• beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    40·
    1 month ago

    We cannot deny for one moment that animals think, understand, plan, and navigate the world just as humans do.

    They just can’t use language as much as we can*, & mostly aren’t as big as us. But they’re way smarter than we’ve been taught , as every farmer in history would tell you.

    And a lot of modern scientists. One cognitive science PhD met once said: the closer we look, the more we see non-human animals doing things we used to think only humans did. Tiny animals, she meant. Snails. Mites. Bacteria.

    • beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      27·
      1 month ago

      *can’t use language as much as we can: AS FAR AS WE CAN CURRENTLY TELL. Which isn’t all that much tbh

      Me, I think birds are already there, full nouns & verbs. And I highly suspect insects have language systems too. I don’t mean some loose definition like like ants and chemical markers, or emotional expressions.

      I mean what linguists mean: units of expression- sound (hand shapes, in signed langs) which recombine to signify different things, in a productive way, allowing for level upon level of transmission of thoughts. It’s a high bar to qualify as human language. And I think probably some nonhuman animals have it, and we’re just not listening closely enough.

      But the closer we look.

      (And yes there’s a Ted Chiang story about this)

      • rockerface 🇺🇦@lemm.eeEnglish
        9·
        1 month ago

        Large parrots are in fact as smart as a toddler. African Greys, apparently, can memorize human language words (just the sound, no grammar or anything complex like that) and apply them to identify objects, colors and materials - even to objects they see for the first time!

        And even smaller birds like budgies usually know the sound of their own name and can even assign “names” in form of sound sequences to other birds and humans they live with. You wouldn’t think they have enough brain size for that, but somehow they do

        • flicker@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9·
          1 month ago

          My cat 100% has a name for every human he meets, and he can even say those names in higher or lower registers (and volumes) depending on how he’s addressing that person.

          I tell people this, and they think I’m insane. I even point out the sound that means that specific person’s name, and they don’t bother to learn it!

          Temba, his arms wide.

        • flora_explora@beehaw.orgEnglish
          1·
          1 month ago

          Is it? It’s probably more like binary code for computers that our machines run on but that we as individuals cannot comprehend. But you cannot call it a language as individual organisms are not able to use it as such.

  • lazynooblet@lazysoci.alEnglish
    30·
    1 month ago

    Slightly off topic question. Science memes is a popular community and I enjoy seeing it in my feed. However I always find the images to load really slowly, and half the time the thumbnails are missing. Is mander.xyz under heavy load or being ddos’d?

  • Bunnylux@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    1 month ago

    I had 2 pet female rats a few years ago and for two years, a wild male rat lived in and around my (old) house for almost two years. I could not catch this ballsy rat with any attempt or trap known to man. One time the rat squared up with me on the stairs and I swear to god I ran away first. anyways I named him Ratboi and put up warning signs about him at rat eye level but he WANTED my girls. All of their rags and bedding would be pulled through the bars of the cage and chewed on and stuff. It was wild. Anyways.

    • shneancy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      1 month ago

      rats are simply too smart man, I recently became an owner of two rat boys and in two months they learnt to open their cage (first two weeks actually), foiled my ratproofing 5 separate times, learnt they get farther into the forbidden zone (the bin) if i’m not looking and redecorated their cage too many times to count. All those smarts and they’re using so much of it for crimes