities are not fixed in evolution, but adapt plastically to the environment.

All these examples — of understanding gestures, gaze, empathy — lead us to a deeper question: what exactly is consciousness? And how do we study it in animals that cannot tell us about it? One approach offers a hybrid method, combining philosophy, neuroscience, and the analysis of aperiodic brain activity.

Aperiodic activity refers to the noise-like background fluctuations of neurons, which were once dismissed as mere interference but are now understood to reflect the balance of excitation and inhibition in the brain. It has been proposed that aperiodic activity may be the key to the neural correlates of consciousness — that is, the brain processes that accompany subjective experience.

In humans, this activity changes when we are conscious, asleep under anaesthesia, or in a coma. If we measure analogous patterns in animals — for instance, in dogs, elephants, or dolphins — we may be able to determine with a high degree of confidence whether they possess consciousness. This is a difficult task, because recording the brain’s electrical activity requires the animal to be immobile or even implanted with electrodes. But technology is advancing, and perhaps within a decade we will have a map of the neural correlates of consciousness for dozens of species.

Other researchers propose a simpler, behavioural approach. They argue that the two most reliable indicators of consciousness are working memory and voluntary attention.

Working memory is the ability to hold information in mind for several seconds and manipulate it. Voluntary attention is the capacity to direct one’s attention to an object of one’s own volition, rather than in response to an external stimulus.

Monkeys, dogs, birds, and even some reptiles exhibit both of these signs.

For instance, pigeons can remember the location of several spots on a screen and later point to them with their beaks — a task requiring working memory. And crows can ignore distracting stimuli in order to focus on solving a problem; that is voluntary attention.

If an animal possesses these abilities, then, according to the researcher, it is highly likely to possess phenomenal consciousness as well — that is, there is “something it is like” to be that animal. The famous phrase of the philosopher Thomas Nagel — “what is it like to be a bat?” — receives an operational definition.

But consciousness is not a homogeneous substance. One influential paper introduced the concept of “dimensions of consciousness.” It argues that it is wrong to ask “does this animal have consciousness?” — that is like asking “is this animal tall?” Height can be measured in centimetres, while consciousness can be assessed across multiple parameters: richness of sensory experience, degree of self-awareness, capacity for episodic memory, presence of emotions, and so forth.

Researchers often propose evaluating animals along each dimension separately.

For example, a crab may have primitive self-awareness but a very impoverished emotional life. A dolphin may have a rich emotional life and self-awareness, but be incapable of abstract thought as humans are. We should not arrange animals in a linear hierarchy with humans at the top and worms at the bottom. Rather, this is a multidimensional space in which each species occupies its own unique niche.

But how can we measure subjective experience without reducing it to behaviour? Here, scientists propose the term “comparative phenomenology” and identify behavioural indicators of heterogeneous subjective experience across different species.

For instance, spontaneous play in young animals is a reliable indicator of positive emotions. Avoidance of places where an animal experienced pain — even if there is no pain there any longer — is an indicator of emotional memory. Preference for certain colours, smells, or sounds is an indicator of sensory affectivity. It has been shown that even in invertebrates such as octopuses and bees, such indicators can be found.

The time has come for a truly comparative study of consciousness — one that would include not only mammals and birds, but also reptiles, amphibians, fish, cephalopods, and insects.

We should abandon “corticocentric chauvinism” — the idea that only the cerebral cortex (or its structural analogues) is capable of generating consciousness. Consciousness may instead arise from a specific organisation of neural networks, one that can be implemented on different anatomical substrates.

And this thesis finds support in a study that humorously considers the question “What is it like to be a perch?” — an allusion to Nagel’s famous article.

The authors demonstrate that fish possess all the necessary neuroanatomical structures for experiencing pain: nociceptors (pain receptors), a spinal cord that transmits signals, and subcortical brain centres analogous to the thalamus and amygdala in mammals.

Experiments show that fish avoid places where they have been hurt, that they learn to avoid stimuli associated with pain, and that analgesic drugs alter their behaviour.

Critics object that these are merely reflexes, but the authors address these objections one by one. They conclude that although we cannot know with certainty what a perch feels, the burden of proof lies with those who claim it does not feel pain, because that would require explaining why fish possess such a complex pain system if it is not linked to subjective experience. From an evolutionary standpoint, pain without consciousness is useless: why learn to avoid danger if you feel no discomfort?

Other authors go even further. They argue that insects, particularly bees, may possess a form of consciousness.

Bees have a central nervous system that integrates sensory information; they demonstrate complex learning, memory, the ability to count up to four, and the capacity to distinguish between paintings by Van Gogh and Monet — yes, bees can be trained to tell them apart! Moreover, bees have dopaminergic and octopaminergic systems analogous to the mammalian dopamine system, which is involved in reinforcement and motivation.

The researchers propose the hypothesis that consciousness may have arisen independently multiple times in evolution, with its minimal neural substrate being not the cortex but structures that, during development, become “central” to information processing. In insects, these are the mushroom bodies. If this hypothesis is correct, the ethical implications are colossal: we would have to reconsider our treatment of flies, cockroaches, and termites.

Moving from consciousness to emotions, we must describe how scientists actually measure emotional processes in animals.

As early as 2005, a cognitive approach was proposed: emotions influence how an animal evaluates ambiguous stimuli. If an animal is in a good mood, it is more likely to interpret a neutral stimulus as positive; if in a bad mood, as negative. This method, termed the “judgement bias test,” has become the gold standard in the study of animal emotions.

For example, a rat is trained that one sound (say, a high tone) requires pressing a lever to obtain food, while another (a low tone) requires pressing a different lever to avoid a mild electric shock. Then an intermediate tone — one not previously used — is presented. If the rat quickly presses the “food” lever, it is likely in an optimistic mood; if it presses the “avoidance” lever, it is in a pessimistic one. This method allows for an objective assessment of emotional state without asking the animal in words.

In a comprehensive review, the findings of this approach are as follows: animals in good housing conditions (spacious enclosures, toys, social partners) demonstrate optimistic bias; animals in poor conditions (cramped cages, pain, isolation) demonstrate pessimistic bias. This shows that animals do not merely react to stimuli, but possess emotional states that colour their entire perception of the world.

Another study expands the comparative science of emotions by integrating data from humans and animals. It demonstrates that many basic mechanisms of emotion — activation of the amygdala, autonomic responses (increased heart rate), cortisol release — are conserved across mammals. Moreover, even birds and reptiles possess homologues of these structures. This means that fear, joy, and anger were not invented by humans or even by primates; they emerged very early in evolution, possibly in the common ancestors of all amniotes (reptiles, birds, and mammals).

The authors urge caution: we should not automatically attribute to animals the full spectrum of human emotions (such as guilt or shame), but denying the existence of basic emotions in animals is as mistaken as denying that they breathe.