DMaP Design Methods & Processes

Animal Specialists

Word count: 254

Humans are amazing generalists whereas animals often have specialisms where they surpass humans, such as a cheetah running, an ant carrying its own body weight or a dolphin swimming.

Animal abilities:

  • Repeating patterns
  • Resources from a variety of places
  • Craft
  • Adapts to conditions
  • Changes conditions
  • Fast / agile
  • Uses intelligence
  • Physical prowess
  • Tool user
  • Pack behaviour
  • Use of flow
  • Use of environment (adapted to environment – like a mountain goat)

Looking inside the Animal Mind

Some animals are specialists and are much more effective than humans – for example, a dog’s sense of smell or a cat’s reactions.


On the TV show “Inside the Animal Mind”  a crow when pitted against 2 poodle dogs, and a 2 year old child showed that it had an incredible ability to try out different techniques to solve a task.


The task setup

The task was to retrieve a piece of food from a ball within a transparent perspex box with a hinged door, inside another transparent perspex box with a hinged door on a different side. From the sides were hanging plastic balls on rope attached to the centre of the side of the box.

The outcome of the task

The crow completed the task much faster because it was very driven to get to the food and experimented to solve the puzzle compared to the other two who barely seemed to realise it was a problem to solve.