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Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

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Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#181
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the people quickest to go on about anthropomorphism tend to have the least experience with animals. When you think about it.'s quite the intellectual conceit to assume you fully understand the decision-making of another creature and that it is entirely dependent on food. Reminds me of certain economic ideologues who insist everyone, whether they know it or not, is motivated by money and self-advancement.

It takes some serious introspection to see the similarities between ourselves and the other animals around us. At the same time we have trouble understanding the motivations and thinking of other human beings, much less a wildly different creature like a bird or a snake. I can see why some people just stick their fingers in their ears and think of non-human animals as "Things" rather than thinking beings. Otherwise t…

There are small children dying right now for no other reason than some people wanting to make some money. If one can, say, enjoy a movie while knowing that, why would one have to think of non-human animals as "things"?

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#182
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reduplication[1], in case you find that sort of thing interesting. Almost exact reduplication, bar the ending - is ending in -in or -din allowed in Brazilian Portuguese? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduplication

I may be wrong but I guess that we don't have any words in portuguese that ends with in or din.

In Brazillian portuguese, the only words ended with "n" are scientific names (neologisms?) with a latin radical, e.g. elétron, próton, nêutron, pólen, plâncton, necton, etc.

In European portuguese, while the above forms are also common, the alternatives "electrão, protão, neutrão" are often found.

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#183

To forgive the tautology, intelligent creatures are intelligent. Which also means that love is possible. I mean... every person who's ever had a pet (of any sort) understands this (as I stare at the photo of my recently-deceased and very-charismatic cat). It may not fit into any naturalistic model that clearly separates humans from these other intelligent creatures (and ascribes all perception of humanlike feeling to…

Evolutionary speaking, all the animals that care for their young or form bonds with other animals (same species) for cooperation have a higher likelihood of feeling emotions that you mentioned in your comments. Pain might be universal but things like "love", "play", "excitement", "boredom" etc. are highly unlikely in crustaceans or even fish.

So it's very clear that eating mammals and birds is ethically not okay but apart from the environmental reasons, eating sea food is probably not as bad as eating mammals/birds.

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#184

When I was a child, a school teacher showed me this hoax video of flying penguins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dfWzp7rYR4 . Unfortunately, for a brief period of my childhood, I was under the assumption that penguins could indeed fly. By the time I had uncovered my teacher's subterfuge, I had already made a fool of myself by publicly positing that such penguins existed. Admittedly, my teacher was only playing a p…

For some reason I thought they could sort of fly. Not high or great distances. Less then a turkey, but still in the range of a few feet.

Their wings evolved into flippers more or less. Optimizing for that meant that flight was no longer possible.

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#185
post #8

> It's technically illegal to have a wild animal as a pet in Brazil, as officials want to ensure vulnerable creatures don't get separated from their families and that they can be reintroduced into the wild after injury. Same where I am. I've wondered, though. What constitutes a pet? For example, I give peanuts to the wild squirrels around my house. This is not illegal where I live. It is illegal, however, to keep a w…

I was walking down the sidewalk at a University once, and a squirrel stopped in front of me. I stopped and stared down at it. It moved a foot closer and stared back up at me. Before I knew what was happening it started scampering up my leg! I jumped and it went back down, but I still don't know why it did that.

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#186

When I was a child, a school teacher showed me this hoax video of flying penguins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dfWzp7rYR4 . Unfortunately, for a brief period of my childhood, I was under the assumption that penguins could indeed fly. By the time I had uncovered my teacher's subterfuge, I had already made a fool of myself by publicly positing that such penguins existed. Admittedly, my teacher was only playing a p…

To that end, the dollop did a podcast that talked about the harrowing experience of penguins on an island off Australia: https://thedollop.libsyn.com/207-the-animal-horror-of-macqua...

I've listened to it 4 times so far, it's amazing.

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#187
post #38
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Sweden someone had pigeons flying to their balcony all the time and they got reported for keeping them as a pet. The city dropped them off in another town but they flew back and were ordered to be put down because native species are not allowed to be kept as pets and they were unwilling to adapt to not living on the balcony.

> Here in Sweden someone had pigeons flying to their balcony all the time and they got reported for keeping them as a pet. The city dropped them off in another town but they flew back and were ordered to be put down because native species are not allowed to be kept as pets and they were unwilling to adapt to not living on the balcony. If the motivation of these laws is to protect the animals, I can't think of a more…

Then you are being ignorant. The idea is not to protect a few animals, it is to protect all animals, and all pigeons in this case.

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that's not really relevant here. The parent still considers them 'wild' despite providing alternate food source which changes their behavioral patterns. Somewhat similar to photographers baiting animals for more dramatic photos: https://www.audubon.org/news/why-you-shouldnt-feed-or-bait-o... If you want to keep wildlife truly wild you should do your part to minimize the impact you have on their habitats and…

> The parent still considers them 'wild' despite providing alternate food source which changes their behavioral patterns. Who says this is changing their behavioural patterns? Maybe native people in north america have been randomly feeding grey squirrels for thens of thousands of years. Maybe for longer in Eurasia? In fact if it weren't in the animals behavioural repertoire to recognise the opportunity of taking food…

> Who says this is changing their behavioural patterns?

Can you guarantee 100% that is isn't? No, of course not. Then just leave them alone. What is it with people feeling they can just constantly interfere with animals lives. These are not your pets, not your playthings to do as you wish.

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet the number of vegetarians would go up quite a bit if people had to slaughter animals themselves if they wanted meat. Our society is pretty good at hiding the dirty work from people.

Looking at my grandparents' generation, who had to do just that, I wouldn't count on it.

My parents both grew up on farms where they slaughtered their own animals. They ate meat maybe once a week or less. So at a minimum meat consumption would go down.

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#190

When I was a child, a school teacher showed me this hoax video of flying penguins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dfWzp7rYR4 . Unfortunately, for a brief period of my childhood, I was under the assumption that penguins could indeed fly. By the time I had uncovered my teacher's subterfuge, I had already made a fool of myself by publicly positing that such penguins existed. Admittedly, my teacher was only playing a p…

Reminds me of an incident in my early education when I happened to catch a documentary spoof about Stonehenge on TV that depicted whales building the ancient wonder. (I think Steve Martin was involved.)

Coincidentally, a few days later the topic of Stonehenge came up in class and my teacher asked if anyone knew anything about it. I immediately raised my hand and, when my teacher called on me, smugly announced, with full sincerity, that whales had built it.

She simply said, "No." Then turned to the next raised hand.

Edit: I can now confirm that my teacher was simply not informed by the latest research at the time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVz53dQ1Eyg

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