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A gorilla who was brought up as a boy in an English village

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Re: A gorilla who was brought up as a boy in an English village

#81

Post by mechnesium »

nefitty wrote: post #61
mechnesium wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This resonates with me. It deeply disturbs me that other animals still don’t have rights on parity with humans. I can play devil’s advocate and make the ethical argument that animal lives have more intrinsic value than human lives. For one, they are innately innocent due to their (as we currently understand) more limited capacity for reasoning. This limited reasoning dismisses blame when they do things we see as wron…

As an anti-speciesist vegetarian, I’d like to note that the above viewpoint probably sounds as extreme and incoherent to me as it does to most other people. Parity as regards rights should be based on interests. There is nothing special about life itself. A mouse’s interests are not on par with the interests of a child, and saving the child would generally result in the least amount of suffering. I did my best to tak…

I'm not a vegetarian or vegan, so I don't know why you're conflating my devil's advocate argument with those philosophies.

> A mouse’s interests are not on par with the interests of a child

For an anti-speciesist, this is a very anthropocentric and speciesist statement.

I would argue that saving the child would cause greater suffering[0], not only because the human condition unto itself is rife with suffering, but because we have the greatest capacity and demonstrated ability to cause grave harm to all species and to the planet, more so than any other living being.

The voluntary human extinction movement[1] is a very real movement, however ridiculous you find it to be.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering-focused_ethics#Argum...

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

Re: A gorilla who was brought up as a boy in an English village

#83

Post by lurquer »

malloryerik wrote: post #36
ignoramous wrote: post #3

Good call sending the Gorilla away (though it didn't end well for the Gorilla), because there is no controlling a 200-pound angry wild animal when its upset: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_(chimpanzee) And Bears, too: > Even though it may appear that the bear attacked for no reason, there was a reason. "You can train them and use as many safety precautions as you can, but you're still taking a chance. It's stil…

I'm not sure it's fair to call a gorilla a "wild animal" when they've been so socialized that they live in a human home, use the light switch and the bathroom, go on walks with the local kids and have deep familial relationships with humans, the only other animals they know. That's not to claim that I have any idea how dangerous or not the situation might have been but "wild" really sounds like the wrong word here. H…

On the multistate bar exam there is a invariably a version of this question:

“Susie raised a pet squirrel from birth. It was very well-trained, calm, and seemed to think it was a dog. It would come when called, could do tricks, etc.”

There would be some scenario that would follow where the test-taker would be asked to decide whether this indubitably gentle creature was a “wild animal.” The answer is always yes... training, temperament, etc. has nothing to do with it.

(The issue comes up in legal cases — albeit, rarely — due to the different levels of responsibility one has towards others when one’s pet or livestock causes damage or injury. For a “domesticated animal”, the owner usually needs to be negligent in some way. But, for a “wild animal”, the owner is always strictly liable.

Which is odd in many ways... you may have less liability when your vicious pit bull attacks than when your pet sloth lashes out at someone tormenting it. For, the sloth is by definition “wild” and the dog is, by definition, “domesticated.”

Re: A gorilla who was brought up as a boy in an English village

#84

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

matt_f wrote: post #82

Most interesting line if this article for me: > The ape cost £300, about £25,000 in today’s money (or about $34,000USD). Holy cow, has there been a 10,000% inflation of the value of a pound in one century?

Well, there were two world wars in the meantime?

Re: A gorilla who was brought up as a boy in an English village

#85

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

alexvoda wrote: post #71
naringas wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I counter argue that anthropomorphizing of animals is fundamentally flawed. and I further retort that humans are animals, and that classifying humans into "something other than animals" is fundamentally flawed. Why are so many humans wont on forgetting that we're an animals too? > The only understanding i can see is that having wild animals as pets should be banned as they normally are in most jurisdictions. I supp…

I wonder how much religion factors into the belief that humans are a fundamentally different category. Abrahamic religions certanly rely on this idea. No idea about others.

I think it is more fundamental to human nature than can be explained by religion. Just hang around in tech circles and listen to them talk about other people and you'll see they consider themselves to be in some fundamentally different category from the rest of humanity.

