Creepy fact

发布者 Laihendi

Vikey, it may be comical, but it only makes him seem more like a human.

And Kath, say that gorilla has the vocabulary of a 5 year old... knows 1,000 signs and understands 2,000 words. That's probably a lot more than many 5 year olds, but for the sake of simplicity... let's go with it. If a gorilla can use a language created by and used by humans just as proficiently as a 5 year old, does that mean that a 5 year old is a lesser creature and is incapable of emotion? Of course not.

发布者 Laihendi

Skyfire, you're the one who started classifying creatures and inferior beings. Scroll up if you don't believe it.

And way to go completely ignoring how a mere animal is capable of not only understanding but using a human language.

And you say animals can't care? It seems to Laihendi that you simply can't care about them. As said before multiple times "Just because you can't understand the complexities of animals, it doesn't mean they don't exist".

Where you are wrong is that you are taking the specific case and extending it to the general, which is an easy-to-see logical fallacy.

So you're saying that Laihendi can't use specific cases to back up his arguments? Why? Do you not like it when others have evidence indicating that you're wrong?

发布者 182246

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

发布者 Haxzor

Ivokk I pretty much agree with you totally. We need to have change otherwise we will cease to exist. But science can help that change.

I would love to live in a romantic world, but it can't exist.
A romantisized world is a utopian world.

It's not just science that made the world less romantic, but politics and womens rights(unfortnate as it is, it's true) also played major parts

发布者 Skyfire

Skyfire, you're the one who started classifying creatures and inferior beings. Scroll up if you don't believe it.Yes, but my message was not based on any inherent inferiority with respect to humanity, which you seem to think it was. They are simply inferior technologically and rationally. This I then used to say that they can not feel true emotion. REREAD EVERYTHING AGAIN.

And way to go completely ignoring how a mere animal is capable of not only understanding but using a human language.

Which has what to do with rationality? Which has what to do with the general case? You need to read it, again. Read all of it a 3rd time, because you either won't get it the 2nd or you'll refuse to get it the 2nd.

And you say animals can't care? It seems to Laihendi that you simply can't care about them. As said before multiple times "Just because you can't understand the complexities of animals, it doesn't mean they don't exist".

They can't care because they can not rationalize. Read it all, a fourth time. Is this sounding like a broken record? If it is, you should look at what you're saying, even thinking, and adjust to what I'm saying.

So you're saying that Laihendi can't use specific cases to back up his arguments? Why?

Because using the specific case only proves your argument for the specific case. As you're the one harping about all animals, you need to also use the general case. Which you have not.

It's like arguing that (x-3)(x+3)=0 only has one root at 3. You either need to prove a) that there is also a specific root at -3 or you need to b) prove that there are always roots at certain places on a quadratic curve. The first you have not done, and the analog to the quadratic equation which is required for the second you similarly have not done. I, on the other hand, have come out and said "these things are true in all cases, with respect to emotion".

发布者 182246

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

发布者 Laihendi

Women's rights played a part in making the world less utopian?

...

发布者 Laihendi

Skyfire, you're the one who started classifying creatures and inferior beings. Scroll up if you don't believe it.Yes, but my message was not based on any inherent inferiority with respect to humanity, which you seem to think it was. They are simply inferior technologically and rationally. This I then used to say that they can not feel true emotion. REREAD EVERYTHING AGAIN.

And way to go completely ignoring how a mere animal is capable of not only understanding but using a human language.

Which has what to do with rationality? Which has what to do with the general case? You need to read it, again. Read all of it a 3rd time, because you either won't get it the 2nd or you'll refuse to get it the 2nd.

And you say animals can't care? It seems to Laihendi that you simply can't care about them. As said before multiple times "Just because you can't understand the complexities of animals, it doesn't mean they don't exist".

They can't care because they can not rationalize. Read it all, a fourth time. Is this sounding like a broken record? If it is, you should look at what you're saying, even thinking, and adjust to what I'm saying.

Ok if you're going to be an ass, so will Laihendi.

You know absolutely nothing about animals. Get it? Like, read it again? You don't know what the hell you're talking about. Wanna read it four more times?

Sorry is this sounding like a broken record?

发布者 184848

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发布者 Haxzor

Laihendi, 1. I'm older than you, and have lived all my life with animals, giving me a better base understanding of animals

2. Throughout my life I've had ALL types of vertibrates as pets (reptiles, amphibians, aves, mammals, fish) and many insect pets.

3. I'm studying to become a vertibrate zoologist.

I have a deeper understanding of animals than you can comprehend.

发布者 Haxzor

Ivokk have you read Brave New World by any chance?

发布者 Laihendi

You said earlier it's physically impossible for a dog to smile. Maybe you just haven't been paying attention all these years? Laihendi has both pictures of his dogs (and his deceased dogs) smiling, and not smiling. Maybe he can mail you copies of them so you can observe the differences.

发布者 Skyfire

Ok if you're going to be an ass, so will Laihendi.

You know absolutely nothing about animals. Get it? Like, read it again? You don't know what the hell you're talking about. Wanna read it four more times?

Sorry is this sounding like a broken record?

Except I didn't say that. I said you didn't understand, not that you didn't know, and there is a very large difference between the two words.

There is no ass here.

