Given the science that parrots are extremely social, this evidence that they enjoy calling each other, and the sheer number of wealthy people that own exactly one parrot, I expect that one of you is surely going to launch a social network for parrots any day now, and it will probably make money.
Great. Now my parrot goes on Beakbook and within a month he has a timeshare, a reverse mortgage, and three NFTs.
Also his favorite phrases to yell out when company comes over are "The Earth is Flat!", "Vaccines Suck!", and "I'm not flying, I'm traveling."
Also, all the aquatic animals have one rather serious obstacle to developing an advanced/technological society: no way to make/use fire. Personally I think the only thing that really categorically distinguishes humans from other smart animals is that, the use of fire. Yeah, our language abilities are impressive too, but they may have fully developed after we already started using fire, telling stories around the camp…
Obviously you're not wrong about fire being a major blocking point for sea creatures[1] - hard to make metals without fire. But possibly mermaids could "cook" their food via fermentation, e.g. putting food in a sealed swim bladder, then burying it in the sand. This could fulfill the same brain calorie requirements. [1] Of course, maybe in Andromeda some sea-hackers are reading Hacker Sea-News and arguing land-based a…
They might be learn to make use of underground volcanoes and gas vents. Maybe too deep for marine mammals?
Obviously you're not wrong about fire being a major blocking point for sea creatures[1] - hard to make metals without fire. But possibly mermaids could "cook" their food via fermentation, e.g. putting food in a sealed swim bladder, then burying it in the sand. This could fulfill the same brain calorie requirements. [1] Of course, maybe in Andromeda some sea-hackers are reading Hacker Sea-News and arguing land-based a…
They might be learn to make use of underground volcanoes and gas vents. Maybe too deep for marine mammals?
Yeah, too deep to keep watch over I think, unless they went for air in shifts. There's also the issue that if you're on land, gravity means you don't need an airtight container to cook/smelt/etc. But underwater it would be hard to prevent things from leaking to the sea.
I think mermaids could do fish kebabs over a gas vent (though they'd lose a lot of food), but they couldn't use it as a kiln.
Most animals in the wild live very tough, short lives and have high likelihood that they be killed and eaten by predators, so they live every second of their lives in fear. I am not convinced that when animals are grown by humans in appropriate conditions (i.e. not overcrowded sausage factories), given all the food they need and able to "enjoy" (this is a human emotion, but perhaps they have an analogous "feeling" wh…
> so they live every second of their lives in fear. Seems like an oversimplification to me, and we don't know that they live their whole live in fear. We observe playful and happy behavior in plenty of wild animals, not only in apex predators. > I am not convinced that when animals are grown by humans in appropriate conditions [...] They lack any kind of self determination, take a milk farm for example. The cows are…
If you think we are raping cows when they are artificially inseminated, I hope you are equally horrified by natural animal sex. Everything from penis spines to traumatic insemination, to dolphin rape gangs, and worse exist in animal sex. And the there is oven nothing resembing consent asked or given. Its humans and bonaboo and thats pretty much it that who do it nicely most of the time.
Incredible! So much that is fascinating about non-human animals. I can't resist but think that there's a deep similarity between us, and them. One that we even don't suspect. Reminds me of Tom Regan's words: "Animals have a past, a story, a biography. They have histories. Mink and bears, elephants and dolphins, pigs and chickens, cats and dogs: each is a unique somebody, not a disposable something."
We can't prove or disprove that enslaving and exploiting animals is a bad thing. As a society we currently answer that with .. take a look at your supermarket. What if we are wrong?
We can take it as an axiom. I believe that enslaving animals and causing harm to the biosphere is just as bad as human enslavement and genocide. I believe such an axiom is the only moral one.
It's not just our supermarket. Our entire society is based on the genocide of animal species and destruction and violence. It is the most sick society and disgusting thing I have ever seen, on the level of the atrocities of all of human history.
My pet Mitred Conure (Leonard) loves to mess with my iPad while I'm reading. On the other had, Leonard >hates< my iPhone. If he's on my shoulder he'll engage in a agressive display waving around and violently biting my shirt. If the phone is close enough to him he will attack the phone. I'm an extremely light phone user so its not like I ignore him when using the phone, but I do expect it is the size makes it competi…
I have a family member with a cockatoo (goffin) and it's generally afraid when someone has a phone in their hand. Pretty strange, we haven't figured out exactly what the issue is. Placing the phone down on a table to play some music seems fine, but it seems like once the phone is in someone's hands and moving around, maybe it resembles some kind of predator?? No clue!
And they had preferred friends! It's truly awesome because their owners could help improve their quality of life with just a cheap tablet and the service fee.
Their owners could improve their quality of life by simply not keeping them Parrots are too smart and too social to be kept in captivity
Yeah these comments feel so out of touch, kind of a metaphors for what we became with modern tech. We're creating tools and distractions to cope from how unbearable we made our daily lives, and apparently it's progress
Most animals in the wild live very tough, short lives and have high likelihood that they be killed and eaten by predators, so they live every second of their lives in fear. I am not convinced that when animals are grown by humans in appropriate conditions (i.e. not overcrowded sausage factories), given all the food they need and able to "enjoy" (this is a human emotion, but perhaps they have an analogous "feeling" wh…
Its not a strong argument. Denying nature is what we do constantly. We teach our children to shit in a bowl that flushes water instead of shitting on the ground, we teach them to delay their gratification s, we tell them not to use violence, we teach them to ask for consent. All unnatural things to do. Are you saying these are not wise things to do?
Nature is adaptation for survival. I think you're mixing up "the old ways" with "naturally beneficial ways". Your chances of survival and reproduction are much higher with access to modern toilets, delayed gratification, no unnecessary violence, and due to society asking for consent. It's perfectly natural.
> so they live every second of their lives in fear. Seems like an oversimplification to me, and we don't know that they live their whole live in fear. We observe playful and happy behavior in plenty of wild animals, not only in apex predators. > I am not convinced that when animals are grown by humans in appropriate conditions [...] They lack any kind of self determination, take a milk farm for example. The cows are…
If you think we are raping cows when they are artificially inseminated, I hope you are equally horrified by natural animal sex. Everything from penis spines to traumatic insemination, to dolphin rape gangs, and worse exist in animal sex. And the there is oven nothing resembing consent asked or given. Its humans and bonaboo and thats pretty much it that who do it nicely most of the time.
I see your point, indeed by human standards consent and in general a lack of cruelty are not what defines wild animal life. At the same time I believe there is an important difference between humans doing it in an industry setting and it happening in the wild. Additionally, even ignoring the insemination point, I'd say the big picture remains the same. For me the big picture is a question of self determination, in the wild, female mammals usually have more than zero control over who they mate with, in the setting of a farm her head gets locked into place between bars so she can't move away when a human plunges a probe into her.
What a wonderful site design. Everything, even the video clips, work without javascript execution. This is a site that a parrot itself could load and use. On that topic, I recently saw a video of flocks of parrots that learned to manually spin a water pump windmill by flying up and sitting on the top of it on windless days.
I thought the exact opposite from a UX angle. Swiped down and it started scrolljacking and then I read the line about touch screens helping us “to snag Lightning deals on Prime Day” and it was enough for me to just stop reading and close the tab.
That's a punishment for enabling JavaScript. As GP stated, it's perfectly usable without JS.