Are humans the only species to make art?

December 26, 2011 1:39 AM

Are humans the only species to make art?

I am looking for evidence that non-human species engage in artistic ideas which serve no evolutionary purpose.

Let us broadly define "art" as the "the product or process of deliberately arranging items (often with symbolic significance) in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect." (From Wikipedia)

Do you know of any such evidence?

posted by beshtya to Grab Bag (20 answers total)

Male bowerbirds and weaver birds build visually impressive nests as a courtship display.
posted by LogicalDash at 2:31 AM on December 26, 2011

Er, wait. Nothing at all to do with reproduction? I don't think humans qualify, then. There are so many fetishes for different kinds of dress that they are difficult to catalogue properly.
posted by LogicalDash at 2:35 AM on December 26, 2011

Does elaborate construction designed to impress count? Or does sense affecting art have to have no function to count as non-evolutionary?

I'm not your scientist... but my feeling is tha anything humans compulsively do probably has some (evolutionary) purpose. Even art.
posted by choppyes at 2:37 AM on December 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

I once saw a program (Monkey World? An Attenborough series?) that showed a female orangutan who had a collection of sticks. She would spend hours arranging and rearranging them to her evident satisfaction. Her carer (yeah, I think Monkey World, though I can't find anything via google) reported she was very particular about the precise arrangement.

And though this probably counts more as play - but who knows their true intent - I also thought of dolphin bubble rings.
posted by likeso at 3:14 AM on December 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Elephants can be taught to paint things like flowers and elephants, but it's a trained thing so this may not help. Some primates, though, when given paints and such, will paint abstract stuff. I don't have a cite off the top of my head, though; was just something I saw on a documentary once. But again, that's if they are given paints; I dunno if they seek out natural materials and do it on their own.

I was going to say bowerbirds too, but the line between doing something for evolutionary reasons and not is thin even for humans (see: how many writers, painters, musicians, actors, etc throughout history have seemed VERY motivated by attracting the opposite sex). So that's a curious question... I am thinking that narrows it down to things that seem to be for the purpose of capturing/expressing emotion, or else recreating something. My parrots make up new songs all the time, and there are no mates about, but it has been thought that is still an offshoot of attracting a mate, or establishing social hierarchies. And even there, humans arguably engage in art often for the purpose of having special social attention paid to them. Or being paid, which helps survival. It becomes difficult to pinpoint a "pure" example of art.

I'm going to think on this some more and if I come up with anything I'll post again. I have done a lot of reading about animal intelligence and creativity but the "no evolutionary purpose" is a bit stickier...
posted by Nattie at 3:16 AM on December 26, 2011

It isn't clear that researchers have a good enough understanding of consciousness, intellect, emotional state, etc. to do much more than anthropomorphize the behaviors of other species, which result in something like human art. We've certainly tried getting other animals to create human art, though what that means about art outside of human perception seems unclear, to me, assuming it is even possible to understand or appreciate.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:29 AM on December 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

Yes, absolutely BP, that's kind of what I think I was implying with my two "examples". Say true non-human art exists. We'd probably never recognize it as such.
posted by likeso at 3:38 AM on December 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: While I appreciate that certain human endeavours can lead to evolutionary advantages (e.g. greater magnetism to the opposite sex), I can think of a number of ideas that would be deemed artistic and would serve me no purpose to procreate: you can possibly think of some yourself.

My point in asking this question is to tease out whether the notion of art is simply a by-product of a highly developed neocortex and nothing more.
posted by beshtya at 3:52 AM on December 26, 2011

Chimpanzee paintings sold at auction.
posted by Cocodrillo at 4:32 AM on December 26, 2011

This article and the internal links discuss the issue. The Central Washington University Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute claims that one of their chimps who had been taught sign language produced this drawing and when asked what it was, sign the word "bird." Unfortunately, this is a single incident and the chimp in question has since died, so it cannot be said to be conclusive proof.
posted by chrisulonic at 4:49 AM on December 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

A similar question from a few days ago that might give you a few interesting leads: Do any animals other than humans dance? Do any animals other than humans make music?
posted by bcwinters at 6:14 AM on December 26, 2011

Elephants can paint.
posted by brownrd at 6:37 AM on December 26, 2011

Er, no, I'm pretty sure the human capacity to sexualize everything knows no bounds. Thrash metal bands still have groupies when they've all got bad skin and never cut their hair. There's a fetish for androgyny, which might be quite a common fetish if you count people like Justin Bieber. Sure, it's easy to produce art without intending for it to increase your own magnetism, but no way are you going to stop someone else from finding a prurient application. I suppose that, with our beastly complicated social organization systems, we need a proportionately complicated supply of courtship rituals.
posted by LogicalDash at 7:28 AM on December 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Lots of animals can manipulate pigments to make marks that humans sell to each other. To elephant and chimpanzee paintings mentioned above you can add feline art and designs created by hissing cockroaches. Whether these hold any symbolic significance for the animals themselves is open to question.

Naturally, I would need to revise my answer substantially if your definition of art includes video games.
posted by Nomyte at 8:36 AM on December 26, 2011

I think any sentence which begins "humans are the only animal that" is bound to have exceptions and counterexamples unless it is specific to the point of being useless. (Humans are the only animals that built a Statue of Liberty.) Where we differ from other animals is in the level of abstraction we employ in reacting to our environment, and this is a difference of degree, not of kind.
posted by Nothing at 9:54 AM on December 26, 2011

I should have said, abstraction and symbolic thinking. The extent to which you see those as a prerequisite for art will color your answer to this question.
posted by Nothing at 9:56 AM on December 26, 2011

Neanderthals made art, but that might be too close to human for you.
posted by absalom at 11:19 AM on December 26, 2011

We can't accurately discern the intent of other humans, let alone other animals. We don't even know what art is or why we do it.

Totally unanswerable and, philosophically, I'd say nonsensical question.
posted by cmoj at 1:18 PM on December 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Humpback whale song?
posted by doctor_negative at 1:39 PM on December 26, 2011

"Do animals make art? This exhibition includes paintings by apes and elephants and examines whether they are artistic works or just pointless lines on a page."
posted by iamkimiam at 2:30 PM on December 26, 2011