Are we animals, or something else? by chrisisall

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
I swear she's a Ronco dream customer

The bass-O-matic Chrisisall

"I only do it to to remind you that I'm right and that deep down, you know I'm right, you want me to be right, you need me to be right." - The Imperial Hero Strikes Back, 2010

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Thursday, March 18, 2010 11:25 AM

Quote:
Neanderthal tools have survived and been found, but no Neanderthal art, as I understand it.

This actually isn't true anymore. Apparently Neanderthals painted seashells.

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Thursday, March 18, 2010 11:31 AM

Niki: DT thought people were jumping on him and thinks Frem is mad at him for some reason, so he stopped coming around...

I still talk to him over emails, but yeah, I miss the insights he always brought. I try to pick and choose the topics I link him because he's busy, restricting it to things I know he's been looking into, but his information on other topics was always good stuff. Guy researched a lot.

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Thursday, March 18, 2010 11:56 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:

I think they do have a 'soul', it's just not as complex as ours - mainly because their brain power is less.
Oh, THAT is a low blow to Sarah Palin's youngest child!! So, his "soul" is not as "complex" as any other child? Brainpower is the measure of a SOUL now??? Were Hitler & Einstein's souls more "complex" than YOURS????
Elitist Humancentric balderdash!

The laughing Chrisisall

Reminds me of the duel between Edward Drinker Cope and O.C. Marsh. The scientists, former friends turned rivals, were the central figures of the Great Dinosaur Bone wars of the 19th century. So hard up to one up each other, their bickering lasted beyond their graves.

One of Cope's last requests was that scientists dissect his head after his death to determine the size of his brain, which he was certain would be bigger than Marsh's. Wisely, perhaps, Marsh declined the challenge, and to this day, Cope's head rests in storage at the University of Pennsylvania.

Summer Glau can simply walk into Mordor

Bones: "Don't 'rawr' her!"
Booth: "What? she'rawred' me first."

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Thursday, March 18, 2010 12:00 PM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Too bad, DT was interesting. I don't think, however that his information was always "good", from our exchanges. He went off a bit half-cocked for my taste. I'd have liked to debate him, but it was pretty obviously impossible eventually.

Too bad, tho'; different voices always enhance things.

Okay, off to physical therapy, but with one last reminder that "we" may not be all that superior to others after all, and the concept that chimps might be laughing at us:

So long, and thanx for all the fish!

"I'm just right. Kinda like the sun rising in the east and the world being round...its not a need its just the way it is." The Delusional "Hero", 3/1/10

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Thursday, March 18, 2010 12:05 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
"Recent discoveries in anthropology may show that we are not great apes at all as has been to most logical assumption in the past."

Now THAT'S an interesting (but false) idea !

“Man’s greatest asset is the unsettled mind.”
- Isaac Asimov

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Thursday, March 18, 2010 12:33 PM

Huh. Whenever I doubled checked what DT said, I always found confirmation sources right away. I do that though. Someone says something, and I go double check. It's a good way to make me waste a few hours on wikipedia... Shouldn't have said that.

Good luck with the physical therapy. What for? Did you hurt yourself somehow?

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Thursday, March 18, 2010 12:33 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Niki2:
Quote:
We are definatly superior in a survival of the fittest sense to other animals that have become extinct, but equal to those that have survived
I disagree. Other species fit IN with their world, instinctively or genetically; we change the world to fit our SHORT-TERM convenience, and along the way have made millions of other species extinct or removed them from competition with us or introduced species for our convenience which have caused others to go extinct, and in doing so screwed up the entire natural balance. Few other species have done that.

“We”, as a species, are not even winners in “survival of the fittest”, given that on our own individually we would be slaughtered by many other predator species. As in

I'm sure we won't be the first species to breed themselves into extinction. As far as being slaughtered by other predator species, there aren’t many that could take on a human with a wooden spear. A big cat uses it's brain to stealthily attack from behind, if you also denied them the use of their brain they would be easy prey. Wolfs hunt in a pack, alone they would starve and become extinct. Intelligence and in some cases cooperation are what put predators at the top of the food chain, to say we are no match for predators in their environment means surrendering our greatest assets while letting them retain theirs.

“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.”
Charles Darwin

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Friday, March 19, 2010 9:17 AM

OUT2THEBLACK

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Quote:
Neanderthal tools have survived and been found, but no Neanderthal art, as I understand it.

...Apparently Neanderthals painted seashells.

Yes , this is true !

I see them in the touristy shops down at the beach , all the time...

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Friday, March 19, 2010 9:34 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Newly discovered painted scallops and cockleshells in Spain are the first hard evidence that Neandertals made jewelry. These findings suggest humanity's closest extinct relatives might have been capable of symbolism, after all.

