I would say you're example of sentience is more of an example of sapience. It took previous sense perceptions (whatever the owner did to punish the dog for eating people food) and applied meaning to it. I would say sentience would be as simple as smelling food to begin with, and then recognizing it as at least possibly food.
From my experience a dog passing a mirror does not recognize the reflection as itself, but as another dog until it learns that either that dog does not actually exist or the dog is itself. I haven't personally seen a dog interact with itself in a mirror and understanding it is its own reflection, but not saying it's never happened.
The middle example is actually from my (now dead) dog. He liked to hang out in a room with a couch and a full-length mirror on the opposing wall. He learned pretty quickly what the mirror was and began to use it to watch for people coming down the hallway who would yell at him for being on the couch. He never did figure out that if you can see someone in a mirror that they can see you as well, but that's another matter.
He'd also inspect himself in the mirror a lot. One christmas morning, I put a bow on his head and he walked around with it for an hour. He later walked into his favorite room to go lie down and immediately upon seeing the bow, batted it off his head.
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Yea, I would say being able to see youreslf in a mirror, recognizing you are the one in the mirror well enough to know that the bow on the dog in the mirror is on you would be self-awareness. Though I would say being able to recognize what reflections are to the extent of looking for people in reflections is more sapience, and pretty cool for a dog to do.
Also, look up the mirror test, that also shows a good start for descerning if something is self aware. Apparently magpies are.
I must see besieged fortress. Though I have to ask. Is it subtitled in english, or is it a bad dubbing where the words don't match up to what their mandibles are saying?
I'm interested in how cause-and-effect works into this with favorite toys.
My cat has one of those little heads that, when slammed down, will speak some kind of snarky phrase. He learned, almost right away, that if he picked it up, and flung it up into the air, it would make the noise when it hit the ground, which became his favorite way to play with it.
Damn is that how they get the interior shots? I kinda thought they had some awesome tiny camera for that. Curse you reality!
I did too, but it did seem suspicious that a larva flashed its mandibles for the camera. Also seemed weird that the interior of a caterpillar is apparently nothing but translucent liquid and weird floaty foam.
I like spiders. I hate all the bugs that actively seek humans out to annoy/suck blood/bite/sting us, but spiders just chill around. Hell, sometimes they eat those aforementioned bugs.
Eh, "horrifying" is a human concept. For animals it's just what they do. Also the fact that the things that are getting the real brunt of the parasitation, etc. are also the things that have no comprehension of it at all.
Yeah. Dolphins, on the other hand, enjoy raping and killing other fairly intelligent dolphins.
Film taken of gangs of dolphins repeatedly ramming baby porpoises, tossing them in the air and pursuing them to the death has solved a long-term mystery of what causes the death of so many of these harmless mammals - but has left animal experts baffled as to the motive.
Another mystery is that the animal 'murders' have only been reported in two parts of the world - along Scotland's East Coast and in America off the beaches of Virginia, where even more alarmingly, the victims were scores of the dolphins' own young.
The first clues to solving the riddle came in 1997 when, by coincidence, marine biologists in Virginia were finding young, dead dolphins with horrific internal injuries at the same time as young porpoises were washing up on Scotland's north-east coast with identical causes of death. The body count was growing in both locations.
Four years ago, members of Scots charity the Cetacean Research and Rescue Unit discovered a lifeless porpoise near the harbour at Whitehills, near Banff.
The team described the mammals' injuries as "perhaps the worst example of inter-specific aggression any of us had ever seen. This young female had literally had the life beaten out of her."
Inspection showed multiple lacerations and puncture wounds all over the body which could not have been caused by any other attacker than a bottle-nosed dolphin.
Watching the films, Aberdeen marina biologist Dr Ben Wilson explains yet another shocking phenomenon - that the dolphins use their incredible ultra sound abilties to home in on the vital organs of their victims that will cause most damage.
"The blows are carefully targeted," says Dr Wilson, who is a member of the Scottish Association for Marine Science. "And the attacks are sustained, sometimes up to 30 minutes.
"The film was a key piece of evidence. It crystalised our suspicions. We realised the dolphins' victim was trying to escape from being attacked with such force that any one single blow could kill it.
After five days of evidence, which included descriptions of how Freddie was known to tow bathers through the water by hooking his large penis around them, the jury took just one hour to clear the man of the charge of sexually assaulting the dolphin.
