Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant • Hacker News Board

Re: Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant

#161

Post by namaria » Sun, May 05, 2024, 7:07 AM UTC

penguin_booze wrote: post #113

balls187 wrote: post #73

Many years ago I stopped by a zoo in France, with my 7mo son. I was pushing him in the stroller while he was napping, and at the orangutan exhibit, one came up to the window and gestured towards the stroller. I turned the stroller to face the window, and removed the hood. The orangutan blew my son a kiss, waved then went back to the otherside of its enclosure. Made me rethink what I knew about animal intelligence.

> The orangutan blew my son a kiss Excuse being the kill joy: the fellow might be mimicking a gesture it learned from other visitors. That's not to say they don't have an inner life--we're all made of the same substrate, after all.

What gestures have you thought out originally all by yourself and not learned from others?

Re: Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant

#162

Post by namaria » Sun, May 05, 2024, 7:08 AM UTC

penguin_booze wrote: post #125

noja wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this what humans do?

We do mimic, but I was saying the animal wasn't exactly (probably) expressing its affection/adoration for a human baby with a flying kiss gesture. Had the animal picked up a vulgar gesture from a human visitor, it might as well have chosen that gesture at the baby instead, without necessarily knowing its inappropriate. A human parent, understandably, will not be very pleased with such an incident.

Yes if the gesture chosen was different our reaction would be different. That's the point. If you had said nonsense, I would not have understood.

Re: Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant

#163

Post by manx » Mon, May 06, 2024, 8:48 AM UTC

aitchnyu wrote: post #120

snikeris wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren’t we faced with the same fundamental mystery of human insight? Where does it come from?

Some tribes have a drug with sophisticated preparation steps from multiple plants and they claim the plants spoke to them about their ability. Carrots were pencil thin woody roots, almonds were fatal, bananas were half rock hard seeds, rice was just another grass, wolves were skittish and bare their teeth at humans. How did ancient humans see potential in them?

The book "Guns Germs and Steel" has some good answers to that question.

Re: Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant

#164

Post by ASalazarMX » Mon, May 06, 2024, 11:59 PM UTC

swores wrote: post #136

smusamashah wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mirroring and copying unthinkingly is how we humans learn. If what we mirrored gives us the desired results we keep doing it. Questioning and understanding those actions comes lot later. I have learned this from my toddler son who picked up some 2 3 word sentences from the cartoons that he watches. He ofcourse has no clue what those words mean, but he does know when to use them and what response he gets from them. En…

Sure, we learn by copying things. But there isn't, that I'm aware of, any evidence that an orangutan has done the learning part rather than just the copying part. It wouldn't shock me if we did learn they can learn that way, but it also wouldn't shock me if it was just blindly copying human gestures without learning anything from what happens when they do.

I still think that said orangutan didn't have to blow a kiss and wave goodbye, after all it already had what it wanted: seeing a baby. It could as well just turn around and leave.

Orangutans likely don't blow kisses in the wild, so it not only imitated it, but also used it in an appropriate manner and context, without an immediate need to satisfy.

Chimps are roughly as smart as a 5 year-old human, and toddlers sure blow kisses and wave goodbye with full intention.

Great apes are more human-like than most people think: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/science/17chimp.html

Re: Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant

#165

Post by fsckboy » Tue, May 07, 2024, 4:16 PM UTC

balls187 wrote: post #73

Many years ago I stopped by a zoo in France, with my 7mo son. I was pushing him in the stroller while he was napping, and at the orangutan exhibit, one came up to the window and gestured towards the stroller. I turned the stroller to face the window, and removed the hood. The orangutan blew my son a kiss, waved then went back to the otherside of its enclosure. Made me rethink what I knew about animal intelligence.

> The orangutan blew my son a kiss

orangutan chef's kiss?