Body ornaments made of painted and pierced seashells dating back 70,000 to 120,000 years have been found in Africa and the Near East for years, and serve as evidence of symbolic thought among the earliest modern humans (Homo sapiens). The absence of similar finds in Europe at that time, when it was Neandertal territory, has supported the notion that they lacked symbolism, a potential sign of mental inferiority that might help explain why modern humans eventually replaced them.

Although hints of Neandertal art and jewelry have cropped up in recent years, such as pierced and grooved animal-tooth pendants or a decorated limestone slab on the grave of a child, these have often been shrugged off as artifacts mixed in from modern humans, imitation without understanding, or ambiguous in nature. Now archaeologist João Zilhão at the University of Bristol in England and his colleagues have found 50,000-year-old jewelry at two caves in southeastern Spain, art dating back 10,000 years before the fossil record reveals evidence of modern humans entering Europe.

At the Cueva (Cave) Antón, the scientists unearthed a pierced king scallop shell (Pecten maximus) painted with orange pigment made of yellow goethite and red hematite collected some five kilometers from that site. In material collected from the Cueva de los Aviones, alongside quartz and flint artifacts were bones from horses, deer, ibex, rabbits and tortoises as well as seashells from edible cockles (Glycymeris insubrica), mussels, limpets and snails; the researchers also discovered two pierced dog-cockleshells painted with traces of red hematite pigment. No dyes were found on the food shells or stone tools, suggesting the jewelry was not just painted at random.

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=neandertal-art-human

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Friday, March 19, 2010 10:01 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Thanx Byte: (threadjack) I've got "achilles tendonitis"...tendons take forever! It's just one of the physical "challenges" that seem to have all come down on my head just the past three years or so--before which, I'd never had surgery nor any serious injuries/illnesses.

I consider myself extremely lucky, however; my first PT helped, but not all that much. She went back to school; the one I have now is a miracle worker, and our first meeting, was the only person to ever tell me I walk pronated, which affects a LOT of things. I'm making real progress under her...but if a doctor ever tells you tendons take a long time to heal and to imobilize it before anything else, take it from me: LISTEN TO THEM! I had mine looked at after only a couple of months; Jim waited so long now it's a torn tendon requiring surgery and a looong recuperation.

Getting old sux...seems like we go along for decades just fine, then everything starts falling apart at once!

Husband just had hernia surgery Tuesday (idjit tried to go to work the very next day, now he's been crippled and agreed to stay in bed until Monday). This morning he got the result of his MRI (which he put off as well) and found out his is a TORN tendon, so more surgery, as I said. He put off having an MRI because of the cost...again, idjit, so now he's paying the price in even more lost time and a longer recovery.

Jim puts a lot of things off because of money; our health insurance provided by his employer has a fairly hefty out-of-pocket; I'm on disability so get Medicare as my "secondary provider", thus in my case, they take care of the co-pays, etc., and I end up with a teeeeny little bill. He gets stuck with the full co-pay, etc., because he's not "retired", tho' his share of the premiums has been going up steadily. He'd actually have less out-of-pocket on Medicare, but he's trying to amass as much money as possible to get us through the remaining years.

He's in FAR better shape than I (still runs every morning, bicycles, exercises), tho' ten years older, so it took longer for him to start falling apart I guess. Anyone thinks we don't need an overhaul of the for-profit health system, they should just check into the facts, where it's been going the past decade or more, and where that indicates it WILL continue to go without reform! (/threadjack)

"I'm just right. Kinda like the sun rising in the east and the world being round...its not a need its just the way it is." The Delusional "Hero", 3/1/10

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Friday, March 19, 2010 10:06 AM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

kirkules :"Recent discoveries in anthropology may show that we are not great apes at all as has been to most logical assumption in the past."

Rue: FWIW - humans are great apes. We share blood types, major histocompatibility sites, and humans share roughly 98% genes with chimpanzees. Humans have one pair of chromosomes fewer than chimpanzees and gorillas. However, human gene # 2 can be shown to be a fusion of two chimpanzee genes - from banding pattern, size, genetic content and the presence of a vestigial extra centromere in the human gene.

from various texts not available on-line -
however, you can check these fact by doing a quick google search

***************************************************************

Silence is consent.

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Friday, March 19, 2010 10:30 AM

Sig: Yeah, that's the one. I actually read it in Discover. Thanks for the cite though. I know I get lazy about that... ^_^'

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Friday, March 19, 2010 10:31 AM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Anyway, to go on to some speculation about this: it's been proposed that the different number of genes is what put humans into genetic isolation from chimpanzees and gorillas. And that makes me wonder about Neanderthals and humans.

