Humanness

I would hope so.

Human toddlers outperform apes in social learning

One theory holds that humans have distinctive "cultural intelligence," she said. Alternatively, some think humans hold an advantage in social cognitive tasks simply because they have more general intelligence.

Human toddlers show markedly better social learning skills compared to their primate cousins, a new study finds.

"Social cognition skills are critical for learning," Herrmann said in a news release.

"The children were much better than the apes in understanding nonverbal communications, imitating another's solution to a problem and understanding the intentions of others," she said.

Hermann's study involved 230 subjects -- 100 chimps, 30 orangutans and 100 children.

The children were two-and-a-half years old. That age was picked because the subjects could handle the test's tasks, but they were not old enough to know too much.

The apes resided in sanctuaries in Africa and Indonesia. They ranged in age from three to 21 years.

All the subjects were subjected to the cognitive tests of the Primate Cognition Test Battery.

In areas such as space, quantities and causality, the toddlers and the primates were found to be about equal.

For communication, social learning and theory-of-mind skills, the children scored 74 per cent and the primates only 33 per cent.

Sometimes it takes an art historian to define what science and religion cannot agree on; what makes us human.

In "The Human Animal in Western Art and Science" (University of Chicago Press, 320 pages, $40), the Oxford art historian Martin Kemp offers a new solution.

Mr. Kemp's new solution proposes to draw a line between man and beast not on the basis of reason or the presence of a soul, but in accord with a subtler distinction. Although some animals use crude tools, no animal uses what he calls "indirect tools." These are tools, such as a needle or a bow and arrow, which require a series of imaginative "pre-visualizations," both to invent and to use.

To conceive a needle, one must be able to envisage the process of connecting two pieces of material; this in turn involves picturing such implements as thread or the needle's eye and, in a further stage, the specific looping motion of sewing. As in chess, the ability to picture objects and processes in future and successive stages is required. This seems clearly beyond the capacity of any animal.

Mr. Kemp's argument is persuasive. Such strategic visualization, proceeding by a logic of images rather than of concepts, does appear peculiarly human. And yet, the puzzle of our apartness remains; to be human is to be caught in a strange midway kingdom. We sense but can't know the minds of our fellows in that neighboring realm. Montaigne put it best, in a remark Mr. Kemp quotes: "When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?"

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Heroic Tails

Humans tend to be species chauvinists when it comes to recognizing animal sentience, until this happens that a family pet rescues someone.

Which is not unusual for companion animals; "People don't give their animals enough credit for being smart."

When it is unusual is when it occurs with wild animals. But again it goes to prove that domestication is less important than interspecies solidarity; mutual aid which is the basis of natural society.

Pet's the cat's meow after hall of fame induction

A year-old cat was hailed as a hero yesterday and inducted into the Purina Animal Hall of Fame for waking a Morinville boy before he slipped into diabetic shock.

"I think that's awesome," said Morinville Coun. Pat Krauskopf. "It's not very often you hear about animals coming through like that."

March 27, 2006, Alex Rose was asleep in his Morinville home, 47 km north of Edmonton, when Mel-O, climbed a five-foot ladder and repeatedly pounced on the boy.

Mel-O was the only cat awarded yesterday with a medal of bravery, while three dogs received the honour.

Adrift, alone, but for Echo

Floating unconscious in the frigid waters of Lake Huron, her body temperature in the 20s, blood sugar dangerously low, Tish Smith was close to being claimed by the great lake. But Echo wouldn't allow it.

After their canoe was capsized by a two-metre wave during a freak summer storm that swept over the massive lake last July, the 4-year-old German shepherd-collie mix refused to let her owner die.

Hero dog showered with love

Jango the golden retriever has been hailed a hero dog.

The Trail dog roused his master from a deep sleep by barking to alert him that his house was on fire.

Owner Darrell Unger woke to Jango's persistent barking to find his house filling with smoke.

Five-year-old Koby Unger of Trail looks on as his family's dog, Jango, basks in the attention after his induction yesterday into the Purina Hall of Fame in Toronto.

In the past 39 years, the hall of fame has honoured 133 animals, including 109 dogs, 23 cats and a horse.

SEE:

Damn Cat

Dogs Are Not Wolves

Katrina: It's a Dog-Gone Crime

Elephants Cogitate

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animals, children, dogs, pets,
science, biology, evolution, canids, dogs, wolves, mutual-aid, humans, domestication,

The Ape Will Lie Down With The Tiger

NO MORE PALM OIL!

Both these species are endangered thanks to Palm Oil plantations. And as cute as they are together they are endangered by man and imprisoned by man, to protect them from man.

See my Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright

Feb. 28: Dema, a Sumatran tiger licks Nia a baby orangutan in a nursery room at the Taman Safari Zoo in Bogor, Indonesia.

