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The Brains of the Animal Kingdom


Still Waters

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Who is smarter: a person or an ape? Well, it depends on the task. Consider Ayumu, a young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University who, in a 2007 study, put human memory to shame. Trained on a touch screen, Ayumu could recall a random series of nine numbers, from 1 to 9, and tap them in the right order, even though the numbers had been displayed for just a fraction of a second and then replaced with white squares.

I tried the task myself and could not keep track of more than five numbers—and I was given much more time than the brainy ape.

http://online.wsj.co...4285382756.html

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I guess that ape puts humans to shame.

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"Who is smarter: a person or an ape?"

Now ask the ape to change your flat tire.

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"Who is smarter: a person or an ape?"

Now ask the ape to change your flat tire.

The ape ain't driving, it's your problem ...

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I have always suspected that we humans are not as superior as we give ourselves credit for.

Very interesting read SW.

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The ape ain't driving, it's your problem ...

They'll do anything for a banana, if they can.

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They'll do anything for a banana, if they can.

"If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows."

~ Henry Ward Beecher

If monkey had wings .... :D

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I guess that ape puts humans to shame.

Absolute codswallop.

Just try teaching that ape the basic laws of physics, astronomy, chemistry. Try teaching it E8 algebra or ask it to write a book about the English Civil War and the circumstances leading up to it. Just try any of that with a chimp and see how far you get.

Chimps have NEVER done anything that's blown me away, apart from Bubbles, but that's only because he was brave enough to live with Michael Jackson for several years.

Edited by TheLastLazyGun
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Absolute codswallop.

Just try teaching that ape the basic laws of physics, astronomy, chemistry. Try teaching it E8 algebra or ask it to write a book about the English Civil War and the circumstances leading up to it. Just try any of that with a chimp and see how far you get.

~snip

thats none of their concern,

Apes With IPads: Using Technology to Communicate

“No chimpanzee has learned sign language. They’ve certainly learned some gestures, but sign language is not just a system of gestures. It’s a full, grammatical language with its own systematic grammar, like Latin.” Psychologist Steven Pinker,

Author of The Language Instinct

link
also contends that wild bonobos -- only an estimated 4,000 to 40,000 survive in Congo, formerly Zaire -- have a second communication system. This one resembles road signs built of smashed plants rather than steel.
link

220px-KokoPoster.jpg

Koko (born July 4, 1971) is a female gorilla who, according to Francine "Penny" Patterson, is able to understand more than 1,000 signs based on American Sign Language,[2] and understand approximately 2,000 words of spoken English.[3]

As with other ape language experiments, the degree to which Koko masters these signs has been controversial, as has been the degree to which such mastery demonstrates language abilities.

wiki

~edit : link maintenance

Edited by third_eye
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A chimp being able to learn a few signs in sign language does not blow me away.

Has any chimp ever learnt the Third Law of Thermodynamics?

Has any chimp ever become a molecular biologist?

Has any chimp ever invented something?

No, they haven't. No chimp or any other animal other than homo sapiens has ever done anything that's left me genuinely impressed. Even supposedly intelligent dolphins.

Edited by TheLastLazyGun
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A chimp being able to learn a few signs in sign language does not blow me away.

Has any chimp ever learnt the Third Law of Thermodynamics?

Has any chimp ever become a molecular biologist?

Has any chimp ever invented something?

No, they haven't. No chimp or any other animal other than homo sapiens has ever done anything that's left me genuinely impressed. Even supposedly intelligent dolphins.

A lot of people can't do what you mentioned either and no amount of education seems to change that. you seems to give the impression that all humans are as intelligent as the smartest human there is.

The apes are smart enough for their own humble needs and more.

Like to see you try to learn anything ape, see if you can do better than apes learning things human.

What you are saying is that, to quote Sagan "the ape isn't smart enough to beat me two times out of three at chess because its dumb' (or something like that)

Edited by third_eye
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Try this out with a chimp, and you'll be waiting till hell freezes over:

And I seriously wonder how many of us would have thought of that solution... without knowing of Aesop's Fables, or Archimedes/Aristoteles, fluid mechanics, who- or whatever.

I can imagine many thinking: "Why the hell do they throw these rocks inside my cage??"

Maybe they will figure it out after a couple of minutes (or never), but this rook figured it out within a second.

Now watch this video:

[media=]

See the brain size of two birds of similar size:

pigeon_crow_brains.jpg

I want to see a chimp do just that, as shown in the second video,and with the same speed.

A biologist once said that corvids were - concerning intelligence - between man and apes.

"If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows."

~ Henry Ward Beecher

.

Edited by Abramelin
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Chimps are better at teamwork than anyone realized

Chimpanzees sometimes work together to solve problems. But scientists haven't been sure whether chimps deliberately cooperate to reach a common goal, or accidentally do it by focusing on related tasks. Now, we have evidence that they are consciously working to form teams. This sheds light on the social behavior of chimps and humans alike.

http://io9.com/chimps-are-better-at-teamwork-than-anyone-realized-458410295

needs to update : Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are (1993) is a non-fiction book by the late Carl Sagan and his wife, Ann Druyan.

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Convergent Evolution of Cognition in Corvids, Apes and Other Animals

Jayden O. van Horik, Nicola S. Clayton, and Nathan J. Emery.

Abstract

Over the past 30 years, a cognitive renaissance has produced startling revelations about how species perceive their physical and social worlds. Once considered mere automata by Descartes, recent research supports claims that many animals possess advanced cognitive capacities (Shettleworth, 2010). Moreover, advanced cognition appears to have arisen across numerous species, many of which are distantly related, but which share a number of traits, such as large relative brain size, complex sociality and behavioral flexibility. Is the evolution of advanced cognition the result of a series of adaptive specializations driven by the shared selection pressures that species face in their environments? With our expanding awareness of cognitive processes across species, attributes such as causal reasoning, mental time travel or mental attribution, once thought unique to humans, invite careful reconsideration of their evolutionary origins.

Animals-brainvolume-bodyweight_zps8fad765c.jpg

http://www.academia.edu/452267/Convergent_Evolution_of_Cognition_in_Corvids_Apes_and_Other_Animals

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Apes dont ruin their environment like clever humans do. They may not understand physics but they sure aint stoopid.

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Some animals are extremely smart, just no where near as smart as humans.

This gorilla was taught basic sign language. They introduced a kitten which the gorilla named 'All Ball'.

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Ha...so apes can remember a few numbers and crows can solve small problems. How about taking a look at an animal that's so close to us humans that they can read us like an open book.

Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson does just that:

http://knowyourmeme....-degrasse-tyson

What they forgot to mention is that dogs are domesticated animals: they have been bred into human society for many thousands of years.

Those who didn't obey or were not social enough or not interested in us enough were discarded.

They should do the same experiments with more or less tame wolves. Wolves have like 15*% more brainmass than a dog, but I 'll bet they will fail the tests.

.

Edited by Abramelin
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Many animals are smarter than people give them credit for.

Just cause not many are smart enough to credit anything other than plastic, but to their credit many are now knowing that credit is where credit is due, the interests are better too ...

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