Consider that horses have 64 genes and donkeys have 62, when they mate they produce infertile offspring. If Neanderthal had a different number of genes from humans, it might mean that any pairing would have resulted infertile offspring.

Also, I came across an interesting fact in Wikibooks - different kinds of Equus (horse genus) have widely differing numbers of genes.

Przewalski's horse 66

Horse 64

Donkey 62

Asiatic wild ass 56

Transcaspain wild ass 54

Tibetan wild ass 52

Grevy's zebra 46

Grant's zebra 44

Hartmann's mountain zebra 32

or less than half the genes of Przewalski's horse.

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Silence is consent.

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Friday, March 19, 2010 10:35 AM

Ouchie. Well, good luck to you and your poor husband. Hernias? Torn tendons? Eek!

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Friday, March 19, 2010 11:45 AM

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
How much “mentality” do you think it takes to know how to measure complex water currents?

Animals being able to judge water currents and stuff is cool, but so is a computer being able to fly a fighter aircraft better than a human - it's not evidence of 'soul', or even intelligence strictly speaking. So let's not muddle concepts... if we're talking about souls I think we have to limit ourselves to talking about the mental processes of thoughts and emotions. And in this respect humans are the most complex, and advanced.

Animals (typically predators) are very cool because they have a kind of 'purity of spirit'. Anyone who has seen a cat strut around on its own turf might know what I'm talking about - they are pure instinct, and know exactly what they are about. But to my mind this purity of soul comes from their minds not being clouded by rational thought. My cats kill and torture for fun without a second thought, and the female cat will go on heat and despicably pester and annoy the two (neutered) male cats, but then when she comes off she'll go straight back to strutting around like she owns the place - like nothing has happened. Her mind is free from any kind of 'why am I acting this way' questions, she does whatever her instinct dictates at any particular time - hence purity, and in essence, lack of complexity.

This shows pretty well what I mean by the 'purity of spirit' of a predator: http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/ted-hughes/hawk-roosting/

On Neanderthals, good point about the shells Byte. I think the general concensus is that Neanderthal culture and symbolism was much more basic than ours though, from Wiki:

Quote:
Due to the paucity of symbolism that Neanderthal artifacts show, Neanderthal language probably did not deal much with a verbal future tense, again restricting Neanderthal exploitation of resources. Cro-Magnon people had a much better standard of living than the hardscrabble existence available to Neanderthals. With better language skills and bigger social groups, a better psychological repertoire, and better planning, Cro-Magnon people, living alongside the Neanderthals on the same land, outclassed them in terms of life span, population, available spare time (as shown by Cro-Magnon art), physical health and lower rate of injury, infant mortality, comfort, quality of life, and food procurement.

Heads should roll

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Friday, March 19, 2010 12:14 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

I have to disagree that the 'soul' depends on mentation, that only people have it, or that it even exists. In the first case then those people without mentation - and any severely brain-damaged person fits that description - can be said to have lost their 'soul'. And we have no idea what kind of mentation animals have, though we do know some species have a concept of self. Further, we have no way to judge certain kinds of intelligence - the octopus contains a vast amount of non-cerebral nervous system. For all we know, they are body-wide thinking machines. One thing we do know, is that despite their extremely short life-spans (long life-span has been posited as necessary for intelligence) they are immensely curious, inventive and clever.

Linking 'soul' to mentation falls short in too many instances.

And then of course, how do you prove that it even exists.

However, for legal purposes, loss of brain activity in someone who once had it has been taken to mean they are no longer 'alive' in a meaningful sense.

BTW I have had my cat look me straight in the eye - something not instinctual to cats - and try to talk to me with plaintive, soft, highly modulated meows.

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Silence is consent.

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Friday, March 19, 2010 12:18 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Niki2:

Getting old sux...seems like we go along for decades just fine, then everything starts falling apart at once!

Gotta cruse 'till the tires fall off!

I am a mass of pain. Back, knees, left wrist, neck... the list goes on. But having a lot of this pain since my 20's makes me think, it's not how it hurts, it's how you do whatever the Hell you want to because it's gonna hurt anyway.

The laughing Chrisisall

"I only do it to to remind you that I'm right and that deep down, you know I'm right, you want me to be right, you need me to be right." - The Imperial Hero Strikes Back, 2010

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Friday, March 19, 2010 12:21 PM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

I think Rue has answered the question for me, and far better than I ever could have.

Yup, Chris, that's what I've learned too. Sweeping and mopping hurt the damned torn-ligament wrist (it will never be right); hiking hurts either the back (DDD and herniated disc) or--until today (yayy!!)--the tendon (walked the dogs for an hour this morning, been bicycling 'cuz of tendon, first time walking in a couple of weeks--35 minutes in, bit of pain then it went away, 10 minutes later, same, but it don't hurt now and that's a VICTORY!); riding my motorcycle, bicycle, or myriad other things, hurts the damned wrist AND the other wrist (which has a gangleon cyst and carpal tunnel); cooking hurts my back. But I do 'em anyway; some 'cuz I have to, some 'cuz I refuse to give into it. Coupla aleve and my recliner, and I'm fine a few hours later--or the next day. Screw it!