Dolphins are turning out to be exceedingly clever, but not in the loving, utopian-socialist manner that sentimental Flipperophiles might have hoped. Researchers who have spent thousands of hours observing the behavior of bottlenose dolphins off the coast of Australia have discovered that the males form social alliances with one another that are far more sophisticated and devious than any seen in animals apart from human beings. They have found that one team of dolphins will recruit the help of another team of males to gang up against a third group, a sort of multi-tiered battleplan that scientists said requires considerable mental calculus to work out.
But the purpose of these complex alliances is not exactly sportive. Males collude with their peers as a way of stealing fertile females from competing dolphin bands. And after they have succeeded in spiriting a female away, the males remain in their tight-knit group to assure the female stays in line, performing a series of feats that are at once spectacular and threatening. Two or three males will surround the female, leaping and bellyflopping, swiveling and somersaulting, all in perfect synchrony with one another. Should the female be so unimpressed by the choreography as to attempt to flee, the males will chase after her, bite her, slap her with their fins or slam into her with their bodies. The scientists call this effort to control females "herding," but they acknowledge that the word does not convey the aggressiveness of the act.
"Sometimes the female is obviously trying to escape, and the noises start to sound like they're hurting each other," said Dr. Rachel A. Smolker of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "The hitting sounds really hard, and the female may end up with tooth-rake marks."
The biologists also have evidence that females form sophisticated alliances in an effort to thwart male encroachment, and that bands of females will chase after an alliance of males that has stolen one of their friends from the fold. What is more, females seem to exert choice over the males that seek to herd them, sometimes swimming alongside them in apparent contentment, but at other times working furiously to escape, and often succeeding. But female dolphin behavior is usually more subtle than the male theatrics, and hence less easily deciphered, particularly under the difficult field conditions of studying animals that spend much of their time underwater.
Bunch of rapists.
Simpsons did it.
Also Dolphins are borderline sentient. It stands to reason that they'd be as much of a bunch of assholes as us.
Dolphins seem to be an interesting example of what happens when you're smart enough to not need instinct but not smart enough to have developed morality.
Dolphins seem to be an interesting example of what happens when you're smart enough to not need instinct but not smart enough to have developed morality.
The ocean is pretty much the most hellish place on earth. I don't think Morality can be applied to that environment.
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I like spiders. I hate all the bugs that actively seek humans out to annoy/suck blood/bite/sting us, but spiders just chill around. Hell, sometimes they eat those aforementioned bugs.
So fucking true. I'd lime it, but can't lime hard enough. Our arachnid friend, for the most part, don't bite us. They will kill every mosquito, bitting fly, other annoying bug, you can name. Shame most aren't as cute as the jumpers.
Spiders are on our side when it comes to the war on bugs.
Since mammals are being brought up with frequency, allow me to bring up one of my new found favorites, mainly because he's the baddest motherfucker in Africa and a chunk of asia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_badger
Fucker is fearless, seriously, watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0tycmec1fw&feature=relatedKleinman is a total thug! Little fucker steals the kill of a puff adder right out of it's mouth, eats it, and then is all like "I'm still hungry bitch!" and starts eating the ultra lethal snake. It gets bit, snoozes for 2 hours and then just goes right back to eating a snake that is famous for killing more people then any other in africa.
These are all individuals of the Polistes fuscatus species of paper wasp. A recent research paper shows that even in communal insects, identity is important. From the abstract:
"We manipulated the appearance of Polistes fuscatus paper wasp groups so that three individuals had the same appearance and one individual had a unique, easily recognizable appearance. We found that individuals with distinctive appearances received less aggression than individuals with nondistinctive appearances. Therefore, individuals benefit by advertising their identity with a unique phenotype. Our results provide a potential mechanism through which negative frequency-dependent selection may maintain the polymorphic identity signals in P. fuscatus. Given that recognition is important for many social interactions, selection for distinctive identity signals may be an underappreciated and widespread mechanism underlying the evolution of phenotypic polymorphisms in social taxa."
I fully expect the first insectoid alien space-faring race we encounter will look like mantids.
Just don't let Captain Kirk fuck one.
Why not?
Sure, the mantids may not enjoy the act, but after they kill and devour Kirk in a post-coital snack session it's not like they'll have any room to complain.
I fully expect the first insectoid alien space-faring race we encounter will look like mantids.
Just don't let Captain Kirk fuck one.
Why not?
Sure, the mantids may not enjoy the act, but after they kill and devour Kirk in a post-coital snack session it's not like they'll have any room to complain.
