GWH Pointer x Lab wanted please!

Rest of the article:

Beyond primates

It's not just primates that demonstrate surprising abilities.

Dolphins, whose brains are 25 per cent heavier than humans, recognise themselves in a mirror. So do elephants. A study in June finds that black bears can do primitive counting, something even pigeons have done, by putting two dots before five, or 10 before 20 in one experiment.

The trend in research is to identify some new thinking skill that chimps can do, revealing that certain abilities are "not uniquely human," said Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal. Then the scientists find that same ability in other primates further removed from humans genetically. Then they see it in dogs and elephants.

"Capacities that we think in humans are very special and complex are probably not so special and not so complex," de Waal said. "This research in animals elevates the animals, but it also brings down the humans... If monkeys can do it and maybe dogs and other animals, maybe it's not as complex as you think."

At Duke, professor Elizabeth Brannon shows videos of monkeys that appear to be doing a "fuzzy representation" of multiplication by following the number of dots that go into a box on a computer screen and choosing the right answer to come out of the box. This is after they've already done addition and subtraction.

This spring in France, researchers showed that six baboons could distinguish between fake and real four-letter words — BRRU vs KITE, for example. And they chose to do these computer-based exercises of their own free will, either for fun or a snack.
 
Final bit!


Empathy isn't just for humans

It was once thought the control of emotions and the ability to empathise and socialise separated us from our primate cousins. But chimps console, and fight, each other. They also try to soothe an upset companion, grooming and putting their arms around him.

When scientists look at our other closest relative, the bonobo, they see a difference. Bonobos don't kill. Hare says his experiments show bonobos give food to newcomer bonobos, even when they could choose to keep all the food themselves.

One reason scientists are learning more about animal intellect is computers, including touch screens. In some cases, scientists are setting up banks of computers available to primates 24-7. In the French word recognition experiment, Fagot found he got more and better data when it was the baboons' choice to work.

Animal cognition researcher Steve Ross at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago agrees.

"The apes in our case seem to be working better when they have that control, that choice to perform," he said.

What the brain scans show

Brain scans on monkeys and apes also have helped correct mistaken views about ape brain power. It was once thought the prefrontal cortex, the area in charge of higher reasoning, was disproportionately larger than the rest of the brain only in humans, giving us a cognitive advantage, Hare said. But imaging shows that monkey and ape prefrontal cortexes have that same larger scale, he said.

What's different is that the human communication system in the prefrontal cortex is more complex, Hare said.

So there are limits to what non-human primates can do. Animals don't have the ability to communicate with the complexity of human language. In the French study, the baboons can recognise that the letters KITE make a word because through trial and error they learn which letters tend to go together in what order. But the baboons don't have a clue of what KITE means.

It's that gap that's key. "The boundaries are not as sharp as people think, but there are certain things you can't overcome and language is one of them," said Columbia University animal cognition researcher Herbert Terrace.

And that leads to another difference, Ross said. Because apes lack language skills, they learn by watching and mimicking. Humans teach with language and explanation, which is faster and better, Ross said.

Ethical questions

Some of the shifts in scientific understanding of animals are leading to ethical debates. When Emory University researcher Lori Marino in 2001 co-wrote a groundbreaking study on dolphins recognising themselves in mirrors, proving they have a sense of self similar to humans, she had a revelation.

"The more you learn about them, the more you realize that they do have the capacity and characteristics that we think of as a person," Marino said. "I think it's impossible to ignore the ethical implications of these kinds of findings."

After the two dolphins she studied died when transferred to another aquarium, she decided never to work on captive dolphins again. She then became a science adviser to the Nonhuman Rights Project, which seeks legal rights or status for animals. The idea, Marino said, is to get animals such as dolphins "to be deemed a person, not property."

Animals performing tasks in near-natural habitats "is like an Ivy League college" for the apes, Hare said. "We're going to see them do stunning and sophisticated things."
 
This thread has gone kinda crazy!! Turned into a Biology lecture!!

How did we get from this to this and end up here?!

Poor OP, i bet she wishes she'd never asked!!!
 
I just love the c&p from random source with no backing (are they peer assessed studies? If not, they're worthless) No-one's mind will be changed because it's coming across as a rant.
 