"I'm just right. Kinda like the sun rising in the east and the world being round...its not a need its just the way it is." The Delusional "Hero", 3/1/10

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Friday, March 19, 2010 12:40 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Niki2:
Screw it!

That's the spirit!
Pain wants you to go fetal in a calcified way.
Eff pain.
Life IS pain. Then joy & everything else!

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Friday, March 19, 2010 12:47 PM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

"I'm just right. Kinda like the sun rising in the east and the world being round...its not a need its just the way it is." The Delusional "Hero", 3/1/10

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Friday, March 19, 2010 12:55 PM

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
Linking 'soul' to mentation falls short in too many instances.

And then of course, how do you prove that it even exists.

I'm talking about the 'soul' as the seat of thoughts and emotions. It exists to the extent that humans and animals have thoughts and emotions, and if not in the brain then where...?

Quote:
In the first case then those people without mentation - and any severely brain-damaged person fits that description - can be said to have lost their 'soul'.

I have to tread carefully hear as don't want to upset people, but with dementia for example, I have heard relatives talk about having 'lost' their loved one long before actual death.

Quote:
BTW I have had my cat look me straight in the eye - something not instinctual to cats - and try to talk to me with plaintive, soft, highly modulated meows.

I like animals, and I don't want to burst bubbles, but I think humans project human psychology onto pets and animals allllllll the time.

Heads should roll

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Friday, March 19, 2010 1:20 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
Asiatic wild ass 56

Is it bad that I was expecting a picture of Kim "the pufferfish" Jong-il under that one ?

-F

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Friday, March 19, 2010 1:40 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
kirkules :"Recent discoveries in anthropology may show that we are not great apes at all as has been to most logical assumption in the past."

Rue: FWIW - humans are great apes. We share blood s types, major histocompatibility sites, and humans share roughly 98% genes with chimpanzees. Humans have one pair of chromosomes fewer than chimpanzees and gorillas. However, human gene # 2 can be shown to be a fusion of two chimpanzee genes - from banding pattern, size, genetic content and the presence of a vestigial extra centromere in the human gene.

from various texts not available on-line -
however, you can check these fact by doing a quick google search

There is no doubt in my mind that we are closely related to the chimpanzee, but the question is which came first the chimp or the upright walking hominid. The jury is still out on whether the hominid from the link below is a chimp ancestor, human ancestor or neither. It does however introduce the possibility the our earliest ancestor predated the great apes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahelanthropus_tchadensis

"Sahelanthropus may represent a common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees; no consensus has been reached yet by the scientific community. The original placement of this species as a human ancestor but not a chimpanzee ancestor would complicate the picture of human phylogeny. In particular, if Toumaï is a direct human ancestor, then its facial features bring the status of Australopithecus into doubt because its thickened brow ridges were reported to be similar to those of some later fossil hominids (notably Homo erectus), whereas this morphology differs from that observed in all australopithecines, most fossil hominids and extant humans."

Another possibility is that Toumaï is related to both humans and chimpanzees, but is the ancestor of neither.

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Friday, March 19, 2010 2:17 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

"I'm talking about the 'soul' as the seat of thoughts and emotions."

But when you claim only humans have 'souls' you are doing so without any understanding of the thoughts and emotions experienced by other species. If you don't know that, how can you claim they have no souls ?

"I think humans project human psychology onto pets and animals allllllll the time."

And human interpretation of animals happens to be generally true for good reason. Higher animals must be able to read other animals. It's necessary within the species and between species. Friend or foe ? Predator or harmless visitor ? Anyone who has watched a cat stalk a bird AND THE BIRD WATCH THE CAT knows this is true (or, for a more exotic example, a zebra watch a lion). There is mutual observation and interpretaton going on.

I just finished watching a special on Temple Grandin, the autistic veterinarian who could keenly 'read' animals (though interestingly, not humans.) I have also seen studies done on other animals and the signals they give off though their eyes, ears, mouths, nostrils, stance, attention, agitation and other visual non-verbal communication. Those signals are clearly interpretable though with some species you must watch closely.

I’ve also been told by several veterinarians that they must depend on the pet owner to describe what the problem is, b/c the pet – if well cared for – will display signs of weakness that s/he won’t display when feeling defensive; and b/c the owner - if s/he is attentive – will know when the pet is acting out of his/her normal range of behavior and will be able to at least assign a general description (listless, weak, hostile).

