Respond to the discussion listed below. Respond to a colleague who selected a different keyword topic than you did. Respond in one or more of the following ways:

• Ask a probing question and provide insight into how you would answer your question and why.
• Ask a probing question and provide the foundation, or rationale, for the question.
• Expand on your colleague's posting by offering a new perspective or insight.
• Agree with a colleague and offer additional (new) supporting information for consideration.
• Disagree with a colleague by respectfully discussing and supporting a different perspective.

Support your reply to a colleagues' assignment post with at least one reference (textbook or other scholarly, empirical resources). You may state your opinion and/or provide personal examples; however, you must also back up your assertions with evidence (including in-text citations) from the source and provide a reference.

DISUCSSION

Hello, I hope everyone is happy and healthy! Today, I am going to discuss whether or not animals are conscious or aware of their actions, and what I learned from the textbook and this week's resources are that I believe that animals are conscious and aware of their actions. What I mean by aware and conscious is that they understand their actions and have an idea of what they are doing. They don't speak English but they understand what we are saying and doing around them. We interact with animals like if they are human, talking in front of them and sharing information with them. Higher cognitive functions in animals in terms of language, learning, and memory all support the fact that animals are conscious and aware. For example, dogs, cats, pets etc. all show that they understand, learn, have patterns, and definitely can't read a clock correctly but they know exactly what time there dinner is every night. Weighing in on the values and ethics of conducting animal research on complex mental abilities, you would want to be treating the animals as if they are family, friends, coworkers or good associates. You want to be successful for the animal and the researchers lives as well. Not just working with these animals every day but being a part of there lives in every kind of way. "The parrot named Alex was not just a co-worker or a friend he was a part of the researchers family and wasn't just kept in a cage his whole life, he was treated with love. They made a lot of progress together and they developed a work/life together. Alex learned and communicated with the researcher and made a lot of progress throughout the years working together, they did different tasks together and formed a bond as if he was a part of her family and not just a pet" ( Pepperberg, I., 2009). The article in the learning resources goes into that consciousness is recognition to reflection in the mirror, being able to learn, and seeing that each animal has its own perception of itself. Things with purpose are things that show they have mental fistulation. "Charles Darwin thought the mental capacities of animals and people differed only in degree, not kind--a natural conclusion to reach when armed with the radical new belief that the one evolved from the other. His last great book, "The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals", examined joy, love and grief in birds, domestic animals and primates, and various human races. But Darwin's attitude to animals--easily shared by people in everyday contact with dogs, horses, even mice--ran contrary to a long tradition in European thought which held that animals had no minds at all. This way of thinking stemmed from the argument of Rene Descartes, a great 17th-century philosopher, that people were creatures of reason, linked to the mind of God, while animals were merely machines made of flesh--living robots which, in the words of Nicolas Malebranche, one of his followers, "eat without pleasure, cry without pain, grow without knowing it: they desire nothing, fear nothing, know nothing" (Animals think, therefore., 2015). Article shows evidence that different animals show that they are conscious or aware of their actions.