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The middle example is actually from my (now dead) dog. He liked to hang out in a room with a couch and a full-length mirror on the opposing wall. He learned pretty quickly what the mirror was and began to use it to watch for people coming down the hallway who would yell at him for being on the couch. He never did figure out that if you can see someone in a mirror that they can see you as well, but that's another matter.
He'd also inspect himself in the mirror a lot. One christmas morning, I put a bow on his head and he walked around with it for an hour. He later walked into his favorite room to go lie down and immediately upon seeing the bow, batted it off his head.
Also, look up the mirror test, that also shows a good start for descerning if something is self aware. Apparently magpies are.
I must see besieged fortress. Though I have to ask. Is it subtitled in english, or is it a bad dubbing where the words don't match up to what their mandibles are saying?
My cat has one of those little heads that, when slammed down, will speak some kind of snarky phrase. He learned, almost right away, that if he picked it up, and flung it up into the air, it would make the noise when it hit the ground, which became his favorite way to play with it.
That is intensely cool. I just wish they would cut it out with those somewhat lame larvae puppets.
Damn is that how they get the interior shots? I kinda thought they had some awesome tiny camera for that. Curse you reality!
I did too, but it did seem suspicious that a larva flashed its mandibles for the camera. Also seemed weird that the interior of a caterpillar is apparently nothing but translucent liquid and weird floaty foam.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J2N5ttFBN8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02zvS_QdJhw
And I suggest changing the thread title to "Fuck it, whatever animals you want."
For a split second I saw that as "Fuck whatever animals you want."
Anyway, let's have some beetles. Considering most insect species are beetles, they have been severely underrepresented.
The ocean is pretty much the most hellish place on earth. I don't think Morality can be applied to that environment.
I'm not sure! Many tortoise beetle have at least partially transparent out shells, but I don't see the advantage in doing so. Research ahoy!
Probably keeps things from being able to figure out where to bite at its legs.
That little guy reminds me of Batman and his super obvious, super-armored chest symbol.
So fucking true. I'd lime it, but can't lime hard enough. Our arachnid friend, for the most part, don't bite us. They will kill every mosquito, bitting fly, other annoying bug, you can name. Shame most aren't as cute as the jumpers.
Spiders are on our side when it comes to the war on bugs.
None of the crappy toxins and venoms, no liquefaction, just chewing.
Probably, nay, definatley some freaky and fascinating stuff down there we don't even know about yet.
Or maybe...a combination between mantids and cephalopods!
Also, since this is mutating into a general animal thread, a fascinating article about lions, which really dispels a lot of the myths surrounding them: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/myhrvold_lions07/myhrvold_lions07_index.html
No. Didn't you see Section 9? You should see it. It's all kinds of fucked up social commentary.
To me, that makes it look like a big ol' angry eye, belonging to some big nasty thing beetle predators don't want to mess with.
No, that mantid is no God. He is a prophet bug. Let us hear him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_badger
Fucker is fearless, seriously, watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DsDBBpdjoI&feature=fvw Fucker climbs trees to eat cobra's when it's not chasing off lions!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0tycmec1fw&feature=relatedKleinman is a total thug! Little fucker steals the kill of a puff adder right out of it's mouth, eats it, and then is all like "I'm still hungry bitch!" and starts eating the ultra lethal snake. It gets bit, snoozes for 2 hours and then just goes right back to eating a snake that is famous for killing more people then any other in africa.
Just don't let Captain Kirk fuck one.
Here's something interesting:
These are all individuals of the Polistes fuscatus species of paper wasp. A recent research paper shows that even in communal insects, identity is important. From the abstract:
"We manipulated the appearance of Polistes fuscatus paper wasp groups so that three individuals had the same appearance and one individual had a unique, easily recognizable appearance. We found that individuals with distinctive appearances received less aggression than individuals with nondistinctive appearances. Therefore, individuals benefit by advertising their identity with a unique phenotype. Our results provide a potential mechanism through which negative frequency-dependent selection may maintain the polymorphic identity signals in P. fuscatus. Given that recognition is important for many social interactions, selection for distinctive identity signals may be an underappreciated and widespread mechanism underlying the evolution of phenotypic polymorphisms in social taxa."
Sure, the mantids may not enjoy the act, but after they kill and devour Kirk in a post-coital snack session it's not like they'll have any room to complain.
Frowning spider would miss Kirk. Frowning spider is a Star Trek fan.
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The scale and depending upon how large it is, how far it can jump.
:P
It's sitting on a leaf.
All jumping spiders are tiny.
(for the record, it's the frowning spider that's the image manipulation)
I dunno, mine got about half dollar sized before ants ate em.
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