Alec Swan said:
When we're older, it's known as marriage. ;)

Alec.
Click to expand...

PMSL!

MM, no, of course not! I'm flicking between Silent Hill 2, trying to avoid a dinner invitation (I'm hugely anti social) and three forums! Who has time!! Plus, whatever is said will not change anyone's mind cos it's easy to find 'evidence' on the web to support the fact that say hybrid vigour is true :D

We are all animals, some are less or more intelligent than others. The main difference between us and 'dumb' animals is the capacity to reason and the fear and awareness of the consequence of our actions, IMO.
 
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Alec Swan said:
Something else has just occurred to me, I wonder if animals can ever be diagnosed with mental ill health. Animals will, we know, readily show signs of stress and depression too, but I'm wondering about clinically measurable complaints, the flip side of our much lauded intelligence perhaps.



Alec.
Click to expand...


this has occurred to me several times while grooming certain dogs. While some things can be explained away with brain tumours etc, I have to wonder if certain dogs have one too many chromosomes?
 
JennBags said:
But the reason it's illegal in the first place has NOTHING to do with morals :eek: it's about inbreeding causing genetic defects.
Click to expand...

But morals do come in to play, hence the reason for the legal argument - morally we as humans don't want to create offspring which will have genetic defects, therefore we've placed a law to try to control it. At least that's my basic (and perhaps naiive) understanding of it ;)
 
MurphysMinder said:
You mean you read it?:eek:
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:o :confused: If I share a short story about monkeys will anyone read it?

I remember hearing someone on a Swedish zoo describe the difference in intelligence between their Gorillas, Chimpanzees and Orangutans as this:

Hypothetically, if I accidentally lost my keys one day in the monkey house and the Gorillas got hold of the keys, they would try to use the keys a little here and there for a while, fail to unlock their door, get frustrated and throw away the key.

But if it was the Chimpanzees that found the keys, they would head straight for their door, after a while they would have unlocked it and immediately gone out to investigate the area, at which point they would have been found out and we would have gone in and caught them.

But if it instead was the Orangutans that found the keys, they would have hid them, and in the evening/night, when they thought everyone had left, they would take out the key, unlock their door and undisturbed be able to go out and investigate the area.

:)


Since a lot of this thread sounds like people trying to talk to a brickwall, I want to try and cheer you all up, by asking if you would have called the following wallpaper Fun time? :confused: Well maybe it was fun for the little one, but Ouch!

 
Three short paragraphs - a doddle to read, and interesting too.:)

I think you have it about right with the brick wall, and as for fun time, yikes no, definitely ouch time.:D
 
A few definitions - from various august and respected sources - of intelligence:-

1. “The ability to use memory, knowledge, experience, understanding, reasoning, imagination and judgement in order to solve problems and adapt
to new situations.” AllWords Dictionary, 2006

Many animal species are capable of fulfilling some or all of these criteria, not just humans

2. “The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge.” The American Heritage
Dictionary, fourth edition, 2000

Ditto number 1

3. “Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex
ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience,
to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking
thought.” American Psychological Association [28]

Ditto above

4. “The ability to learn, understand and make judgments or have opinions
that are based on reason” Cambridge Advance Learner’s Dictionary, 2006

Ditto above

5. “Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things,
involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience.” Common statement with 52 expert signatories [13]

Ditto above

6. “The ability to learn facts and skills and apply them, especially when this
ability is highly developed.” Encarta World English Dictionary, 2006

Ditto above

7. “. . . ability to adapt effectively to the environment, either by making a
change in oneself or by changing the environment or finding a new one
. . . intelligence is not a single mental process, but rather a combination of
many mental processes directed toward effective adaptation to the environment.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2006

Wow!! That says it all ... homo sapiens is DEFINITELY not the only intelligent animal on earth!
 
Nikki J said:
A few definitions - from various august and respected sources - of intelligence:-

1. “The ability to use memory, knowledge, experience, understanding, reasoning, imagination and judgement in order to solve problems and adapt
to new situations.” AllWords Dictionary, 2006

Neither of the words that I've highlighted can apply to animals.

2. “The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge.” The American Heritage
Dictionary, fourth edition, 2000

Again, animals have no such capacity.

3. “Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex
ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience,
to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking
thought.” American Psychological Association [28]

Yet again, defining intelligence, but qualities that animals lack.

