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Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

theguardian.com

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Re: Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

#141

Post by [deleted] »

prometheus76 wrote: post #134
sky-kedge0749 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is plenty of meat available that is almost cruelty-free. A factory farmed broiler chicken lives its entire 60,480 minutes (six weeks) in agony, while a hunted deer or pastured cow might only suffer a few minutes, and for the deer you might be saving it from an even worse fate. Maybe you are already buying meat that way. I'm sorry that I compared what you feel to be a religious necessity to eat meat to torturing…

My meat intake all comes from locally raised meat where I physically go to the farm and can see how the animals are being treated. I also agree that the "all or nothing" kind of tone that many people who advocate against eating meat takes is a hard line to sell. A "try a plant-based meal once a week" would be a much easier sell.

[deleted]

Re: Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

#142

Post by guerrilla »

kinghtown wrote: post #123
guerrilla wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like most people are like one or two a-ha insights away from veganism. Intelligence and awareness definitely has a spectrum across the animal kingdom but I’m not so sure about sentience itself. Do fish feel pain? Do insects experience fear? The only people who don't think animals feel pain are people who don't spend time with animals. Every farmer since the neolithic has known that animals feel pain and are…

Quoted post unavailable.

No, as I said you just have assumptions (and values) that most people don't. Much industrialized farming being a nightmare that needs to change is not going to make me a vegan and think eating animal products in general is wrong. That would be a fallacious non-sequitur because opposing abuses in industrialized farming, or even opposing all industrialized farming is not veganism. Your entire approach is foolish and condescending though, assuming I don't already know as much or more than you about the subject.

Re: Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

#143

Post by tdehnel »

lynguist wrote: post #83

The difference between modern humans and other animals, even extinct humans, is not the presence of intelligence, it is language. Just compared to other extinct humans, we are more social and more violent. I believe what makes humans different is this: language and music and religion. This makes humans something bigger than just the individual. See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4947341/#!po=0....

Not surprising that a “lynguist” would think this. But it’s wrong. Animals can communicate with language (whales, chimps, etc etc).

The thing that makes humans special is their ability to create and use explanatory knowledge. That’s why humans and no other animals have had an enlightenment or scientific revolution.

Re: Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

#144

Post by kinghtown »

guerrilla wrote: post #142
kinghtown wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

No, as I said you just have assumptions (and values) that most people don't. Much industrialized farming being a nightmare that needs to change is not going to make me a vegan and think eating animal products in general is wrong. That would be a fallacious non-sequitur because opposing abuses in industrialized farming, or even opposing all industrialized farming is not veganism. Your entire approach is foolish and co…

No post body was provided.

Re: Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

#145

Post by cheese_goddess »

ggm wrote: post #34
cheese_goddess wrote: post #7

> But what makes a pig optimistic? In 2010, researchers at Newcastle University showed that pigs reared in a pleasant, stimulating environment, with room to roam, plenty of straw, and “pig toys” to explore, show the optimistic response to the squeak significantly more often than pigs raised in a small, bleak, boring enclosure. That... is dumb. They just chose whatever definition of "optimistic" was convenient for the…

Initially I also read it that way but it's a better designed experiment than first glance suggests: it's a choice predicated on three things leading to two outcomes, of the three things, one is clearly beneficial and one not beneficial, and the third indeterminate. So the two outcomes are beneficial and not beneficial. How does the pig interpret the as-yet unknown case? An "optimistic" pigs behaviour suggests it is o…

Thanks, I understand the experiment as described. But if you start by asking "what makes a pig optimistic", you're already assuming that a pig can be optimistic. Whatever reason you find after that to say that the pig is optimistic is going to be wrong, because you have failed to do anything to justify the idea that pigs can be optimistic in the first place.

Re: Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

#146

Post by samatman »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #82
throwaway675309 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really have a dog in this fight, no pun intended, but you would be wrong. The only modern study that looked at neurons of carnivorous animals including cats/dogs found that dogs have nearly twice the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex, and the ratio of cortical neurons to overall neurons is also higher (~20% vs ~23%). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnana.2017.0011...

I know very little about brains in general but I would guess that the number of synapses (connections between nuerons) has more to do with intelligence than the number of neurons themselves. Could be that this scales exponentially. I think it's much easier to count neurons tho, seems like we have good numbers for lots of species. Worth considering that African elephants have 3x the nuerons we do, Killer Whales twice…

It's interesting right! But it turns out elephants have about a third of the cortical neurons as humans, presumably they need more brain capacity to handle being enormous.

Orca, on the other hand, have more cortical neurons than we do, and much larger brains in general. Part of that is clearly that they have an incredible sense we don't, the ability to make three-dimensional maps out of sound, but orca are also remarkably complex beings and I don't have too much trouble believing that they're about as smart as us, just in a very different way that doesn't involve tools.

Re: Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

#147

Post by harpersealtako »

kinghtown wrote: post #140
harpersealtako wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admittedly I only skimmed through through it, but it looks like yet another vegan documentary (e.g. Dominion, which I watched all the way through and wasn't convinced at all by) where the worst examples of the worst excesses of industrialized slaughter are taken in the worst possible light and suggested to be broadly representative of the whole. Honestly, anybody with basically any exposure to real-life animal husban…

oh for sure these vegan documentaries are going to cherry pick footage (because the goal is to shock and expose) but it’s not as though they were invited to film in multiple locations around the world and chose the most messed up place of the bunch. The problem is that most people have this like cartoon visual in their head of farming and that these animals are killed gently and instantly when an extreme opposite is…

So the "killed gently and instantly" is the main one I think is wrong about these documentaries and the part that is certainly the easiest to construct a false narrative with. Largely IMO the horrors of industrialized animal husbandry are in the everyday life of the animal, e.g. feedlots, rather than slaughterhouses.

An example: there's this classic image you see all the time of the cow strung up by its hindquarters, kicking and flailing as it's moved along the assembly line. The problem is that this narrative is literally fraudulent. That cow is already dead, its brain has been destroyed by a bolt gun, and the reason it's "kicking" is because its 100% dead carcass is being shocked with electricity to induce rigor mortis. It's actually illegal to slaughter a cow any other way in a slaughterhouse.

For me at least the reason I hunt is because I love the personal connection I get to what I eat. Being responsible for my food is incredibly satisfying. Lab grown meat to me seems like the opposite of that.

Re: Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

#148

Post by xolox »

kmarc wrote: post #52

I'm surprised that the article mentions Frans de Waal primatologist, but doesn't mention his book, which is an excellent read about the topic: Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are? [1] [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30192493-are-we-smart-en...

In addition to "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?" another book by Frans de Waal, "Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves" is also well worth the read.
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