Thinking About It

The other day I got to musing on how things with brains think. I started musing on this because of a lizard, a chameleon. I have a small screened in porch at my front door as well as a screened porch in the back of the house. We have several lizards living on the back porch. We have a few tiny ones that apparently hatched back there in one of the potted plants and an adult or two roaming about.

I noticed, a few months ago, that we had a couple of lizards on the front porch also. Then I found a dead one. And then, a couple of days ago, I noticed a live one that seemed more than just lethargic, it seemed uncaring that I was near. It also seemed quite thin, like it wasn't eating.  I decided yesterday that I would move this one to the back porch... where lizards seemed to thrive.

And that's what triggered musing about thinking. Not mine but the lizard's. I captured it and held in inside my loosely closed fist. I am reasonably sure it could not see out and had no concept of what might happen to it next. And that's when I began musing...

We humans usually think (at least I do) in words, with only occasional images popping up in my mind from time to time when necessary. But the lizard has no words that we know of. So what, if anything, runs though its mind when something as I described happens? Does it feel fear as we know it? Or something so alien to us that we would not be able to relate to it? Does it think in pictures? Symbols?

We often try to ascribe human emotions, thoughts, and reactions to the "lower" animals. I am sure we are completely wrong in our perception of their thought processes but it is how we can relate to them.

And, of course, that made me wonder about the blind among us... and the deaf. Do the blind who can hear think only in words and have no images? Do the deaf think in words? Or in symbols or images? What about the folks who are both blind and deaf? From birth, I mean.