4. “The ability to learn, understand and make judgments or have opinions
that are based on reason” Cambridge Advance Learner’s Dictionary, 2006

As above, and so the list goes on.

5. “Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things,
involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience.” Common statement with 52 expert signatories [13]

Are you really being serious?

6. “The ability to learn facts and skills and apply them, especially when this
ability is highly developed.” Encarta World English Dictionary, 2006

List me some Facts and Skills.

7. “. . . ability to adapt effectively to the environment, either by making a
change in oneself or by changing the environment or finding a new one
. . . intelligence is not a single mental process, but rather a combination of
many mental processes directed toward effective adaptation to the environment.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2006

And yet again, you're applying thought processes which whilst common to man, are simply not present in animals.

.......
Click to expand...

I'm sorry Nikki J, but you've misused the quotes above. Whilst those august bodies which you've quoted have adequately defined a "word", your attachment of those definitions to animals, is ridiculous. Sorry but it is, and it wasn't the intention of the original authors.

Alec.
 
Plus no-one is bothering to read your massive posts cos they just don't care. Making the same point over and over again is......pointless (and boring).
 
I used to breed and show chinchillas, when they were still classed as an exotic and hadn't long been in the country.
I had pedigrees going back 20 plus years in some cases, and studied basic genetics in order to make the right pairings, and thus try to 'improve' the health of the UK herd (I had up to 250 animals, and there were very few other big breeders in this country, so we all worked quite closely).
There is a big difference, IMO, between inbreeding and line breeding, using the coefficient of relationships to work out the ratio. I had to do this for all my stock, making sure I was avoiding inbreeding and increasing (to a certain extent) linebreeding.
In chinchillas, for example, there is a lethal white gene, that if it appears in the homozygous state will result in kits being born without eyes, but is harmless in hetero animals.
But in order to improve on the animals that were first imported/bred in the uk, we had to use this gene to our advantage, producing stronger, fitter animals with better lung capacity, and denser coats to cope with the humid UK temperatures.
This took many generations of line bred animals; if we had gone down the inbreeding route, there would have been more, in this case, lethal white genes floating around!

http://bowlingsite.mcf.com/genetics/inbreeding.html
 
Alec Swan said:
I'm sorry Nikki J, but you've misused the quotes above. Whilst those august bodies which you've quoted have adequately defined a "word", your attachment of those definitions to animals, is ridiculous. Sorry but it is, and it wasn't the intention of the original authors.

Alec.
Click to expand...

The "dictionaries" that I quoted from are to be as a reference source to define words.

The meaning of the word "intelligence" is the same whether it is applied to a worm, a human or a tiger! I have already given you examples of how many species of animal demonstrate that they have intelligence.

And yet you continue to claim that us animals - humans - are the only ones that have intelligence.

This is completely irrational - I just do not understand how you can be so lacking in knowledge of the natural world! There are 2 forms of life on this planet, and they all fall under the category of "animal" or "plant".

I absolutely know for sure which life form I am and it sure ain't a plant! Which are you if you continue to claim that you are not an animal?
 
cinnamontoast said:
Plus no-one is bothering to read your massive posts cos they just don't care. Making the same point over and over again is......pointless (and boring).
Click to expand...

Exactly! And ridiculous - aka my friend continuing to insist that humans are not animals.

I apologise profusely for boring the pants off everyone - and especially to the OP whose thread I abused, but really ... I cannot tolerate someone who is obviously as intelligent as Alec coming out with such a load of utter horses poo poo for want of a better phrase!!
 
cinnamontoast said:
Plus no-one is bothering to read your massive posts cos they just don't care. Making the same point over and over again is......pointless (and boring).
Click to expand...

Admittedly, I have only glanced through some of Nikki J's replies because, sort of as Dry Rot said about "I promised myself I wouldn't contribute to the doggy threads on here as they do not do my blood pressure any good!", reading all of Nikki J's replies wouldn't be good for my blood pressure, but I have e.g. read reply 120, 121 and 122.

My problems with reading things like for example:

Nikki J said:
A study in June finds that black bears can do primitive counting, something even pigeons have done, by putting two dots before five, or 10 before 20 in one experiment.
Click to expand...

is the questions about how do we know that they really understand that they're counting? Can we always find out if it is a result of a taught behaviour, and whether it includes actually understanding what it is they're doing or not?

