Miles, you are so sure of this?
Strangely, "the ability to understand what another entity is thinking and feeling" is a good description of "theory of mind" theory. Historically theory of mind theory was first articulated as a way to describe the abilities of chimpanzees.
What we call "empathy" is not precisely defined, and is certainly not a theoretically defined concept. But loosely, chimpanzees certainly display behaviors and actions and exhibit "feelings" that we would call exhibiting "empathy," if those same behaviors and actions were displayed by human beings. They display those behaviors over and over again, both in their natural environment and in captivity. For philosophical or scientific reasons we might not want to calls those displays of behavior examples of empathy, mainly because we don't really know what empathy is philosophically or scientifically, only experientially. So all I can say is that in my experience what occurs between chimpanzees when one helps another who has been injured, seems a lot like empathy.
I am unfamiliar with the experiments with birds described by Carrol. But similar experiments have been performed with chimps in the following way. Chimp A is in a cage and can see a human outside of a cage hide a prized piece of food beneath a rock. Chimp B is locked away out of sight of Chimp A and human and the hiding place. Chimp B is let loose in the area of the hiding place. Chimp A from the cage, through gesture (pointing and jumping mostly) and howling, directs Chimp B to the correct hiding place. After the piece of food is found Chimp B will usually share the food with Chimp B who is still in the cage. But the experiement has also been done with chimps that prefer different types of food from each other and the results are the same. Sometimes the chimp in the cage does not even like the food that has been hidden but is "aware" that chimp outside the cage likes the food.
Sometimes the experiment has been done with a "favorite" object, like a teddy bear, of a younger chimp. So in such a case Chimp A, directing younger Chimp B' to find B's favorite object, will derive no benefit from Chimp B's success. Many variations of this experiment has been performed over and over again with numbers of chimps, and at varying levels of complexity.
I am not sure what this says about what we call "empathy," but it certainly exhibits what we might call a notion of an "other's" mind.
Jerry
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