The Search for Animal Inventors

摘要

Just how human is that prized human capacity for innovation? Does a creative genius really need the rumpled sweatshirt and the caffeine? Or for that matter, does he, she, or it need an oppos-able thumb to wrap around the coffee cup? And what about the everyday innovator, the blessed individual in the carpool who can always come up with a perfect shortcut? If that counts as innovation, are there innovators, even Edisons, among monkeys? Birds? Fish? Kevin N. Laland might phrase his research problem a little differently, but he takes such questions seriously—so seriously that he and his students at the University of Cambridge in England are looking for innovative capacities among guppies. Laland is one of the few researchers who explicitly examines innovation in animals. However, other behavioral and ecological research, such as studies of improvisation in bird songs or in chimps' tool use, also touch upon that "Aha!" of creativity. The implications of all this work ripple into the study of the origins of human culture. "It's fundamental," Laland says.