To that comes that many studies are designed by humans, even though I know that some are based on observing animals in the wild, and e.g. like the study based on "street dogs" in Moscow, such studies, is to me, sometimes equivalent with observing animals in the wild. And that the result is based on how the humans involved interprets the result, maybe the interpretation is spot-on, maybe not.

Take these two examples:
Nikki J said:
At Duke, professor Elizabeth Brannon shows videos of monkeys that appear to be doing a "fuzzy representation" of multiplication by following the number of dots that go into a box on a computer screen and choosing the right answer to come out of the box. This is after they've already done addition and subtraction.

In the French study, the baboons can recognise that the letters KITE make a word because through trial and error they learn which letters tend to go together in what order. But the baboons don't have a clue of what KITE means.
Click to expand...

They appear to be doing a "fuzzy representation" of multiplication? My interpretation of that, is that the humans have given the monkeys something, and when humans see them interact with whatever it is, it appears as if they're trying to perhaps do multiplications. To me that doesn't sound as an evidence for that those monkeys really understand mathematics.

And the French study with the baboons, does say that their ability to recognise that the letters Kite is a word, is a result of learning, but that they don't know what the word means. To me it seems like a good example of that animals can learn to do complex things, and that it doesn't have to be combined with an understanding of what it is they're doing.
 
Like the African parrot who can talk and say things like 'blue square' when shown an object but it is a result of cue and behaviour rather than him actually 'knowing' so to speak.

I do have some vague recollection of pigeons 'counting' and say with that one it can be related to amount of coloured space taken up rather than number of dots for example.
 
Nikki J said:
The "dictionaries" that I quoted from are to be as a reference source to define words.

The meaning of the word "intelligence" is the same whether it is applied to a worm, a human or a tiger! I have already given you examples of how many species of animal demonstrate that they have intelligence.

And yet you continue to claim that us animals - humans - are the only ones that have intelligence.

This is completely irrational - I just do not understand how you can be so lacking in knowledge of the natural world! There are 2 forms of life on this planet, and they all fall under the category of "animal" or "plant".

I absolutely know for sure which life form I am and it sure ain't a plant! Which are you if you continue to claim that you are not an animal?
Click to expand...

The Swede Carl Linnaeus (Carl von Linné ) did divide us in to Animals and Plants quite some time ago, but I've read that many no longer categorise it as just 2 forms of life on earth.

Two random examples that I found:

from this site http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/alllife/threedomains.html
Until comparatively recently, living organisms were divided into two kingdoms: animal and vegetable, or the Animalia and the Plantae. In the 19th century, evidence began to accumulate that these were insufficient to express the diversity of life, and various schemes were proposed with three, four, or more kingdoms. The scheme most often used currently divides all living organisms into five kingdoms: Monera (bacteria), Protista, Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia. This coexisted with a scheme dividing life into two main divisions: the Prokaryotae (bacteria, etc.) and the Eukaryotae (animals, plants, fungi, and protists).

Recent work, however, has shown that what were once called "prokaryotes" are far more diverse than anyone had suspected. The Prokaryotae are now divided into two domains, the Bacteria and the Archaea, as different from each other as either is from the Eukaryota, or eukaryotes. No one of these groups is ancestral to the others, and each shares certain features with the others as well as having unique characteristics of its own.
Click to expand...

from this site http://www.ric.edu/faculty/ptiskus/six_kingdoms/
When Linnaeus developed his system of classification, there were only two kingdoms, Plants and Animals. But the use of the microscope led to the discovery of new organisms and the identification of differences in cells. A two-kingdom system was no longer useful. Today the system of classification includes six kingdoms.

The Six Kingdoms:

Plants, Animals, Protists, Fungi, Archaebacteria, Eubacteria.


How are organism placed into their kingdoms?

· Cell type, complex or simple

· Their ability to make food

· The number of cells in their body
Click to expand...
 
This is completely irrational - I just do not understand how you can be so lacking in knowledge of the natural world! There are 2 forms of life on this planet, and they all fall under the category of "animal" or "plant".
Click to expand...

I have been beaten to it, however my response was going to be "Tell that to a mushroom".
 
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