this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
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I guess I don't understand what you mean then, especially the first sentence. I think there's a pretty broad agreement that we have a very limited understanding of how brains work, and that our current benchmarks of sophistication (tool use being one) aren't the last word on brain capabilities, they're just (relatively) easily defined behaviors that we can use to categorize what abilities different animals have at their disposal to survive. You also can't really demonstrate that an animal (or a species) can't use a tool, you can only know if an animal can use tools by observing tool use, which we have now done with at least one cow. Which is pretty cool.