Do Animals have Free Will and Intelligence?

 

     by Tony

     Original Sources:

1) Story of Janet 
2) Video Clip of Crows Cracking Nuts

 

      

       People argue about whether animals have free will or not. In my point of view, I believe that animals do have free will. I choose to stand in this position; because I think we are all animals, human have free will, why the others don’t. And what I have experienced, I was grow up with animals, my family and I love animals, we had two cat and one bird in our home when I was kid; right now, we have a dog and a couple of fish. However, animals are like family to me in my childhood, and it still affects me. After we have read and watched the story of Janet and the video of the crow cracking nuts, these references have strengthened my opinion about animals; also, given me a new impression of the intelligence in animals.

       According the story, the elephant Janet had been performed in the circus for a long time; when the incident happened, she was attacking on the specific people, people who had trained her instead of many audiences. Moreover, many similar cases happened in the circus like this, another elephant named Minnie that the article mentioned which was hit by the trainer with a bull-hock, and then she attacked her trainer. Even though, female elephants are supposed to be gentle, placid and friendly, those elephants had been provoked by their trainers. Thus, we could see that the elephants showed people that they have free will; they have the ability to resist people and to choose what they want to do.

       Now we know that many animas have intelligence; as for example, that crow in the video shows us how intelligence it is. The crow's intelligence has been expressed from the little action of cracking nuts. The crow use gravity as force to open the nut, it can use the physic effect which human also had discovered long time ago. When the high altitude doesn't work, it use cars to crush the nut, which reacts that the crow could use tools to open the nut; and then, the most impressive action is the crow waits for the traffic light to stop the cars, and pick up the nut. The crow knows that the light could stop the cars, and it's more safety to pick the nut on pedestrian crossing. This is how a crow intelligent.