We have a long way to go before consciousness in animals
has been fully established as a scientific fact, despite all of
the indications of its existence that have been described in
previous chapters of this book. In chapter 1, I said that
lack of a unitary definition for consciousness should not
inhibit research on the topic, but we should not forget that
different researchers may be looking for different things.
Attention could be focussed on research on one particular
facet of consciousness, but it is difficult to choose what
might be the best facet to look at first. There is also a
danger inherent in a focussed approach and that is the risk
of that single approach becoming the axiom for all further
research on consciousness. Were that to happen, it would
distort or stifle other approaches as, for example, has
occurred with IQ testing and research on intelligence in
humans. Performance on an IQ test (which gives a numer-
ical result, called the Intelligence Quotient) is only one
aspect of the much broader collection of attributes that
were referred to as intelligence, but IQ has dogged the field
of research on intelligence in humans for decades. With
this in mind, I think that research on cognition and
consciousness in animals should proceed along its many
different directions but that it should take more account of
several issues that I will outline in this chapter.

The present flowering of scientific investigation into
consciousness in animals is coloured by our attitudes to

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