 Creativity is a specifically human attitude, but not exclusively human. Animals are also capable of producing creative behaviour. This does not include the kinds of activities that, though highly complex (building a termite mound or a beehive, or hunting in packs), can be classified as traditional – that is, as belonging to the shared behaviour typical of a given species.
When we talk about animal creativity, we refer instead to instances when individual animals do something that no other member of their group has ever done before; when they do it for a purpose – usually involving the procurement of food – and when the behaviour (or pattern, as the ethologists call it) is repeated and perhaps transmitted to and adopted by the group because it is more effective in achieving a purpose.
Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Kohler (b.1925) is the author of a classic study on chimpanzees. In one episode, a chimp is in a cage with a short stick. Outside on the floor is a piece of fruit and a longer stick. The chimp tries to grab the fruit, then tries using the short stick, but the prize is out of reach. The chimp becomes frustrated, then calms down. And then, he quickly uses the short stick to drag the long stick within reach, and with that gets the fruit.
This result, in Kohler’s view, comes from the ape’s ability to reconfigure cognitive elements in a new totality charged with meaning. Kohler observes that when the chimp ‘sees’ the solution, this perception is immediate and irreversible, and when an individual, human or animal, learns something through this kind of instant illumination rather than through trial and error, the probability of forgetting it diminishes.
Imo, the macaque monkey from the Japanese island of Koshima studied by Frans de Waal, is famous for having discovered, entirely on his own, that sweet potatoes taste better after being washed in a stream. But his real achievement was that he was gradually able to teach his playmates, his mother and, over the course of five years, every individual in the community except the older males.
Later on, Imo also discovered that grain can be cleansed of sand and grit by putting it in still water and letting the sand separate from the floating grain, and he taught this trick to his community as well.
There are many such fascinating accounts from ethologists, including the story of Betty, the New Caledonian crow who invented a hook for procuring otherwise inaccessible food. There are Australian dolphins who have learned to protect their faces from being lacerated by coral when foraging for food in the reef by padding their snouts with a sponge.
In any case, animal creativity operates not by design but by trial and error, with a major component of chance, and is invariably driven by basic needs relative to survival or exploration. These needs occasionally generate innovative behavioral patterns. Human creativity, on the other hand, is conscious and purposeful, though the purposes are not limited to pure survival. They are driven by an inner urgency, a dissatisfaction that more often resembles restlessness than material need.
Animals develop creative behaviors more easily when there is enough food, but when it is neither too much nor too readily available. In short, animals are at their most creative when they need to figure out a way to get something good to eat, but something good to eat has to be there.
Humans seem do be most creative when there is instead abundance and comfortable conditions, but the pressure on individuals and the competition for achieving results are exceptionally high, such as the possibility of networking, the freedom of choosing a research topic, the opportunity of informal encounters among practitioners of different disciplines. Many good ideas are developed in university laboratories, but are often born of a chat in the cafeteria, where the barriers of position and profession are absent. This is the sort of atmosphere one finds on certain campuses. As Svante Lindquist, president of the Nobel Foundation, has noted, Cambridge University has won 80% of the Nobel Prizes awarded to Great Britain.
Since animal creativity is driven by survival and exploration, it is usually evinced by young individuals (more often females than males, it would seem) and the mothers who must find ways to feed their young.
Among humans, on the other hand, creativity is intrinsically bound to the possession of adequate cognitive tools (basic education, specific skills) rather than to gender or age. Clearly there are those who feel that in certain disciplines it is easier to achieve significant results at a younger age. The Fiels Medal, for example – the Nobel of mathematics, awarded by the International Mathematical Union – is reserved for those under 40. Indeed, Andrew Wiles, who proved Fermat’s Last Theorem at age 42, was ineligible (though mathematicians over 40 can always hope for the Wolf Prize, or even – like John Nash – the Nobel). But one need only think of Pablo Picasso, or Giuseppe Verdi, who left lyric opera to try his hand at comic theatre with Falstaff at 80 years old to understand that creative vigor can defy the limits of age.
While for animals all that is needed is a particularly clever individual like Imo the potato-washer to spread a creative behavioural pattern through a community, the course of human history reveals instead, in different times and places, creative explosions that involve many individuals and, by extension, the entire community. The reason for this is simple: human creativity has a powerful cultural component and is expressed primarily in socially and economically favourable situations. In certain times and places, these conditions were present, whereas in others, they weren’t.
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|  | Animal creativity
Style: Slow, random, dispersive
Purpose: New behavioral patterns
Impetus: Exploration, survival
Environment: Moderate environmental pressure
Who: Young individuals (primates), females (dolphins), mothers with young
Means of diffusion: Spread within single communities
Human creativity
Style: Fast, goal-oriented, logical/analogical, analytical/synthetic
Purpose: Invention and discovery. Art, science, technology.
Impetus: Curiosity, dissatisfaction, challenge
Environment: High pressure on individuals; comfortable environment
Who: Cultured and competent individuals, young people (science and technology), older people (music, literature, art, e.g. Verdi, Picasso)
Means of diffusion: Creative prosperity bound to cultural, economic, historical context: Periclean Athens, Renaissance Florence, fin-de-siecle Paris, early 20th-century Vienna, Silicon Valley
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