D:        Here's something I don't get, Yaël...what makes humans different from other animals?

Y:        What do you mean?

D:        Well, we're different from dogs, horses, and even chimpanzees, right?  But in many ways we're not that different. I mean, we share much of the same DNA.  And many animals are good problem solvers.  It's even been discovered that some chimps make tools. So why do humans believe they are so different?

Y:        It has to do with how we think.

D:        You mean our brains are more sophisticated?

Y:        In some ways. Dolphins, for example, can communicate efficiently in auditory ways that we can still only guess at, and dogs can figure out where your shoes have been from their smell. We can't compete with that. Our differences relate to flexibility in putting together different information and generalizing what we learn. It's the difference between what Harvard researcher Marc Hauser calls "laser beam" intelligence and "floodlight intelligence."

D:        Explain...

Y:        What he means is that most animals, like dogs and chimps, solve specific problems with specific solutions.  But they can't use the solution to one problem to solve a different kind of problem.  For example, a chimp might fashion a crude tool to fish for termites, but it almost never uses that tool to solve other problems. So for most animals, solutions to problems are narrowly focused, like a laser beam.

D:        But human thought has a wider range...

Y:        Exactly. We invent a tool for one purpose and learn to use it to solve other problems. Our brains can recombine old information, helped by our ability to think abstractly, and develop new categories.

D:        So we're not the only animals that think, but our thinking is always unique.

Y:        Well, not always, unless you want to focus on our ability to overgeneralize.