Power to Animals

It is widely thought that "animals only act on instinct." I have heard this from numerous people (i.e.-my dad) all throughout my life. But, as we have proved through studies in Psych class, animals are much more advanced than they're given credit for. What most people might not know is that many animals have the capacity to learn. Whether this learning is instinctive or not, it adds a level of advancement to the demeaning opinion that is often relayed by humans.
So far we have examined classical and operant conditioning. In classical conditioning, animals can learn to have a conditioned response when impacted by a conditioned stimulus. At first - just like any human would act - a dog would not associate a tone with the coming of food. But after a the process of tone resulting in the coming of food, the dog learns to salivate just by hearing the tone.
And in operant conditioning, animals can learn operant behavior depending on the environment. Just as a human would learn to push a bar if it results in more food, so too can a mouse learn to push a bar to get more food.
Yes, humans are far superior to animals. But animals can indeed learn.That's not too shabby.