His paintings were first shown in London in 1957 as abstract lyrical or abstract expressionist works. Picasso and Miro were said to have bought his canvases, and an American collector of contemporary art bought three paintings at an auction in 2005 for $26,352. The artist's name was Congo - a chimpanzee.

This is not merely an anecdote; art does not belong exclusively to human beings, but to other animals as well. This is the main thesis of a new book by Ben Ami Sharfstein, Professor Emeritus at Tel Aviv University and recipient of the 2005 Israel Prize for Philosophy.

Whether they are paintings of elephants and chimpanzees, birds singing duets, Japanese cranes dancing for no apparent reason but enjoyment, or the singing of the whales - animals create art and enjoy it, Sharfstein says.

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In his book "Birds, Elephants and other Artists," Sharfstein, himself a painter, provides various examples of animal art that was observed and documented by other researchers.

But can any animal really be called an artist? Philosophers themselves are divided over what exactly art is. In recent years, an increasing number of animal researchers and anthropologists have challenged the traditional distinction of man from other animals - that all animals other than man do not have qualities such as consciousness, awareness, culture, intelligence, and language.

But even though philosophers are willing to admit that animals can produce something nice, they generally refuse to recognize it as art, asserting that art is the domain of only human beings. "This is nothing but unjustified arrogance based on prejudice," Sharfstein says.

British animal behaviorist Desmond Morris carried out experiments with primates and capuchin monkeys who doodled and painted. Some of them displayed no interest in the activity, while others carried it out with full concentration. They were not interested in the completed product, and received no reward but the act itself.

Morris focused on Congo the chimpanzee. He reported that Congo, like a human artist, chose carefully where to place his brush on the canvas, and repeated thematic patterns with slight variations.

Over two years he developed his style. His paintings were marked by the form of a fan, to which he sometimes added a secondary fan with variations. As weeks went by, his confidence grew and every colorful line or spot was placed exactly where he wanted them to be, Morris summed in his observations.

Sharfstein says the process Congo experienced would be called "aesthetic maturation" in humans.

But is it really art? After all, many people paint, and in most cases their work is not called "works of art." Some say art cannot be attributed to a creature that is not aware of its own experience. Birds, for example, have no "experience of music."

Sharfstein agrees that these arguments make sense, but believes they are too decisive. On the one hand, they attribute excessive freedom from biological urges to humans. On the other hand, they ignore the fact that what we see as automatic, birth-imprinted responses are not fully understood. These responses can be surprisingly flexible in adjusting to changing circumstances, much like those we would call "intelligent" in humans.

Sharfstein says that while the ape is interested in the process rather than the end product, man is interested in both the process and its result. Second, both man and ape arrange their paintings in similar fashions. The ape's art reveals balance, rhythm and thematic patterns.

There is no way of distinguishing between a picture painted by a man or an ape. Sharfstein knows that these responses could also be used to bash contemporary art, "but I prefer to see them as indications of the interesting closeness between art and its pre-human sources," he says.