According to the extended cognition thesis, an agent’s cognitive system can sometimes include extracerebral components amongst its physical constituents. Here, we show that such a view of cognition has an unjustifiably anthropocentric focus, for it tends to depict cognitive extensions as a human-only affair. In contrast, we will argue that if human cognition extends, then the cognition of many non-human animals extends too, for many non-human animals rely on the same cognition-extending strategies humans rely on. To substantiate this claim, we will proceed as follows. First (Sect. 1), we will introduce the extended cognition thesis, exposing its anthropocentric bias. Then, we will show that humans and many non-human animals rely on the same cognition-extending strategies. To do so, we will discuss a variety of case studies, including “intrabodily” cognitive extensions such as the spinal cord (Sect. 2), the widespread reliance on epistemic actions to solve cognitive tasks (Sect. 3) and cases of animal cognitive offloading (Sect. 4). We’ll then allay some worries our claim might raise (Sect. 5) to then conclude the paper (Sect. 6).

根据扩展认知理论，主体的认知系统有时可以在其物理成分中包括脑外成分。在这里，我们表明这种认知观具有不合理的人类中心论焦点，因为它倾向于将认知延伸描述为仅人类的事情。相比之下，我们认为，如果人类认知延伸，那么许多非人类动物的认知也会延伸，因为许多非人类动物依赖于人类所依赖的相同认知延伸策略。为了证实这一说法，我们将进行如下操作。首先（第一节），我们将介绍扩展认知论，揭露其人类中心主义偏见。然后，我们将证明人类和许多非人类动物依赖相同的认知扩展策略。为此，我们将讨论各种案例研究，包括脊髓等“体内”认知延伸（第 2 节）、广泛依赖认知行为来解决认知任务（第 3 节）以及动物认知案例卸载（第 4 节）。然后，我们将消除我们的主张可能引起的一些担忧（第 5 节），然后结束本文（第 6 节）。