Re: A gorilla who was brought up as a boy in an English village

#86

Post by joshAg »

matt_f wrote: post #82

Most interesting line if this article for me: > The ape cost £300, about £25,000 in today’s money (or about $34,000USD). Holy cow, has there been a 10,000% inflation of the value of a pound in one century?

Not as bad as 10,000%, but the bank of england estimates an average inflation rate of 4.2%[1], so it's within an order of magnitude. (25M - 300) / 300 is only like 8200%, but bank of england puts the current value of 300 1917 pounds at 21283.44 2020 pounds, which is "only" 6994% ([21283.44 - 300] / 300).

[1]: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/in... 300 pounds, 1917, and 2020.

Re: A gorilla who was brought up as a boy in an English village

#87

Post by kemayo »

NoOneNew wrote: post #44
chmod775 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Though you could make a similar argument for domesticated animals like dogs. Especially larger dogs. Or humans! There are a lot of things that can be dangerous to humans, especially children, when they fly off the handle. There is always a risk. Most animals function emotionally like humans, but have no good way of communicating emotions like frustration and anger except through aggression. But locking up an…

https://youtu.be/4dwjS_eI-lQ In that video they show how far they still are from domesticated foxes compared to modern dogs. Well, domesticated pretty much means, "desirable traits for human benefit" when you think about it, the same applies to humans, but we call that civilized or sociable. Theres a joke in the comments, something like the fox goes "I'm okay with you being a meter away from me... but let's keep it t…

If nothing else, people tend to to put more effort into properly training large dogs out of any human-aggressive tendencies. It's a lot easier to view your Chihuahua nipping at someone's ankles as cute, compared to your pitbull doing the exact same thing.

Honestly, the biggest problem I've had with large dogs is poor socialization in how to play with humans. A dog doing properly-social play by dog standards (play-bows, carefully light nipping, etc) can still be a really worrying experience for an adult if the dog is 100lbs.

Re: A gorilla who was brought up as a boy in an English village

#88

Post by jdmichal »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #47
chmod775 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Though you could make a similar argument for domesticated animals like dogs. Especially larger dogs. Or humans! There are a lot of things that can be dangerous to humans, especially children, when they fly off the handle. There is always a risk. Most animals function emotionally like humans, but have no good way of communicating emotions like frustration and anger except through aggression. But locking up an…

I love animals and had dogs and cats living with my family. When I had my first kid, my wife had a large dog (a mixture between a labrador and a german shepard, and probably others - she found it as a puppy attached to a rope in the forest, left to die). The dog was extremely quiet, socialized and what not. When we brought our baby from the hospital, he was really curious. We left him sniff the baby and the dog appar…

My parents had a husky when I was born. The moment it bit my face was the last moment it spent in the house. Lived in the garage until it was (quickly) rehomed. I don't blame it; it wasn't like it was trying to rip my face off. I think it was just trying to assert itself in the pack order ahead of me. Except the pack leaders weren't too fond of that idea.

Ironically, I now love huskies. But would also never get one, because I live in Florida and would not subject such a dog to the weather here.

Re: A gorilla who was brought up as a boy in an English village

#89

Post by dan-robertson »

I grew up very near to Uley yet had no idea about this. I’m amazed how quickly it seems to have been forgotten. I wonder why it was? It seems some people did know about it so maybe no one thought it was noteworthy. Perhaps the demographic changes in the countryside made it harder for that sort of history to be passed down. Or maybe it wasn’t really forgotten at all but it just wasn’t widely known or talked about.

Re: A gorilla who was brought up as a boy in an English village

#90

Post by yencabulator »

rbanffy wrote: post #48
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

further, if one has the opportunity to talk to people working in a forensic psychology unit, they might discover the presence of the "wild animal" in the human and that all of us are still a lot closer to that wild animal than we like to admit.

Still, a raging 80 kg human can be a handful to deal with. A raging 200 kg gorilla is much worse. There is a lot that can be done to assimilate a gorilla into a human society, but they aren't human and the differences, while possible to understand at a certain effort, may end up surprising you. My cat still tries to hunt my foot when bored. If she were a tiger, I would have a very serious problem to deal with (it's h…

Absolutely. However, that is a different criteria than wild/not wild.

Bulls are domesticated animals, after all.

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