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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

#121

Post by btilly »

Aeolun wrote: post #113
btilly wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, a raging 80 kg human can be a handful to deal with. Exactly how big a handful becomes much clearer when someone close to you spends long enough manic and without sleep, then goes psychotic.

Trying to hold my 15kg toddler when he goes crazy has given me a fairly good idea of what that would be like.

I would have said the same when my kids were young.

When my sister went crazy in exactly the manner described, I learned that I was wrong. Totally wrong.

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

#122

Post by solarengineer »

lurquer wrote: post #117
Aeolun wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this was true when we were still practicing slavery? The owner would be held strictly liable for slave inflicted attacks, so humans would be wild animals by that definition.

What do you mean by “we”?

Slave suppliers - those at the start of the chain - often sell those from their region. Across centuries, humans from all parts of the world have enslaved each other.

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

#123

Post by trhway »

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…

>Still, a raging 80 kg human can be a handful to deal with. A raging 200 kg gorilla is much worse.

the history of our civilization proves that raging 80 kg human with a weapon is a much worse than any other animal. Even mammoths went down before us. This is why we took over that planet and are an apex predator and are a most dangerous animal around.

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

#124

Post by 29athrowaway »

type0 wrote: post #107
29athrowaway wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting fact, thank you. I wasn't familiar with this.

Watch some nature documentaries, wild researchers can often go and sit in close proximity with the gorillas, if humans are calm so are them. You wouldn't dare to do this with chimpanzees.

Yeah... chimpanzees can be very violent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War

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

#125

Post by drdeca »

naringas wrote: post #16
ptsneves wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cordially disagree. I counter argue that anthropomorphizing of animals is fundamentally flawed. What understanding are you talking about? That with understanding the wild animal will not kill and maim randomly? As per other comments it seems evidence is against this reasoning. Highly experienced trainers who understand very well their animals end up dead. I think it is quite a high grounded statement to call profes…

> 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…

Why are humans unlike (other) animals? Because only humans debate whether they are.

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

#126

Post by aceofspades19 »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #69
aceofspades19 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been around house cats for almost my entire life and have been bit and scratched countless times and I never have had any wound that has had an infection as a result. So would like to see the actual statistics on how often people lose their hands from their pet cat biting them. Not that I am saying one shouldn't use applicable wound care but find it difficult to believe that you must visit a doctor right away…

cf. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15456433/ "Appropriate early treatment of cat bites of the hand is the key to success. Treatment with antibiotics, surgical drainage, debridement and copious irrigation, and use of corticosteroids in some cases, proved to be effective. Hand elevation and intensive physiotherapy after a short period of immobilization is critical. We believe that prophylactic antibiotics should be gi…

That's a study of people already visiting the hospital for a cat bite, which implies they were fairly serious wounds. Of course if you have a serious enough wound to go to the hospital over and possibly get plastic surgery to repair, yes there is a serious risk of infection obviously. The OP was implying that ANY cat bite that breaks the skin means you should rush to the doctor which that paper does not prove.

Furthermore, I already acknowledge that proper wound care should not be ignored.

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

#127

Post by ivanbakel »

mLuby wrote: post #56
ivanbakel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the point being made here? Humans are liable for themselves and their actions - animals are not. It ultimately doesn't matter if an animal has a justification for its actions; being unable to take responsibility for them, from a human perspective, is the biggest separator between human and animal behaviour.

Animals are liable for their actions. The punishment is usually death by lethal injection or firing squad. The stronger argument is that animals aren't as aware as humans which actions will have consequences. Animals do have customs about what's okay and what's not, but they often don't align with human society's laws. It's "ignorance of the law is no excuse" taken to an extreme.

I don't really agree. While humans can and do punish animals, it doesn't follow that the animal itself is liable for its own actions. In pretty much all cases, the owner of the animal is the one liable - and animals without owners are liable to nobody. An animal without an owner might still be killed - for example, if it is a danger to people - but I don't think you can call that just punishment.

For another argument, consider that if you went into the woods and were mauled by a bear, nobody who found your body would feel the need to confront the bear and hold it responsible. The bear would not need to be convicted in order to be acted against.

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

#128

Post by Ensorceled »

1e-9 wrote: post #120
Ensorceled wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Domesticated dogs attack and maim on a regular basis and kill someone pretty much weekly in North America[1]. It's bizarre that we would expect non-domesticated, larger, more dangerous animals to be not be, well, dangerous. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_dog_attacks_in_t...

32 of the fatality descriptions identify a breed. 26 of them list "pit bull." So, 81% of fatality descriptions that identify a breed list "pit bull." That's a much higher rate of pit bull involvement than I had heard of in the past.

I think it's a few things: pit bulls are a very large and strong breed, aggressive people prefer large, powerful dogs, aggressive people don't train/socialize their dogs to be nice to other people.

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

#129

Post by rbanffy »

trhway wrote: post #123
rbanffy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Still, a raging 80 kg human can be a handful to deal with. A raging 200 kg gorilla is much worse. the history of our civilization proves that raging 80 kg human with a weapon is a much worse than any other animal. Even mammoths went down before us. This is why we took over that planet and are an apex predator and are a most dangerous animal around.

True, but, without weapons, I'll still bet on the gorilla.

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

#130

Post by jeegsy »

lurquer wrote: post #83
malloryerik wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... tra…

Once I read the story, I could easily predict the comments that would follow on HN: > because there is no controlling a 200-pound angry wild animal when its upset:

>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

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