Global warming hits world's largest tiger reserve

See:

Cargill

Borneo

Orangutan

Apes

Primates

Monkeys

Great Apes


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Pachyderm Liberation

No sooner do they get criticized for the prison conditions that they keep elephants in, than the Edmonton Zoo folks tell us all is well.

Except it ain't. Last fall one of the elephants injured her trunk on the fence at the zoo. The zoo enclosure is too small and what the heck are we doing keeping tropical animals in a boreal region in an outdoors Zoo.

And this is the same reactionary defense of the indefensible, that Zoo Check got when they denounced West Edmonton Mall for their enclosure and imprisonment of Dolphins,all died except Howard who was secretly shipped out in the middle of the night.

Zoocheck Canada, a Toronto-based animal rights group, says Edmonton’s cold climate and small zoo enclosure are making the zoo’s two elephants, Lucy and Samantha, sick, stressed and bored.

Spokesman Julie Woodyer said today that renowned African elephant expert Winnie Kiiru, project manager of the Amboseli Human-Elephant Conflict Project in Kenya, visited several Canadian zoos last fall and determined that the climate is too cold and enclosures too compact at many facilities in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.

“After reviewing all of the elephant enclosures in Canadian zoos, it is my opinion that the Edmonton Valley Zoo is the worst at this time,” Kiiru said in her report, released last month.

“The climate in Edmonton is completely inappropriate for elephants.”

In her conclusion, she recommends that the “City of Edmonton take immediate action to move Lucy and Samantha to a sanctuary that can provide them with a more appropriate physical and social environment and to close the elephant exhibit at this zoo.”

And it's not just Edmonton, Zoo Check has criticized the famous Calgary Zoo for elephant breeding.

Female elephants are matriarchal social animals, needing to be in a group, which is not what occurs in Zoo's or circuses.

Elephants live in a very structured social order. The social lives of male and female elephants are very different. The females spend their entire lives in tightly knit family groups made up of mothers, daughters, sisters, and aunts. These groups are led by the eldest female, or matriarch. Adult males, on the other hand, live mostly solitary lives.

The social circle of the female elephant does not end with the small family unit. In addition to encountering the local males that live on the fringes of one or more groups, the female's life also involves interaction with other families, clans, and subpopulations. Most immediate family groups range from five to fifteen adults, as well as a number of immature males and females. When a group gets too big, a few of the elder daughters will break off and form their own small group. They remain very aware of which local herds are relatives and which are not.

Elephants are also self aware, that is they have the ability to think and communicate. Thus it is unconscionable to keep them imprisoned and neither Zoo can defend its actions as being good for the animals, the species, or science.

From a study reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an Asian elephant housed at the Bronx Zoo in New York, repeatedly touched a white cross painted above its eye, when it saw this mark reflected in a large mirror. Another mark made on the forehead in colourless paint, was ignored, showing that it was not the smell or feeling which caused the interest. Elephants are among the very small number of species such as the great apes and Bottlenose Dolphins capable of self-recognition.

Elephants in Zoos and Circuses in North America are the direct result of the Slave Trade and are the last vestige of that original Atlantic trade that brought Africa to the attention of North America's colonizers.

The Geography Of The Atlantic Slave Trade

"Chart of the Sea Coasts of Europe, Africa, and America . . ." From John Thornton, The Atlas Maritimus of the Sea Atlas. London, ca. 1700. Geography and Map Division. (1-11)

This map's elaborate cartouche (drawing), embellished with an elephant and two Africans, one holding an elephant tusk, emphasizes the pivotal role of Africa in the Atlantic trading network. The South Atlantic trade network involved several international routes. The best known of the triangular trades included the transportation of manufactured goods from Europe to Africa, where they were traded for slaves. Slaves were then transported across the Atlantic--the infamous middle passage--primarily to Brazil and the Caribbean, where they were sold. The final leg of this triangular trade brought tropical products to Europe. In another variation, manufactured goods from colonial America were taken to West Africa; slaves were carried to the Caribbean and Southern colonies; and sugar, molasses and other goods were returned to the home ports.

19th Century European Zoo's contained not just Elephants and other African flora and fauna, but Africans as well. Today we keep Elephants in their place. And our attitudes towards Elephants, as well as other species, as being self aware and cognitive is the same as it was towards indigenous peoples.

A Human zoo (also called "ethnological expositions" or "Negro Villages") was a 19th and 20th century public exhibit of human beings usually in their natural or "primitive" state. These displays usually emphasized the cultural differences between indigenous and traditional peoples and Western publics. Ethnographic zoos were often predicated on unilinealism, scientific racism, and a version of Social Darwinism. A number of them placed indigenous people (particularly Africans) in a continuum somewhere between the great apes and human beings of European descent

Entrepreneur William Reynolds, who billed the city as The Riviera of the East, had a herd of elephants march in from his Dreamland on Coney Island in about 1907, ostensibly to help build the boardwalk, but in reality to generate publicity. (Long Beach Historical and Preservation Society)

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