There is far more real communication going on than you give credit for.

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Silence is consent.

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Friday, March 19, 2010 3:08 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

There was a book (Plague Dogs) and somewhere near the beginning- maybe even in the preface- there was a poetic discussion about how animals feel. I can't possibly do it justice, but what it said was something like: It's HUMANS who don't feel. We have a long-remembered past, we envision a future, we have rationalizations by which we explain our feelings, comfort ourselves, put it in context.

But animals feel everything as if there was no past and no future, no choices and no context. They feel a lifetime in a moment. We should never think that animals can't feel, because sometimes that is all they do. And because of that, we should be more careful of their feelings than our own.

I would add... very similar to children.

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Friday, March 19, 2010 3:28 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:

I would add... very similar to children.

Exactly similar.
All my adult pain can be traced back to careless smacks I received as a kid. And the careless smacks I witnessed perpetrated upon my Mother.
Lack of empathy might have made me another Cheney.
I escaped that course.
Mostly.

God help another mugger targeting me, though. In my teens I was much more lenient. Now I might seek more permanent damage in my rage.
But maybe not...

*catharsis over*

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Friday, March 19, 2010 3:42 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:

There is far more real communication going on than you give credit for.

Less communication of any worth goes on between most humans IMO.
Except hostility.
My cats bite me when I play too rough, but then lick me in the same minute when they remember they love me.

Lucky I'm not an Incredible Shrinking Man, eh?

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Friday, March 19, 2010 3:48 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Temple knows his stuff, oh yes.

I couldn't even come as close to describing it as you two did, but yes, animals are psychologically, very, very different from us.

That doesn't mean they can NOT be understood, or that they are unwilling to make themselves understood by us - most feline vocalisations are in fact an effort to communicate with us, since we're as a rule (according to the cat) half blind and dumber than dirt about reading inter-cat communication like scent and body language.

And even IF you can make the connection, your ability to communicate back is very limited cause you have a different physical form, the body language doesn't work so well, you lack the right scents or even detection of em, etc etc.
Not to mention you really can't apply most human concepts since the whole "mind" you are trying to tune into is so very different from our own.

That said, communication IS possible, IF they wanna communicate with you - which often as not, they don't - seen from an animal perspective we're friggin obnoxious.

-F

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Friday, March 19, 2010 3:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
seen from an animal perspective we're friggin obnoxious.

BUT, we do feed 'em!

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Friday, March 19, 2010 4:07 PM

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
But when you claim only humans have 'souls'...

I never said that, Lord help me, I said the human 'soul' is more *complex* than animal 'souls'. Simply, our thoughts and emotions are more complex and advanced.

Quote:
you are doing so without any understanding of the thoughts and emotions experienced by other species.

Except from that 'higher species' perception you went on to talk about... Seriously though, if an animal had thoughts and emotions that were incomprehensible to me, it would evidence them in actions that were incomprehensible to me. Just like my cats are mystified (or would be if they had any intellectual curiosity) by my use of language to communicate with other humans, my enjoyment of watching firefly, my wearing of different clothes, my general use of tools and machinery etc. The cats will never understand me, but I understand the cats - their behaviour holds no incomprehensible mystery for me.

Heads should roll

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Friday, March 19, 2010 4:09 PM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Some think we are above animals- that we are unique due to our superiour intelligence, opposable thumbs, souls or whatnot.

Homo sapiens are animals who think they are not.

But their collective memories are filled with examples demonstrating many of them are actually worse.

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Friday, March 19, 2010 4:21 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
their behaviour holds no great mystery for me.

So now it's "mystery" that defines the soul...
Complexity, mystery, how about levity?

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Friday, March 19, 2010 4:44 PM

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Somebody earlier referenced the quite 'mysterious' action of dolphins carrying their dead family members bodies on their backs...

This suggests some emotional depth to me. It is a strange action, but I believe I can comprehend the thought process, as we humans care about our families members as well. I'm saying if some animals are above us in any thoughts/emotions then they must exhibit this in strange actions - like all the human actions I talked about earlier that would be mysterious to the mind of a cat.

Heads should roll

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Friday, March 19, 2010 5:00 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

k-ules

This is what you posted: ""Recent discoveries in anthropology may show that we are not great apes at all as has been to most logical assumption in the past."

Genetically and biochemically humans are more closely related to chimpanzees than humans are to gorillas, or chimpanzees are to gorillas. The orangutan is even further removed from the grouping humans/ chimps/ / / gorillas. If humans are not great apes, then neither are chimps, and probably gorillas as well - to say nothing of the orangutans - in which case the definition becomes moot.

