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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

#131

Post by coldtea »

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…

>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.

Harmony is just the result of a struggle + emerging balances.

Left to their own devices, even cats could eradicate entire species of birds, diseases could exterminate whole populations of animals, and so on. And of course a big rock from space could end life on earth in its entirety.

>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 eat them.

Well, there's no rule that something with feelings shouldn't be eaten.

In fact animals (who you said "live in balance") eat other animals all the time.

Besides, we hurt people's feelings all the time. An employee might not want to flip burgers for 10 hours every day and little pay , but we don't care about their feelings, we take advantage of their life's circumstances and need to pay the rent and have them do it.

With animals, we go a step beyond, and also eat them.

Besides, isn't the main story of the article that trees have a sort of language and a sort of feelings too? Which means that the "has feelings, we shouldn't eat" theory would leave us with nothing to it, since plants now have feelings too.

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

#132

Post by TomMarius »

mft_ wrote: post #129
vidarh wrote: post #124

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 :) 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...)

Depends on what you define as fun, what we're observing is more like "not for immediate need" and/or "not for food" - and when the immediate need for food arises, the first reflex is the cat food, but that obviously doesn't happen in nature. A dog is most certainly capable of attacking you even though it's not hungry or feeling unsafe.

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

#133

Post by jand »

mft_ wrote: post #129
vidarh wrote: post #124

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 :) 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...)

Actually, there are quite a few. [1]

Since it seems to me that "fun" or "malice" or other motivations cannot be measured that precisely in animal kingdom, i think it is fair to say that surplus killing covers your question.

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

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

#134

Post by fifnir »

harperlee wrote: post #83

To me, there needs to be a differentiation between communicating and speaking. If you broadcast information and another entity receives it, and uses it, that is not dialogue - just reactions. Even if through an evolutionary game the species reaches effective communication (predators, plagues, etc.), and complex feedback loops emerge, resembling a dialogue, there seems to be something lacking - perhaps the ability to…

> perhaps the ability to query the other for specific information would be a good litmus test for it?

Do you know of Alex the grey parrot? It seems to be the only animal that we have recorded actually asking questions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)

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

#135

Post by coldtea »

wild_preference wrote: post #46
TeMPOraL wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we are the only ones on the planet who can't live in harmony with other species. This "harmony" is really just interlocking loops of unconstrained growth, followed by running out of resources, and starvation while the food supply regenerates. It only looks pretty if you ain't looking very carefully. In fact, human beings seem to be the only ones observed with a capability for restraint . We're not very good at prac…

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 ?

>What about when my cat restrains from eating all of its treats at once?

What about it? Other animals don't restrain, and even a cat can eat too many of its treats at once, and end up obese.

Here's some info on cats:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/stone-cold...

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/it-s-official-cats-ar...

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/culturing-science/kille...

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_actually_kill

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

#136

Post by coldtea »

mft_ wrote: post #129
vidarh wrote: post #124

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 :) 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...)

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

Obviously not. All kinds of animals kill. Also it's not "for fun" in the way we're having fun. They don't plan on entertaining themselves that way, weighing and ignoring the moral impact, etc.

It's an instinct they have. It's training to hone their hunting skills -- which they need evolutionary to survive -- even if they we take there of them for the last 5-10.000 years (which is very little in evolutionary terms)

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

#137

Post by captainbland »

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…

The amount of birds and mice our cats used to bring in perfectly alive and unharmed was quite astonishing and one time ended up leaving a large amount of Sparrow droppings all over my room. Of course they were probably just trying to teach us humans to hunt.

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

#138

Post by Angostura »

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…

Humans have lots of failings, its true - in terms of perception in particular. On the other hand, we're also horribly prone to anthropomorphism.

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

#139

Post by fifnir »

rbosinger wrote: post #17

This is what alien life will be like. We will decide it is alive but not understand fully what that means.

> We will decide it is alive but not understand fully what that means.

I don't understand fully what this comment means.

If alien life has DNA (chemistry) like ours, we learn that life as we know it either started somewhere and spread or was re-invented.

If it doesn't, but is obviously alive (move on its own will, hunts, i dont know) we learn that life can exist with different chemistries.

If it's not obviously alive but we determine anyway, whichever way we do that, we've learned of a new aspect of life.

what does "what that means" mean ? ? ?

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

#140

Post by Angostura »

pygy_ wrote: post #70
TeMPOraL wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we are the only ones on the planet who can't live in harmony with other species. This "harmony" is really just interlocking loops of unconstrained growth, followed by running out of resources, and starvation while the food supply regenerates. It only looks pretty if you ain't looking very carefully. In fact, human beings seem to be the only ones observed with a capability for restraint . We're not very good at prac…

Restrain is all over the place in nature. Unconstrained growth followed by starvation is the hallmark of primitive processes like fire and basic life forms. Most individuals grow up to a genetically predetermined size. Colonies adapt their size to the amount of resources they have available, optimizing for long term perenniality. The human economy behaves like a primitive life form, at the moment. Ecosystems are usua…

I'm not sure "restraint" is the correct word in the examples you cite. Individual size is typically the result of a combination of evolutionary selection pressure and physics. Colonies are constrained by resources which influence reproductive rates.
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