the totally sentient thread!

[Nate]

Well said... but can you please define 'extranthropical'?

[Wil]

I was going to say ‘outside of the anthroposphere’, but apparently that word-I-made-up already has a meaning in exactly the field of science I allegedly study, so I shall say ‘outside of humanity; in a species that is not human’.

[Bullet Magnet]

If you discount dolphins, chimps and gorillas from sapience, you've got to discount some low-functioning humans too.

Which isn't surprising, since once again we are imposing discrete terms on a natural world made up of gradients.

[ziggy]

Are you talking about severely retarded or insane people? I guess they could be discounted, but I'm still not sure what the full definition of sapience means.

[MA]

and another incredibly dull generalisation by Ziggy.

yes, lets rule out all severely retarded and insane people, because we all know they're pretty much the same thing and are all as thick as pig shit.

you astound me.

[keeperxiii]

Well, chimps can have the intelligence of small children, can't they? Of course, that intelligence is used elsewhere.

[ziggy]

Like ripping off the hands and feet and balls of men who dare walk in their lairs. I think we should kill all the chimps really, they're a bunch of bastards.

[Elmatto753]

Since when have chimps had lairs? They make nests and sleep together as a group. They are intelligent enough to make a pecking order with an Alpha Male.

[Manco]

They make nests

Lairs.

[Mac Sirloin]

There are no chimp lairs.

Anyway, what about Pigs? Pigs can have the intelligence of a small human child, and we eat those in pretty much every culture (with one big nosed exception).

[keeperxiii]

I believe he said lairs as in a habitat. Just that.

However, pigs evolved to, and are adapted to being a just a four-legged animal with no opposable thumbs . While chimps can use tools. Thus, their minds are better developed for a lifestyle like our own.

[MeechMunchie]

Chimps also have lying, rape and xenophobia. I'd say they're already well on their way to being human.

[Elmatto753]

Is there any species that exchanges items? Like a palm leaf for a banana (or something of that nature)?

[Wings of Fire]

You'd be hard pressed to find a mammal that doesn't rape, the difference is that it's socially unacceptable to chimps, gorillas, humans, dolphins etc etc.

When I was younger my mom's boyfriend brought his dog over for the night and it attempted to rape my dog. That was traumatic.

[MeechMunchie]

Is there any species that exchanges items? Like a palm leaf for a banana (or something of that nature)?

Chimps have appeasement. That's the more primitive version.

[keeperxiii]

You'd be hard pressed to find a mammal that doesn't rape, the difference is that it's socially unacceptable to chimps, gorillas, humans, dolphins etc etc.

When I was younger my mom's boyfriend brought his dog over for the night and it attempted to rape my dog. That was traumatic.

True, it's everywhere in the animal kingdom.

I wasn't aware that chimps lied though. Any examples?

[MeechMunchie]

If a low ranking chimp spots, say, a tasty-looking banana and a dominant male appears, they may pretend they haven't until the other one leaves. The purpose being, of course, to stop the dominant chimp taking the banana.

[keeperxiii]

Clever little chimp. Of course, that little chimp could rip me open, but still.

I also heard that studies also revealed that chimps started using more rudimentary 'tools' in the last few decades. You know, for foraging for food and such.

[Bullet Magnet]

Crows lie. They deliberately deceive other crows, and sometimes human researchers. They also craft tools for multiple purposes, and use multiple tools in sequence for a single task.

[Nate]

Crows lie. They deliberately deceive other crows, and sometimes human researchers.

F'rexample?

[Manco]

F'rexample?

#4 of this Cracked article:

Deciding that stealing food from humans was no longer a challenge, the crows began helping themselves to stretches of fiber optic cables, bulking up their nest building material with pieces of wire and building their nests snuggled tightly amongst the cables supplying electricity to the city.

As you can probably imagine, this wreaks absolute havoc with the city's power grid. The crows have caused a spate of blackouts around Japan. On one occasion in 2007, a crow-manufactured blackout led to the high speed bullet train being shut down.

Something needed to be done, and the Kyushu Electric Power company decided to form an organization dedicated to outsmarting the pesky birds. Thus, the Crow Patrol was born. Its mission: to seek and destroy any crows' nests built in an electricity-laden location.

