[HN Gopher] Whales in 19th century shared information about ship...
___________________________________________________________________
Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks
Author : rwmj
Score : 46 points
Date : 2021-03-20 10:04 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > As Whitehead observes, whale culture is many millions of years
| older than ours.
|
| Oh? How old is our culture?
|
| What were whales doing a million years ago that primates weren't
| that qualifies as culture?
| darksaints wrote:
| Whales can communicate with dolphins as well as other
| caetacians of various species. Can you communicate with
| chimpanzees or apes? It is quite possible that, via
| communication, whale culture actually is millions of years
| older than ours...kept alive by communicating with species as
| they evolve.
| wwtrv wrote:
| There are humans who can communicate somewhat effectively
| with chimpanzees using sign language, does that mean humans
| now have access to the several hundred year old chimp
| culture? I don't think so.
|
| Anyway, while we can assume that whales and dolphins have
| exhibited advanced behaviors throughout the time their
| species existed do we have any evidence that these behaviors
| did not develop independently in different populations and
| were lost or recreated again over those millions of years?
| drooby wrote:
| Joseph Henrich, a professor of human biological evolution as
| Harvard, has some pretty good theories on the subject.
|
| He defines culture as, "the large body of practices,
| techniques, heuristics, tools, motivations, values, and beliefs
| that we all acquire while growing up, mostly by learning from
| other people."
|
| He estimates that our ability to use culture started at perhaps
| a million or so years ago, maybe a bit more, maybe hundreds of
| thousands of years ago.
|
| This article challenges his ideas bit since he seems to think
| that culture is unique to our species, and in contrast these
| researches of course claim wales have it too.
|
| I think the largest point of contention may lie in the
| definition of culture. Does the ability to communicate danger
| really amount to "culture"?
| zikzak wrote:
| I love the "Wales" typo, here. :)
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| I think we keep torturing ourselves by forgetting our own
| language. Whales do not have a culture. They may be
| intelligent and social creatures, they may communicate, but
| they don't have civilization, art, morals, laws, and the
| practices for developing and improving these things in the
| minds of our children.
|
| The origin of the word is to cultivate, from Latin, and
| implies building and transmission. Familial training in whale
| pods for feeding techniques is not the same thing. It
| seemingly echoes some facets of the immensely more complex
| concept we call culture, but saying that of whales is
| reductionist in way that isn't useful for clear thought.
|
| Perhaps we can blame modern dictionaries, because the older
| ones shed more light on the matter: https://www.webster-
| dictionary.org/definition/culture
| blondie9x wrote:
| Sperm Whales Clicking You Inside Out -- James Nestor at The
| Interval - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsDwFGz0Okg
| EmilioMartinez wrote:
| https://archive.is/cNmEv
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Seems got only 1/2 of the story. Ma be it is a story in making.
| As life is.
| greenfellowman wrote:
| Fascinating that they responded to the 19th-century whalers by
| swimming upwind to escape their murderers. Sadly this escape
| failed as ships went fossil.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-21 23:01 UTC)