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A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

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Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#121

Post by mockingbirdy »

Swizec wrote: post #113
mockingbirdy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But we just ignore all that when it's convenient for us to eat them. I don't necessarily agree with your misanthropy (I don't see the broader point of it - "my plan for humanity: let's self-annihilate, we suck"?). But I'm interested in psychology. And there are studies that show that people perceive cows as dumb while eating them . When they get asked before and after eating meat, the same people said that cows are…

I would love to read some of those studies. That sounds fascinating! > despite the fact that we normally know about the human-like qualities of the animals we eat. Didn't there used to be whole cultures (like the Aztec, I think) where cannibalism was a mostly normal part of life? That seems like a pretty extreme version of this cognitive dissonance. "You're human but you're tasty and I'm hungry soooo ..."

Start here [1] and see this [2] for a light introduction. Then proceed with cognitive dissonance, implicit belief systems and cognitive biases [3]. Have fun!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_eating_meat

[2]: https://youtu.be/ao2GL3NAWQU

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#122

Post by fifnir »

mpfundstein wrote: post #30
kpnbg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too enjoy watching the perfect harmony of a lion eating a live impala

The huge difference is that lions dont put impalas into huge factories, where they feed them afwul food, rob them of any dignitiy, slaughter them by the masses, ship them across the globe in order to throw half of it away because it didnt hit the market’s taste of the month!

Life feeds on life. No animal would hesitate for a second to eat you, if it could without risk. Even herbivores, have you seen cows/deer/horses eat little chicks? Life then replicates without limits until all resources are consumed and it cannot be supported anymore.

We are in fact, (we can't know for sure but I think it's very reasonable to assume) the only species capable of seeing this and MAYBE,hopefully control ourselves before we do the same thing.

We are pieces of shit, but at the same time we're the only animal with potential to escape the bad parts of our nature

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#123

Post by fifnir »

King-Aaron wrote: post #90
zjaffee wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do other animals go to war, commit genocide, or in the context of our relationship with other animals, do anything similar to factory farming.

Some ants "farm" aphids: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071009212548.h...

Ants also have wars: https://www.quora.com/Do-ants-ever-go-to-war https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/160130-animals-i...

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#124

Post by vidarh »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #55
wild_preference wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your definition of restraint seems based on that one example. What about when my cat restrains from eating all of its treats at once? Or the restraint any animal takes through a farming process like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphid#Ant_mutualism ?

Well, your cat will also likely be very cruel if it ever caches a mouse or a bird, so I'll raise you that for harmony :). And I'm a cat owner. RE ants, I'm not a biologist so I won't speculate how exactly that relationship came to be, but it doesn't seem to me that there was any meeting of minds involved - I would guess evolutionary feedback loops again. I made a pretty generalized argument, but the point is, what we…

> Well, your cat will also likely be very cruel if it ever caches a mouse or a bird, so I'll raise you that for harmony :)

We had a cat once who, we found out, liked to sit in the berry bushes in the garden, wait for a bird to land, and then kill them. She didn't didn't eat them - she much preferred the cat food she got. She just murdered bird after bird and left them to rot.

Cats certainly are not the best examples of harmony.

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#125

Post by sharpneli »

collyw wrote: post #115
xd wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a big fan of humanity. We are pretty awful. Self loathing of the human race needs to stop, there are an incredible number of hard working people making the world a better place one step at a time. Our impact on the world barely registers to past extinction level events. Humanity has just as much right to exist and be as any other species. If you don't like what we are doing, work to improve things. Are you aw…

As a species we seem to be a cancer on the planet. We are pretty much responsive for the current mass extinction event. That doesn't mean that individuals aren't good.

There has been global cancers before. With the difference that we may be able to restrain ourselves.

As an example see the great oxygenation event. Where bunch of selfish green algea pumped waste product into the atmosphere killing almost all anaerobic life.

Then there is the carboniferous period where trees grew so much that due to lack of lignin breaking fungi they basically sucked out all CO2 from atmosphere causing global glaciation and killing themselves in the process.

Life has been crapping itself since the very start. We are no worse than others, however we have the chance to be better.

