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By Vicki Croke, Globe Staff, 01/01/2000

hat a millennium this is going to be! Fasten your seat belts, animal lovers, because this thousand years is launching with a boom in books and TV shows concerned with animal minds, emotions, and status.

Steven M. Wise's provocative "Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals" (Perseus, $25) is due out in February; Marc Hauser's "Animal Minds: What Animals Really Think" (Henry Holt and Company, $25) in March.

So it's crucial that you get your feet wet on the subject with the new "Nature" mini series, "Inside the Animal Mind," which starts Tuesday night at 8, on Channel 2, and continues on Jan. 11 and 18. The longtime voice of PBS's "Nature," George Page, is the executive editor (though it's Steve Kroft of "60 Minutes" we hear). Page has also written a companion volume, "Inside the Animal Mind: A Groundbreaking Exploration of Animal Intelligence" (Doubleday, $24.95).

TV people can be shameless with titles, can't they? Not quite groundbreaking, the package is more a beginner's guide to the beast-brain universe. In three hours, the show covers the biggies: issues such as problem solving, abstract thought, navigation, emotions, awareness of self, and the definition of intelligence.

And we hear from many of the field's biggies: Jane Goodall, Temple Grandin, Marian Dawkins, and our own Dr. Nicholas Dodman from Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine. But the best part is the animals themselves. In one study, pigeons trained to peck at "like" images (all trees, for example) on a TV screen are shown to be capable of distinguishing a Picasso from a Monet - for a reward pellet, that is.

Lowly chickens are found to produce direct, meaningful calls. The warning to others of a hawk overhead is different from that for a ground predator. And hearing these separate calls, the other chickens take appropriate action - ducking or heading for a corner of the coop. Meerkats and vervet monkeys have similar discrete warnings for various predators.

In one segment, ewes are shown images of familiar sheep faces on doors. The females choose a door as though participating in a woolly version of "Mystery Date." If not in season, a ewe will always select a female from her group. If she is sexually receptive, however - here comes the naughty bit - she will choose a particular ram of her liking. It's amazing to see an animal study the faces and then run for a door.

Then there is Nelson, the charismatic macaw that trundles off to bed with owner Christine. Nelson contentedly cuddles as Christine reads a book, but when her husband, Paul, attempts to climb in with them, Nelson flies into a rage - biting the nervy interloper. This comes during the portion on "jealousy."

There is also a sweet scene in which Goodall sits for an interview, a vast savanna for a backdrop. She's there to describe chimpanzee characteristics, and suddenly a very young chimp leaps onto the boom mike being angled over her head. "Mischievous!" she cries out with a hard, unguarded laugh of complete delight.

We meet a pet magpie who tricks the household dogs with duck cries, baboons fascinated with mirrors, and a chimp that can immediately locate a real banana in a real room after being shown a toy banana hidden in a small-scale replica of the room. We witness elephants gravely examining the bones of dead relatives.

There are many things to ponder. Grandin, a well-known professor of animal sciences at Colorado State University, is autistic. She says that because of her autism, she thinks in pictures, not words. She believes that animals may do the same, and that she may have particular insight into their minds.

One of the most intriguing threads to run through the series involves the comparison of human brain chemistry and activity with that of animals.

Time and again, high-tech scanning techniques prove that similar areas of the brain are activated in both man and animal when performing similar tasks, such as creating a mental map. And as for chemistry, Dodman lets us sit in on a few of his behavioral cases at Tufts in part two: "Do Animals Have Emotions?" There is a beautiful greyhound named Jeff that has terrible separation anxiety, and Tasher, a stressed-out, self-mutilating cockatoo.

The veterinary behaviorist points out that, in these cases, human medications, such as Prozac, are used in the same way with animals. There is a great deal of fuss about whether animals feel some emotions as we do. In the book, Page quotes Dodman as saying, "Look, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, we have to investigate the possibility that it's a duck."

Along with big concepts, there are wonderful scientific tidbits. When a puppy, or any other mammal for that matter, is born, the amygdala, the portion of the brain that acts as a radar for danger, is the only fully developed part. Consequently, early traumas can lead to phobias.

Oxytocin is a hormone that may play a role in sexual pleasure. It is also released during childbirth and promotes pair bonding between mother and child. The sight of a baby face - animal or human - can stimulate its production. This emotional glue is also key in keeping the famously monogamous pairs of prairie voles together for life. And that commitment can apparently be jump-started with an injection of this very hormone. Just think of the possibilities.

One odd element in a series about intelligence is the tendency of the narrator to ask obvious questions, as though the viewer were a child. We watch a bird locating buried nuts, "Is this the limit" of animal intelligence? we rubes are asked. "Do any other animals have insight?" we're queried after watching chimps. Simple declarative sentences would be less patronizing. I know, I know, they're only human.

"Inside the Animal Mind" doesn't quite hit the heights or reach the depths hoped for. But to catch even a glimpse of the mental powers of killer whales, chimps, dogs, rats, dolphins, elephants, orangutans, birds, and bees is nothing short of thrilling.

This story ran on page E05 of the Boston Globe on 1/01/2000.
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