Activists want chimp declared a 'person'

[cljanney]

That's awesome! ^^^

[Lindox]

That photo deserves the award for sure.
Although one would have to be very uninterested in marine life to not realize on first glance that dolphin wasn't a baby humpback whale.

Wonder what those dolphins really were doing?
They are so inventive and playful. Maybe it was like an amusement park ride to them. Would be to me too.

What a great ride that would be. Definately an "E" ticket.

[Lindox]

Originally Posted by Wise Young

In my opinion, our achievementa in these areas result mostly from the parts of the brain responsible for communication. Many of the achievements that you referred to, such as airplanes, submarines, satellites, etc., could not have been done without oral and oral communication at a complexity level that far surpasses the communication between members of other species. None of these could have been achieved without cooperation and coordination of thousands of people.

I guess that one can equally attribute it to mathematical, logical, or symbolic thinking. Let us put that hypothesis to a test.

• Would it be possible to build an airplane, submarine, or satellite without mathematics? It would be difficult but one can express many concepts without mathematical symbols. For instance, evolution occurred without mathematics. If we did not have mathematics, perhaps we would have simply bred huge birds that could carry passengers, or fish that had big pockets with breathing tubes to be our submarine, or created a network of plants that can transmit electrical or sound impulses to many parts of the world. Before we had satellites or cell phones, people communicated through line-of-sight fires and drums. The latter might not be as fast as a satellite and would be quite cryptic but potentially could be pretty effective.

• Could we do it without logic? Logical thinking implies the proposition of hypotheses (the if) and the logical conclusion (then) that follows from the hypotheses. After some thought, I think that we can do it without logic. After all, I know many people who think perfectly well and come to the right conclusions but do so in a seemingly illogical fashion.

• Could we do it without symbolic thinking? I don't know. Symbolic thinking is of course using symbols to represent complex concepts. It is a way of explaining, of organizing one's thoughts, and expressing what has been done to others. Thus, when I say quagmire, it is a symbol of many things, evoking images of Vietnam. Likewise, when I say X^2, it means to multiple a quantity by itself. I suppose that we can have these concepts without the symbols. However, without symbols, we cannot have written communication. Without such communication, a way of keeping a record of our thoughts, we cannot communicate, document, and pass on previous thoughts and achievements to others. So, in my opinion, symbolic thinking is necessary.

Wise.

Would humans have even imagined or thought of flight had they not seen birds and insects flying?
Or thought of going deep into the depths of the oceans without seeing creatures that did just that?

Would we have thought of sonar without witnessing it?

Electricity without lightening? I don't know.
It seems the further we try to take ourselves away from nature the closer we realize we actually are.

DNA mapping is man's doing..but just look what it is showing us.

Communication? Ants, bees, wasps, etc. They don't say a word but to watch their actions due to some sort of communication is just breathtaking. Geese and all migratory species..no maps..no talking navigation systems..just remembering what your elders showed you.

Elephant herds..amazing. And how they communicate is just so advanced even to our educated versions of communication.

Even this photo. That dolphin KNEW the humpback was friendly and posed no real danger to him/her. Somehow that had to be communicated. Or animals are smarter than humans.