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Cheesecat wrote: The parrot in the poster probably doesn't know what those words mean, it's more coincidence than anything.
The parrot definatly knew the concepts of the words in its vocabulary. It demonstrated this by using its limited vocabulary to create new words or names for objects. When Alex was first exposed to dry corn, vs the fresh he was used to he called it rock corn.
That doesn't sound like conceptuality. What Alex just did there was probably to project a mental representation he already had to an object which exhibited the same principal characteristic. That mental representation is sometimes refered to as a pre-cept, and earlier was often just called an sensorial intuition. As far as I'm concerned, Koko, who'se already shown here, is the only example of conceptualisation in animals.
Projecting one attributed from one experience to another isn't necessarily a proof of conceptuality, because conceptuality is often associated with ideas which cannot be mentally represented. It's what allows you to do the latter in the mental equation [Rock = Hard] + [Dry Seed = Hard] = [Things can be Hard]
[...] for conflict is the great teacher, and pain, the perfect educator.
nomsheep wrote: My rat managed to escape his cage despite it being locked and the roof to far away for him to jump to. I still have no idea how he did it.
I had a hamster like that, I swear to the goddess that she was the reincarnated Harry Houdini. It got to the point that her little hamster palace was placed in a large fish tank, with a fine mesh lid, which was weighted down with large books. STILL managed to escape a couple times.
Dwarf hamster breeds can flatten their skull and bodies to escape.
I had a friend who had one that escaped and gnawed on a wire, lets say the hamster was from then on called crispy.
After living for my whole life on a farm, I can say that animals absolutely have an intelligence all their own. We humans are just so narcissistic about our awesomeness that unless something is as smart as us, we call it "stupid", with any sign of smarts being "coincidence".
Hell, we started ignoring our cat when she wants to be fed, because she's a pig and doesn't need fed all the time. So she will turn around and go bug the dog, who will then come over and start getting on our nerves when she previously was off doing her own thing in another room, because she's bigger and is harder to ignore.
That's not just communication, that's inter-species communication.
Unfortunately, for evidence against such a thing, on the other hand at my parent's farm the goats and sheep are actually too stupid to have a concept of "looking up". I can be above them hanging out of the barn's hayloft, and call them , and they will come running. But then they will repeatedly run inside, and then back out again because they "can't find me inside!"
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2012/11/17 22:40:59
"By this point I'm convinced 100% that every single race in the 40k universe have somehow tapped into the ork ability to just have their tech work because they think it should."
hotsauceman1 wrote: I have 2 dogs that, Despite being two rooms away out of sight, know exactly when im in the kitchen.
My dog, without telling her, knows I'm taking her for a walk if I'm putting my shoes on and grabbing my Ipod. If I grab one or the other, she doesn't react.
Ask yourself: have you rated a gallery image today?
Experiment 626 wrote: Our older cat Stitch can pull straws out of pop cans, despite the straw being inserted through the pull tab.
She's also a real bugger for stealing your socks - but only if they're white ones!
The younger one Loki, well, let's just say that pretty much anything not nailed down is fair game for her to come and carry off!
On top of that, we have to keep their food bin well defended and completly inacessable otherwise Loki will get to it, and pull the lid off the container, then proceed to gorge herself to death.
I know about that! Monday Barb heard excited rustling and the TBone started barking. The pantry had been left open. Rodney had climbed up it pulled down a closed bag of RUsty's treat biscuits and dragged it into his kennel with the intent of eating all of them (the bag is about four times his size). TBone was barking because Rodney wasn't sharing...
After the dozen or so he ate in about two minutes, he couldn't crawl out of the kennel for hours.
LOL!
Last Christmas, we'd given our little girls a bag of kitten treats.
Loki goes running off with the entire bag while we're continuing with unwrapping all our presants, so we ended up putting it up on the pantry in our laundry room. we figured there was no way Loki could get at them since we've got the entire desk blockaded and my dad's tool chest would be a huge jump for her since she's a runt.
A couple hours latter I've been sent down to bring up some more potatoes to help with the dinner prep... Not not did Loki manage to jump onto the tool chest, but she also monkey'ed her way up onto the pantry, (she basically would have had to play 'spider-cat' to do it too!), but she'd got her bag of treats back AND chewed through the foil package and was happily chowing down on the tasty bits inside!
You can't protect food from Loki... She's litterly a small black hole when it comes to sniffing out the good stuff and eating...
Another good one;
Stitch knows that she and Loki aren't allowed to go in behind the TV in the rec room, since Loki has already fudged up some wires. If Stitch sees Loki trying to get behind the TV, she'll wait for Loki to come out and then pounce on her and pound her into the ground!
It tends to look an awful lot like;
Of corse, after Loki has legged it for her life, Stitch will then proceed to jump behind the TV and investigate what's so interesting about the whole thing.
When animals are domesticated, they'll display intelligent characteristic.
Its simple, because they don't have to worry about life and death and food at every single moment.
Example, if you throw a human back into Jurassic Period, you can guarantee they wont be building table sipping teas.
By that behavioral display would you compare them to the intelligence of savages?