Current genetic and biochemical similarities are often a good guide to evolutionary history. When incomplete bone fragments were the only source of information many false comparisons and conclusions were drawn. Genetic research has caused much reclassifying throughout all the plant, animal, protista, fungal, archaebacterial, and eubacterial kingdoms. And that in turn has caused a reevaluation of evolutionary theories. Since there is no reason to doubt the genetic data over bone data, I suspect those bones will be found to belong to a long extinct branch in the evolutionary tree. And speaking of which, there were many proto-apes over the course of evolution whose lines died out and have no current representation – Neanderthals come to mind.

There is also good reason to think humans evolved on the horn of Africa, which was detached from and attached to the main continent many times by rising and falling ocean levels. It has been suggested that b/c of that, there is scant direct fossil records of human evolution on the main body of the continent.

Anyway, I have to go. Ponder this and consider you may be wrong.

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Friday, March 19, 2010 5:35 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

"... if an animal had thoughts and emotions that were incomprehensible to me ..."

Then you claim to understand everything every animal does ? They never do anything outside of your comprehension ?

So, just briefly getting around to 'thoughts' and 'emotions' (b/c I really have to get going) ...

Animals can and do have abstract representations of things in their heads. How do I know this ? B/c a cat recognizes water whether it's in a puddle, a blue ceramic bowl that it's been drinking out of for years or a new stainless steel one, a pool, pouring out of a tap, or sloshing in a bathtub. These abstract representations I would consider 'thoughts' and they are every bit as complex as ours. After all, they have to eat, drink, shelter, mate, care for their young, and hunt or avoid being hunted in a complex environment, and often, they form societies.

They have dreams, so they have memory and imagination.

And they plainly have emotions.

Many animals recognize individuals either of their own or other species. SignyM's orphaned sparrow who is the epitome of a bird brain recognizes each of us separately.

Some even have a sense of self, and, as far as we can tell, language. They understand the 'theory of mind'. They can lie by misdirection. And chimpanzees, gorillas and elephants have been seen to mourn their dead.

And then, as I mentioned before, there are animals who are complex but so alien we may never understand exactly what their intelligence is - parrots and octopuses come to mind.

Given all of this, I can't say that their souls are smaller than ours. They do all that we do and deal with all that we deal with.

But the debate about the actual existence of souls is another direction which I won't be able to address now.

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Friday, March 19, 2010 5:48 PM

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
"... if an animal had thoughts and emotions that were incomprehensible to me ..."

Then you claim to understand everything every animal does ?

'Incomprehensible' suggests that it is an action and a thought process that I could never possibly understand. The mysterious action and thought process has to be completely beyond human comprehension - science will never be able to answer it. Like my cats would *never* understand a lot of my human actions/thought processes.

To your other points, sure, animals have similar or more primitive versions of a lot of our thought processes. That doesn't surprise me - we're animals too.

Heads should roll

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Friday, March 19, 2010 10:04 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

So you claim that you COULD be omniscient in regards to animals if only you tried ? I have to say, that's quite a claim.

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Saturday, March 20, 2010 3:55 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
k-ules

This is what you posted: ""Recent discoveries in anthropology may show that we are not great apes at all as has been to most logical assumption in the past."

Genetically and biochemically humans are more closely related to chimpanzees than humans are to gorillas, or chimpanzees are to gorillas. The orangutan is even further removed from the grouping humans/ chimps/ / / gorillas. If humans are not great apes, then neither are chimps, and probably gorillas as well - to say nothing of the orangutans - in which case the definition becomes moot.

Current genetic and biochemical similarities are often a good guide to evolutionary history. When incomplete bone fragments were the only source of information many false comparisons and conclusions were drawn. Genetic research has caused much reclassifying throughout all the plant, animal, protista, fungal, archaebacterial, and eubacterial kingdoms. And that in turn has caused a reevaluation of evolutionary theories. Since there is no reason to doubt the genetic data over bone data, I suspect those bones will be found to belong to a long extinct branch in the evolutionary tree. And speaking of which, there were many proto-apes over the course of evolution whose lines died out and have no current representation – Neanderthals come to mind.

There is also good reason to think humans evolved on the horn of Africa, which was detached from and attached to the main continent many times by rising and falling ocean levels. It has been suggested that b/c of that, there is scant direct fossil records of human evolution on the main body of the continent.

Anyway, I have to go. Ponder this and consider you may be wrong.

I agree that it’s irrelevant whether we choose to call ourselves great apes or otherwise because we are so genetically similar to apes. What I was suggesting is that we did not evolve from any of the great ape species still in existence and that the split might have happened up to 12 million years ago long before any species similar to those we recognize today existed.

