Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

Our instinctual understanding of reality is the same as most other animals.

Human folk are as a matter of fact eager to find intelligence in animals.

With land-roaming animals, I've just read so much about the sophistication of their emotional lives and their intelligence and the way they process information that betrays a greater intelligence.

Animals are certainly more sophisticated than we used to think. And we shouldn't lump together animals as a group. Crows and chimps and dogs are all highly intelligent in very different ways.

The intelligence of the lower forms of animal life, like a great deal of human intelligence, does not involve a self.

Fear, love, and hunger were the agents that developed the wits of the lower animals, as they were, of course, the prime factors in developing the intelligence of man.

One of the things we found out as we filmed with people who dealt with chimps, and with all animals, and it's really incredible, is their levels of intelligence that we don't recognize right away.

There are any number of things that survive great, and don't need any kind of consciousness, so why bother going through all the trouble of evolving monkeys that don't run very well or climb very fast or have particularly sharp teeth, but have big heads.

Evolution acts slowly. Our psychological characteristics today are those that promoted reproductive success in the ancestral environmen.

We're interested in things that have big teeth, and you can see the evolutionary value of that, and you can also see the practical consequences by watching 'Animal Planet.' You notice they make very few programs about gerbils. It's mostly about things that have big teeth.

When we see animals doing remarkable things, how do we know if we're simply seeing tricks or signs of real intelligence? Are talented animals just obeying commands, or do they have some kind of deeper understanding? One of the biggest challenges for animal researchers is to come up with tests that can distinguish between the two.

I never thought I could learn much from a dog or cat. They sleep when we sleep. They eat when we eat. I'm into observing animals being as wild as they can be in a captive environment.

Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion.

Many foxes grow gray but few grow good.

I'd been interested in animal behaviour as a teenager and had thought of studying it at one point.

When I began in 1960, individuality wasn't an accepted thing to look for; it was about species-specific behaviour. But animal behaviour is not hard science. There's room for intuition.

Over the course of history, the people who are not scared go into the woods and are mauled by a bear, are not going to survive.

Pigs are smarter than dogs, and both are smarter than Congress.

I've always been interested in animal behavior, and I keep reading about it because it's so surprising all the time - so many things are happening around us that we neglect to look at. Part of the passion I have for biology is based on this wonderment.

I had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was man the tool-maker - yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action. I remember that day as vividly as if it was yesterday.

Humans are an infant species, a mere 150,000 years old. But, armed with a massive brain, we've not only survived, we've used our wits to adapt to and flourish in habitats as varied as deserts, Arctic tundra, tropical rainforests, wetlands and high mountain ranges.

It is conceded by all that man is the very highest type of all living creatures on the earth. His intelligence is far superior to that of any other earthly being.

Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.

Human intelligence may not be the best trick nature has to offer.

Scientists have shown that pigs are capable of playing simple video games, learning from each other, and even learning names.