发布者 Haxzor

Womens rights made the world less romantic, as it killed off chivalry to an extent. I will open doors for women, I will never harm a woman, and most of all I respect women

发布者 184848

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

发布者 184848

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

发布者 Haxzor

发布者 Laihendi

Do Animals Have Emotions?

A three-month-old baby died in its mother’s arms earlier this month. For hours the mother, Gana, gently shook and stroked her son Claudio, apparently trying to restore movement to his lolling head and limp arms. People who watched were moved to tears — unfazed by the fact that Gana and Claudio were “only” gorillas in Münster zoo, northern Germany.

Although many people would feel comfortable associating emotions with large, charismatic mammals, hard evidence increasingly suggests that other animals are similarly capable. The neurobiologist Erich Jarvis of Duke University, North Carolina, argues that evolution has created more than one way to generate complex behaviour; and that they are comparable.

Some birds have evolved cognitive abilities far more complex than those of many mammals. Dr Nathan Emery, a neuropsychologist at Cambridge University’s department of zoology, suggests that in their cognitive ability, corvids — the bird family that includes crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays and magpies — rival the great apes and might well be considered “feathered apes”.

Esther Woolfson, author of a new book, Corvus: A Life with Birds, has lived for years with a variety of these feathered apes. Woolfson doesn’t believe that her birds understand every word she says — the claim beloved of pet owners everywhere — but she does believe they have emotions. “I have seen — or believe that I have seen — in birds, impatience, frustration, anxiety in the urge to impart news, affection, fear, amusement (the last being a difficult one, I admit, to prove, merely on the basis of watching the look on a magpie’s face as its #$%^y-trap was successful) and, particularly, joy.”

One bird, Spike, would balance an object — a pamphlet, a rubber glove, a matchbox — on top of a half-open cupboard door, then wait until it fell onto the head of the next person to open the cupboard.

Her birds also seemed to empathise: “To have a magpie, on seeing me weep, hover on top of the fridge, wings outstretched, tremble for a few moments then fly down to my knee to crouch, squeaking quietly, edging ever nearer until his body was close against mine, seemed to me at the time, (as it does now) an act of an unexpected tenderness that I can interpret only as empathy. There may be other explanations of their behaviour, but I can’t think what they might be.”

Bekoff agrees that we can no longer associate emotion only with the charismatic mammals: “The fact is that fish show fear. Rodents can empathise. This is hard science. With birds and mammals there is no doubt that they have a very rich ensemble of emotions.”

“We are animals. And we have a kind of empathy with the animal kingdom. They’re our kin. There is a slight difference between a cat and a dog and a chimp and a female human and a male one and a black human and a white one. These differences are very small: 98% of our DNA is the same as in other animals such as primates,” Kumar says.

发布者 Laihendi

More food for thought.

“There used to be a time when people thought that animals had no soul, just as they thought that slaves or Africans or women had no soul. We realised a long time ago, as Jains, that animals have souls.

They do feel pain and joy. Mostly they feel what we feel. Animals have empathy and intelligence. We have to be humble and accept that we are only one kind of animal and these are others.”

Jains divide the living world into several categories. “Living things like trees and vegetation have only one sense — touch. Then you have two senses, touch and taste, the animals that eat. Then there are animals with a third sense, smell. Fourth are the ones that have sight, too. And then hearing. Intelligence is limited in these cases because they get their information through fewer senses than us,” says Kumar. “But look at people who are not literate. Literacy is a relatively new thing. Before that we had only an oral culture. That does not mean that people lacked intelligence; just techniques.

However, intelligence is not the same as emotion. Studies of intelligence and ability have been around for ever — a new one last week showed that elephants can do maths.

Evidence of emotional capacity, conceivably older in evolutionary terms than intelligence, has the greater potential to change the way we treat animals. You might put an animal into a circus if it did tricks, but if you knew that this upset the animal you would take it out again. (Unless you were a psychopath, many of whom have been shown to be cruel to animals as well as humans.)
If we can stand it, we should look into the fear-filled eyes of animals who suffer at our hands, in horrible conditions of captivity, in slaughterhouses and research labs, fur farms, zoos, rodeos and circuses. Dare to look into the sunken eyes of animals who are afraid or feeling all sorts of pain and then try to deny to yourself and to others that these individuals are feeling anything. I bet you can’t.”

Bekoff abandoned a promising career at medical school for this reason. “A very intelligent cat looked at me and asked, ‘Why me?’ I couldn’t find the words to tell him why or how badly I felt for torturing and killing him.”

Strict behaviourists might laugh at this, saying the animal’s expression was merely a physical response to particular stimuli. But if they are consistent they must say the same about human emotions, too.

Marian Stamp Dawkins, professor of animal behaviour at Oxford University, points out that even in humans it is difficult to measure emotion: “There are three ways: we can listen to what people say they feel; measure body temperature and heart rate and hormonal levels; and observe behaviour. Unfortunately, the three emotional systems do not necessarily correlate with each other. Sometimes, for example, strong subjective emotions occur with no obvious autonomic changes — as when someone experiences a rapid switch from excitement to fear on a roller coaster.”

Ultimately, the minds and feelings of individuals other than ourselves are private. “Access is limited because we can’t really get into the head or heart of another being — and that includes other people,” says Bekoff.

And Laihendi will try to get his mother to email him some pictures so that he can in turn email them to you. (talking to Haxzor)

And you should probably read the whole article before you start trying to discredit it.

发布者 184848

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Creepy fact

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