zerostart

That is amazing, clearly shows a thought process and reasoning going on.

zerostart

What do you think about this:

http://www.alexfoundation.org/alextheparrot.mov

espritch

I watched an episode of Scientific America on PBS a while back dealing with animal intelligence. One segment that particularly struck me was about an experiment done with chimps. The chimp would be shown a model of a room and a model of an object that chimp wanted (e.g. a banana) would be hidden in some location in the model room while the chimp watched. The chimp would then be taken to the actually room. They would head straight to the place in the real room where the object had been hidden in the model room and find the real object. They were able to associate the model with the actual room. This requires fairly abstract reasoning. What was really interesting about this is that human children below a certain age (about 3 if I recall correctly) were unable to do this.

An even more interesting example involved crows (I may have seen this on a episode of Nature). They put a meal worm in a bottle and provided the crow with a piece of wire. One of the crows they were working with not only figured out that she could use the wire to fish out the meal worm, she even bent the end of it with her beak to make it a more effective tool for dragging the worm out. That's pretty sophisticated problem solving for a creature with a brain that is tiny compared with our own.

Opps. I just saw the link that someone posted about crows. I've got to start making sure I check all the previous posts before posting stuff. :banghead:

acronos

I think humans are only slightly smarter than other animals. However, random chance gave us rudamentary language which provided a whole new path for evolution, and co-evolved because better language was more fit than lesser language in our case. Other animals barely have this path because they have very little of our ability to pass knowledge on to our offspring. A mother birds ability to teach it's young is far inferior to what we can teach with language and our long childhood. These small changes, just like changes that happen with DNA, built up to significant evolutionary advantage. The new DNA is memes (ideas) and it evolves faster than anything else the planet has ever seen. Other animals don't have this because of their inferior ability to transmit ideas both concurrently and over time. DNA was the old storage mechanism, language is the new.

Happy Wonderer

The human bias is very interesting; I often read claims that "humans are the only creatures who..." based upon very little evidence. First off, we don't know all of the creatures in the world -- highly reasoning creatures would probably do well to avoid humans. Secondly, without a common cognative framework it is close to impossible for two creatures to compare their abilities.

Consider the difficulty of testing the I.Q. of an Aborigional child. Puzzle problems involving trains, colored blocks, or mazes on paper are not going to have much meaning to somebody who hasn't experienced the technology. On the other hand, drop him and your 'gifted' suburban child naked in the outback and see who survives.

Squirrels are an interesting case. Experience shows that there is almost no mechanical puzzle problem that a squirrel cannot solve -- the word 'Squirrel proof' on bird feeders should be outlawed. If the squirrel cannot solve it, it is a certainty that the rat can. I have seen the little suckers working together in order to defeat a "rat and squirrel proof" feeder. (One stands on the counterweight to prevent the weight of the other from triggering the shutter.) Intentional? Cooperation in the human sense? I don't know, but I do know that it works and that they will repeat the behavior once that they learn that it works.

The fact that they get run over on the road probably has more to do with their sensory apparatus than their (for want of a better word) 'intelligence.' Humans do apparently stupid things on the water when they get run over by huge ships because our senses are not geared to accurately measuring the speed of large, distant objects. People get hit by barges and freighters all the time because the skipper misjudges the speed (large ships only look slow, they move at 25-30 knots and cannot stop.) Dolphins and whales almost never get run over. Stupid humans? No, whales and dolphins have great echo-locating abilities equivalent (or better) than radar.

hw

Donnmathan

I'll do you one better than squirrels...ever have to deal with a raccoon? Not only are the little buggers capable of more problem-solving then most people give them credit for (including opening the child-proof latch on my uncle's live box [for those who don't know, it's a submerged cage for storing game fish you've caught]), they already have something that is bloody close to an opposable thumb.

Hyndis

Humans are amazingly frail, though. Physically, its a miracle humans managed to survive long enough to invent technology. I don't know how our ancestors managed...

We have almost no sense of smell, a pathetic sense of hearing, we're very slow, we tire easily, we have no claws and a powerful yet very hard to use bite, we're physically weak, and we have no protection against the elements or against other animals. Bare skin is weaker than skin protected by fur, or scales, or even feathers.

While we're able to do almost anything, we don't have any specialities in the physical sense. An average wolf could probably get the better of most humans. They have a better bite, can run quicker for a much longer time, and are even just as strong as we are, despite them being smaller. So if there's a competition between a human and a single wolf for who can catch dinner, the wolf is going to win every time. And about half the time if it wants manflesh for dinner.

But take pride in being walking brains.

Rather than having innate abilities to survive, we're able to create our own abilities. Almost kind of like a funky form of shapeshifting. We have no claws on our own, but we can make the nastiest claws this planet has ever seen. Claws that can kill at thousands of yards away. And hides that cannot be penetrated by any natural weapon. The ability to heal ourselves from the most horrendous injuries and illnesses. Not only the ability to fly, but to do it at absurd speeds. And to move over lands at equally absurd speeds. We're only about halfway decent with underwater stuff, though. Also, we can upgrade our eyes to see in whatever spectrum we choose.

I rather like having the several pounds of nerve cells in my skull that I currently have.

Karalora

My sister's cat knows how to open doors--she just lacks the strength/mass and paw traction to do it herself. But she has also figured out that standing up against the door and scrabbling at the knob sends an unambiguous signal to us that she wants it open.

Aria

Two of my cats do this. They can actually open the long knobs, they usually jump and hook a paw out. It always surprises guests who think shutting the door means the cat can't get in.

KeithHarwood

We nearly didn't. About 70,000 years ago we went through a genetic bottleneck when the population was reduced to about 1,000 individuals.

And the reason that human beings are so advanced is that human beings get to choose who is advanced and who isn't.