© Bill O'Leary/The Washington PostTo prevent Shania the octopus from becoming bored, keepers at the National Aquarium in Washington, D.C. gave her a Mr. Potato Head filled with fish to snuggle.
Brain structure and circuitry offer clues to consciousness in nonmammalsOne afternoon while participating in studies in a University of Oxford lab, Abel snatched a hook away from Betty, leaving her without a tool to complete a task. Spying a piece of straight wire nearby, she picked it up, bent one end into a hook and used it to finish the job. Nothing about this story was remarkable, except for the fact that Betty was a New Caledonian crow.
Betty isn't the only crow with such conceptual ingenuity. Nor are crows the only members of the animal kingdom to exhibit similar mental powers. Animals can do all sorts of clever things: Studies of chimpanzees, gorillas, dolphins and birds have found that some can add, subtract, create sentences, plan ahead or deceive others.
To carry out such tasks, these animals must be drawing on past experiences and then using them along with immediate perceptions to make sense of it all. In other words, some scientists would say, these animals are thinking consciously.