Here’s a link to info about a study that might explain why we have not varied much genetically since our split from the chimp or a common ancestor. It might be that we have not evolved much genetically because of the traits that make us human. Our ancestors and dead ends like Neanderthal did not vary much genetically over time because they were bipedal hominids.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2009/01/08-02.html?etoc

“Hublin and Premo propose that if human ancestors selected mates from similar backgrounds, there would have been a lot of inbreeding within different populations, restricting the flow of new mutations to other groups. "If these guys on the other side of the river spoke a different language and had different weapons, you would not try to mate with them or they might kill you," says Hublin. Over time, most populations went extinct, allowing the genes of only a few groups to proliferate, further erasing genetic diversity.”

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Saturday, March 20, 2010 6:27 AM

CITIZEN

Quote:
Originally posted by Kirkules:
I agree that it’s irrelevant whether we choose to call ourselves great apes or otherwise because we are so genetically similar to apes. What I was suggesting is that we did not evolve from any of the great ape species still in existence and that the split might have happened up to 12 million years ago long before any species similar to those we recognize today existed.

1) Humans are a member of the Great Apes.
2) I've never heard the suggestion that we're descended from a living species of Great Ape, outside of creationist strawmen.

Humans are a member of the Great Ape family because we share a close common ancestor.

--------------------------------------------------

If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows.

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Saturday, March 20, 2010 9:47 AM

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
So you claim that you COULD be omniscient in regards to animals if only you tried ?

No, I don't feel I need to, because if animals *did* widely have these thoughts and emotions it would be *obvious*. Like it would be *obvious* to my cat (if it were in its nature to contemplate such things) that I have a range of thoughts and emotions outside of its comprehension.

One last example of this: I support a football team. If one of my cats was to study my life's actions in the way that we study animals, my cat would observe a strange but consistent pattern to my behaviour - on certain days, fairly evenly spaced apart, I get together with other humans and go to the pub, where everyone watches a screen showing other humans kicking a ball around, and gets excited by it. After extensive study my cat would be familiar with this clear pattern in my behaviour, as well as maybe other little details like the colour of clothes I choose to wear on such occasions...

My point is, the cat would not comprehend my mentality at all, but it would still be able to observe and identify the special pattern of behaviour, and so my mysterious mentality would be *obvious*, if not comprehended. THIS is the evidence that is missing in your 'Who knows what depth of emotion and philosohical thought animals' minds entertain?' theory.

Heads should roll

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Sunday, March 21, 2010 11:28 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Quote:
And human interpretation of animals happens to be generally true for good reason

Called anthroporphism. And I don't think it's as infallible as was suggested. MANY people mistake an animal's actions for something they can relate to, but which in actually has nothing to do with the animal's action or intent.

One only has to watch a few episodes of Dog Whisperer or It's Me or the Dog to see how stupidly people frequently interpret animals' actions. A lot of the time I sit there shaking my head, not sure whether to be amused by them or disgusted with them...or both.

I also don't believe we can interpret animals' actions; many are so foreign to us tht our mentality can't wrap its head around them well enough to interpret them. Not necessarily domesticated species, because we've both "molded" them to our way of being and have been intimately connected to them for so long. But other species...no, I don't think we can accurately interpret their actions or the reasons for them.

"I'm just right. Kinda like the sun rising in the east and the world being round...its not a need its just the way it is." The Delusional "Hero", 3/1/10

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Monday, March 22, 2010 9:42 AM

PERFESSERGEE

Quote:
Originally posted by Kirkules:
Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
Others (like myself) feel that we are merely well-groomed talking chimps, with no exclusive franchise on "souls" or varieties of intellect.

We are animals because we have established the knowledge base to be able to properly define our place among other living things. We are not however just “well groomed chimps”. Recent discoveries in anthropology may show that we are not great apes at all as has been to most logical assumption in the past. Though we almost certainly share a common ancestor the great apes, apes probably evolved long after the split with upright walking hominids that we are directly descended from. We are defiantly superior in a survival of the fittest sense to other animals that have become extinct, but equal to those that have survived.

Kirkules, I believe you are mischaracterizing the recently published work on our distant ancestor (and that of the other great apes), Ardepithecus. That animal, now the earliest know fully bipedal hominid, was the subject of nearly an entire issue of the journal Science last October, and it caused some revisions of our thinking about the history of human evolution. One of those revisions was not that we aren't great apes. We most certainly are, on many, many grounds; biochemical, anatomical, genetic, dietary, the particulars of how we use tools (e.g., all the great apes have good overhand throwing abilities) etc. etc. One big surprise were that "Ardi" didn't live in a savannah habitat, as we've thought for many decades, but in a tropical rainforest. The open nature of savannah grasslands was thought to promote upright walking. Apparently not, as Ardi walked upright, based on hipbone and foot structure. The other major suprise comes from the fact that Ardi is more than 6 million years old - about 2 million years older than the split between chimps and us. And Ardi is more like us than a chimp. We had always thought that the common ancestor would be chimplike, and that we evolved from that state into the animal that we now are. In other words, we not only didn't evolve from chimps or the other animals currently called "great apes" they evolved from us!