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#126

Post by novia »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #78
some_account wrote: post #23

Humans can't perceive a lot of things, and on top of that, we have egos that makes us feel superior even though in reality, we are the only ones on the planet who can't live in harmony with other species. If you ever had a cat and really observed it and communicated with it, you know it has feelings and emotions. Birds have it also, so does pigs, horses... But we just ignore all that when it's convenient for us to ea…

I think you are misunderstanding the equilibrium of nature. There's no great and beautiful mutually orchestrated harmony. What happens invariably is a predator hunts a prey to the point of scarcity. At this point, assuming that prey was the predator's primary diet, the predators begin to literally starve to death which lowers their population. This, in turn, gives the prey a chance to increase their population with f…

>The other animals introduced to the Mauritius also had a taste for the Dodo and its eggs in particular.

Which species introduced the other animals to the Mauritius?

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#127

Post by Radim »

collyw wrote: post #115
xd wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a big fan of humanity. We are pretty awful. Self loathing of the human race needs to stop, there are an incredible number of hard working people making the world a better place one step at a time. Our impact on the world barely registers to past extinction level events. Humanity has just as much right to exist and be as any other species. If you don't like what we are doing, work to improve things. Are you aw…

As a species we seem to be a cancer on the planet. We are pretty much responsive for the current mass extinction event. That doesn't mean that individuals aren't good.

"As a species we seem to be a cancer on the planet."

This platitude is actually interesting in this context. It connects multiple threads:

* One of the previous major extinctions was the Oxygen Holocaust [1], caused by photosynthesizing cyanobacteria. It killed pretty much everything alive back then. And turned our Earth into a snowball to boot.

* This oxygen is a major contributor to CANCER, via free radicals etc. It leads to a faster (and more ruthless, more side effects) metabolism, enabling evolution of highly reactive creatures such as us.

* And trees, the "speaking organisms" under discussion, are one of the major producers of this highly volatile, carcinogenic O2 substance.

Tongue in cheek? Maybe. But hopefully no worse than the naive "humans are a cancer to the planet".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#128

Post by ianai »

vidarh wrote: post #124
TeMPOraL wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, your cat will also likely be very cruel if it ever caches a mouse or a bird, so I'll raise you that for harmony :). And I'm a cat owner. RE ants, I'm not a biologist so I won't speculate how exactly that relationship came to be, but it doesn't seem to me that there was any meeting of minds involved - I would guess evolutionary feedback loops again. I made a pretty generalized argument, but the point is, what we…

> Well, your cat will also likely be very cruel if it ever caches a mouse or a bird, so I'll raise you that for harmony :) We had a cat once who, we found out, liked to sit in the berry bushes in the garden, wait for a bird to land, and then kill them. She didn't didn't eat them - she much preferred the cat food she got. She just murdered bird after bird and left them to rot. Cats certainly are not the best examples…

Humans wanted cats that would kill all the pests in their farms.

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#129

Post by mft_ »

vidarh wrote: post #124
TeMPOraL wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, your cat will also likely be very cruel if it ever caches a mouse or a bird, so I'll raise you that for harmony :). And I'm a cat owner. RE ants, I'm not a biologist so I won't speculate how exactly that relationship came to be, but it doesn't seem to me that there was any meeting of minds involved - I would guess evolutionary feedback loops again. I made a pretty generalized argument, but the point is, what we…

> Well, your cat will also likely be very cruel if it ever caches a mouse or a bird, so I'll raise you that for harmony :) We had a cat once who, we found out, liked to sit in the berry bushes in the garden, wait for a bird to land, and then kill them. She didn't didn't eat them - she much preferred the cat food she got. She just murdered bird after bird and left them to rot. Cats certainly are not the best examples…

Are (aren't?) cats the only animal that kills for fun, rather than food?

(Apart from the scum that are some humans...)

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#130

Post by honestoHeminway »

some_account wrote: post #23

Humans can't perceive a lot of things, and on top of that, we have egos that makes us feel superior even though in reality, we are the only ones on the planet who can't live in harmony with other species. If you ever had a cat and really observed it and communicated with it, you know it has feelings and emotions. Birds have it also, so does pigs, horses... But we just ignore all that when it's convenient for us to ea…

The only one?

What about rats arriving on islands?

The truth is ecologys are bubbles divided by barriers that any large scale migrating species punctures.

The only thing preventing problems so far is a inabiliity of plants to hijack migration species as pathways and other species to transport theire offspring that way.

The agah-frog could have been everywhere worldwide, if its eggs - stuck to birdfeet where able to encapsule.

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