In the first three years of its existence, the Crow Patrol undertook twice-weekly rounds in an attempt to rid Kagoshima of its bird plague. They removed some 600 crow homes from the cables.

But the crows had wised up to the Patrol's mission, and deciding the territory was well worth defending, formed their own cunning plan. Operating on the "needle in a haystack" premise, the crows started spamming the area with dummy nests, to the point that the fake nests outnumbered the real ones.

It was an ingenious plan. First, it meant that while the Patrol went about their work of clearing the city, there was only a small chance that the nest they removed was going to have been lived in by a crow family. Second, if the Crow Busters did strike it lucky and destroy an actual home, there were a multitude of empty nests ready and available to move into. And finally, more nests meant more blackouts, leaving the crows added time to build new homes while the humans scrambled to get power back up.

So with it looking like the crows are there to stay, at least we can look on the positive side and say that Japanese crows are much smaller and less aggressive than the American cro... oh, no that's not right. They have a wing span of up to a meter, scary fucking beaks and sharp claws, and there have been a number of occasions where children have been attacked by Japanese crows for the candy held in their innocent little hands.

Holy shit. It might be time to just move out of the city and let them fucking have it.

[ziggy]

In ancient Rome crows were a sign of greatness.

[keeperxiii]

Crows lie. They deliberately deceive other crows, and sometimes human researchers. They also craft tools for multiple purposes, and use multiple tools in sequence for a single task.

But the thing is... They don't have opposable thumbs.

[Elmatto753]

They have beaks. You can do a lot with a beak.

[keeperxiii]

They have beaks. You can do a lot with a beak.

I know you're a fan of chickens but arms, legs and hands can do a lot more. Sure, the brain power can be roughly the same but it's about lifestyles. A chimp is better adapted to do certain things.

[Elmatto753]

I know you're a fan of chickens but arms, legs and hands can do a lot more. Sure, the brain power can be roughly the same but it's about lifestyles. A chimp is better adapted to do certain things.

It's actually representative. I wouldn't call myself a fan of chickens. And the combination of beak and feet is a surprisingly good tool creation combo.

[Nate]

I would say it's even more impressive that crows can use tools without opposable thumbs.

There are a lot more videos on Youtube, but how can you go past David Attenborough?


Also, I once saw a falconry display that showed off how the bird used a stone to crack open an egg that had particularly thick shell. That was cool too.

[keeperxiii]

It's actually representative. I wouldn't call myself a fan of chickens. And the combination of beak and feet is a surprisingly good tool creation combo.

I was just kidding because of your avatar xD. And a crow would never be able to create tools the way a humanoid ever could.

[Bullet Magnet]

Also, I once saw a falconry display that showed off how the bird used a stone to crack open an egg that had particularly thick shell. That was cool too.

I once saw a falconry display that included a crow that did not belong to the falconer. It was a wild crow that simply turns up for each show, does a bit, then goes home after payment. The show stops for the winter, but the first day it is shown again next summer, he's back. If he's ever not there, the falconer just calls "Mr Crow!" across the fields and he comes back before the show has finished. All organisms must work for their food, and this one has independently invented performance as one of its means.

I remember when everyone was congregating around the show area for one of that day's showings, I was watching that crow just sitting there, hanging around with intent. I was already sure it would be involved, but it had no leg ring or leather coil. Is it wild? Is it tame? I couldn't work it out, but the falconer explained.

[MeechMunchie]

Brilliant. So crows have employment, and performance arts? They're my favourite 'intellegent' species (quotation marks simply to avoid argument over the definition) by far, but I'd never heard that. And unlike lots of animals that can use tools, the ability to create them too shows something must be going on inside that feathery noggin. One experiment featured a piece of food in a long tube, a piece of straight wire and a crow. The crow bent the end of the wire into a hook (as was said, beak & claws is a pretty good combo), and proceeded to fish the food out of the end of the tube. Nate's video probably showed an equivalent natural situation, but I couldn't be arsed to watch it.

Sure, they had to show the crow a piece of curved wire first, but it's still impressive.

Also octopuses. Pull switches, open jars, squirt handlers, predict football results... They can do it all.