Not really, just plain priorities.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2012/11/18 01:24:40
When animals are domesticated, they'll display intelligent characteristic.
Its simple, because they don't have to worry about life and death and food at every single moment.
Example, if you throw a human back into Jurassic Period, you can guarantee they wont be building table sipping teas.
By that behavioral display would you compare them to the intelligence of savages?
Not really, just plain priorities.
No, building table sipping teas would still be a display of incredible intelligence. Just the different numbers of steps to plan ahead from cutting down the trees to boiling water would overheat any other animal's brain.
Point being that animals will display intelligent traits even in the wild. Once domesticated, they'll lose some of those traits, and gain other, mainly social, largely due to the fact that we infantilize them, and naturally infancy is when living beings learn most social traits.
Which is another nifty and imprevisible thing about nature; we often rile against the fact that it takes 20+ years to raise a human being, while that's probably the main reason why we evolved to the top of the humanoid ladder. Longer youth makes for better social agents.
[...] for conflict is the great teacher, and pain, the perfect educator.
I would say if a men in the wild builds table to sip tea before developing shelter and weaponry will not be too intelligent :'P
The Gorrila Coco is dead isnt she? I wonder if the humans ever trained her to create fire, and her response regarding it...
and perhaps we can ask her to attempt to teach the other gorilla.
One food example of intelligence and evolution: The Bonobos
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2012/11/18 01:46:25
LunaHound wrote: I would say if a men in the wild builds table to sip tea before developing shelter and weaponry will not be too intelligent :'P
They wouldn't have been very good with their priorities, like you said, but it would still remain, by the standard of nature, a feat of great intelligence.
The Gorrila Coco is dead isnt she? I wonder if the humans ever trained her to create fire, and her response regarding it...
Koko, and she's still alive, 41 years old. I'm not aware that she was ever shown how to build a fire, nor would it be a very good idea to do so to an animal in captivity, just in case she might burn down the place. But gorillas can project themselves in time, and firebuilding doesn't require more than a few steps, so they might very well be capable of it. I'm not sure, again, that it's a great idea.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2012/11/18 01:47:42
[...] for conflict is the great teacher, and pain, the perfect educator.
Kovnik Obama wrote: Koko, and she's still alive, 41 years old. I'm not aware that she was ever shown how to build a fire, nor would it be a very good idea to do so to an animal in captivity, just in case she might burn down the place. But gorillas can project themselves in time, and firebuilding doesn't require more than a few steps, so they might very well be capable of it. I'm not sure, again, that it's a great idea.
I think its a great idea, even with the risks. She can almost fully communicate with humans through sign language right?
Instead of digging for bones of our missing links , why not see how far we can take the gorillas?
Koko would be the great medium between human and other gorillas...
Building fire is a simple task, with great threat, yet thats why it serves a purpose.
Let there be test environment, let koko give this great power we know as fire, and let us see how far they can take it.
For all we know, homo sapiens might have gained such great advantage with fire alone, since its the bane of all living creatures.
To her own life? I don't think so, we've already messed up a lot of her existence...
She can almost fully communicate with humans through sign language right?
No, she can understand 2000 english words, and sign 1000 words using the american sign language. Which is incredible from the point of view of an animal, but it's far from full communication. There's autists out there that have a much more developped lexicon, and we'd still feel uneasy speaking with them.
Also, it's unclear as of now if this qualifies as language or just communication. You can teach a gorilla the human language, and they might still not have the faculty of language, because that refers to the faculty which allows us freely to associate terms with concepts and mental representations. Personnally, I'm sure they do have this faculty, but in a much more calcified manner, but it's still very much debated.
Instead of digging for bones of our missing links , why not see how far we can take the gorillas?
Would be a cool thing to try, but I wouldn't keep my hopes up.
Koko would be the great medium between human and other gorillas...
That's one of the arguments against the gorilla's faculty of language, since a being with that faculty would normally show it to it's young, which we haven't observed as of yet.
Building fire is a simple task, with great threat, yet thats why it serves a purpose.
Let there be test environment, let koko give this great power we know as fire, and let us see how far they can take it.
For all we know, homo sapiens might have gained such great advantage with fire alone, since its the bane of all living creatures.
It certainly was an advantage, but it alone doesn't explain how we came to be the Apex. Most animals, even big predators, will be afraid of a rock to the face. Fire probably accounts more for the dispersion of humans over climates that we're not naturally adapted to.
[...] for conflict is the great teacher, and pain, the perfect educator.
May the the blessings of His Grace the Emperor tumble down upon you like a golden fog. (Only a VERY select few will get this reference. And it's not from 40k. )
hotsauceman1 wrote: I have 2 dogs that, Despite being two rooms away out of sight, know exactly when im in the kitchen.
My dog, without telling her, knows I'm taking her for a walk if I'm putting my shoes on and grabbing my Ipod. If I grab one or the other, she doesn't react.
My springer spaniel does the exact same thing.
And my other dog (a dachshund for those who are wondering) has learned that she doesn't have to work to steal food from the table, just that she has to wait for the springer to knock the food down so she can steal it while it's at a much more accessible height.
)