I'd also question your assertion that making other species go extinct makes us superior, but I guess that depends on how you define "superior". A survivor most definitely - we've certainly survived all of our closest relatives (neandertals, Homo erectus, Homo floresensis), and all of our other close relatives (chimps, gorillas and orangutans) are highly endangered in the wild, mostly as a result of human activity. Not a record I'd point to with pride and assert our superiority.

I'd go with Chris's "well groomed talking chimps".

perfessergee

Edited to add: I see now the article you were referring to. The ones I'm citing make up almost all of the 2 October 2009 issue of Science.

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Monday, March 22, 2010 10:01 AM

A female human goes to a styling salon every Saturday. When she returns, you don't see any difference in the appearance or length of her hair, but she inexplicably expects you to notice this difference upon threat of punishment.

You are able to observe this behaviour, but not comprehend it.

Despite this, I don't argue that all males must be completely lacking in their ability to even recognize this obvious mysterious mentality. We would have to ask them all, and they all seem to be too interested in going to the pub and watching football to participate.

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Monday, March 22, 2010 10:06 AM

PERFESSERGEE

Rue, a quick correction: We have different numbers of chromosomes from chimps and gorillas, but about the same number of genes (or otherwise we wouldn't share 98+% of them). The genes are just arranged differently, like our fused chromosome #2. Or alternatively, if our type is ancestral (as may now be the case as I suggested above), chimps could have gotten the extra pair from having our #2 split into two. Genes get repackaged in a lot of funny ways over evolutionary time (including having viral DNA become a permanent part of our package). And it's likely that most of the differences between chimps and ourselves are minor changes in DNA sequence in genes that do the same thing for both species - though obviously there are some profound differences as well, since it's not hard to tell the 2 species apart!

perfessergee

Edited to correct spelling

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Monday, March 22, 2010 10:08 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by perfessergee:
In other words, we not only didn't evolve from chimps or the other animals currently called "great apes" they evolved from us!

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Monday, March 22, 2010 10:43 AM

OUT2THEBLACK

I am NOT AN ANIMAL !

Quote:
Originally posted by perfessergee:
Genes get repackaged in a lot of funny ways over evolutionary time (including having viral DNA become a permanent part of our package).

There's NO 'viral DNA' in MY package !

I use 'protection' !

...And keep your stinking hands off me , all you damn , dirty APES !

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Monday, March 22, 2010 11:19 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
A female human goes to a styling salon every Saturday. When she returns, you don't see any difference in the appearance or length of her hair, but she inexplicably expects you to notice this difference upon threat of punishment.

You are able to observe this behaviour, but not comprehend it.

Despite this, I don't argue that all males must be completely lacking in their ability to even recognize this obvious mysterious mentality. We would have to ask them all, and they all seem to be too interested in going to the pub and watching football to participate.

*rolls out of his chair laughing*

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Tuesday, March 23, 2010 6:27 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

That one's easy. Women want to be attractive to their mates; the only way to do that is (what they THINK is) looking different, doing what society makes them think needs doing to look attractive...new clothes are the same thing, new shoes, etc. And if not noticed, they want to bring it to their mate's attention. If the mate's not appreciative, SOME women feel hurt, which translates to anger. That stuff's been happening probably since the first of our ancestors stuck a flower in her hair. Easily interpreted.

Jim doesn't notice changes in me unless they're drastic, and even then might not mention anything...but I did cut my hair last year, which I'd been growing for years. He mentioned THAT, because he was sad I had done it. I pull my hair back into a clip, and once he remarked that since I did so, why have long hair?...so I thought he'd like my wearing it down if it was short. Imagine my surprise when he said "yeah, but when I ran my hands through it, it was so lovely".

Can't win for losing...it's back in a clip and growing again. Easier for ME that way, since he doesn't give a damn. He DOES like me to wear makeup (which I rarely do anymore)--I don't do anything but eyeliner, but given I've got severe myopia (which seems to make many people say "You've got lovely eyes", weirdly!), my eyes do look naked without eye liner. I just don't bother very often at my age.

He still says I'm "beautiful", and sexy, which mystifies ME. Can one of you males tell me why a guy--given older guys seem to seek out younger, sexier women--would still think his 61-year-old wife is sexy?? THAT one eludes me!

"I'm just right. Kinda like the sun rising in the east and the world being round...its not a need its just the way it is." The Delusional "Hero", 3/1/10

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Tuesday, March 23, 2010 6:54 AM