[HN Gopher] A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
___________________________________________________________________
A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
Author : awll
Score : 268 points
Date : 2021-05-01 18:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| I am reminded of the case of Alex the Parrot [1]. We all know
| parrots can mimic human speech very well, but the case made for
| Alex is that he was using actual language to convey meaning and
| not just parroting (pun intended) what he heard.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)
|
| In my wild imagination, I imagine parrots being taught to
| communicate with humans, being let loose into the jungle, and the
| passing on human language to their offspring. Some years hence,
| people would venture into the jungle and would be able to ask the
| parrots for directions. :)
| jobigoud wrote:
| There is also the case of these dogs that have grown up using
| sound boards to communicate with their humans (sound on):
| https://www.instagram.com/p/CMuXy3mBcVw/
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Wow that is fascinating, thank you for sharing
| pstuart wrote:
| Kind of like this: http://www.chitka.info/attention.html
| rotexo wrote:
| On a tangent: if humanity ever found themselves in a children
| of men-style situation, I think an excellent use of the final
| generation's resources and effort would be building a system of
| fully automated luxury communism for the corvids and parrots of
| the world. Automated seed farms, drones that carry birds with
| broken wings to safety and treat their wounds, self-cleaning
| nesting boxes, etc.
| j4ah4n wrote:
| I stumbled across this related project a few months ago, really
| interesting initiative.
|
| https://github.com/earthspecies/project
| haecceity wrote:
| I guess the emphasis is on tried
| IronWolve wrote:
| Don't forget Koko the Gorilla. She was able to sign, understand
| english and recount stories of her past.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4QQ8Mfjb_g
| axiolite wrote:
| Not as clear as case as we've been led to believe:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYWSXRUGxDQ
| chmod775 wrote:
| Not a clear case of _what_?
|
| It was obvious to me she was able to understand and
| communicate. Obvious in the same it was for _most_ humans I
| 've met.
| dehrmann wrote:
| "Can Apes Really 'Talk' To Humans?"
|
| Nit: humans _are_ apes.
| avereveard wrote:
| No, topmost common branch is hominidae
| tomerico wrote:
| Interesting watch. TL;DW - Apes like Koko were raised by
| trainers who did not perform rigorous scientific measurements
| and were prone to bias. Research on Apes became immoral over
| time, hence less recent examples exist.
|
| The most recent and rigorous study is on a bonobo, where
| communication is done using touchscreen with buttons saying
| words (lexigrams). Even in this case interaction seems to be
| limited to "give me an item" or "put item in box".
| barrkel wrote:
| Do you mean fewer recent examples exist?
|
| "Less recent examples exist" is a positive assertion about
| the existence of even older examples. The 'less' attaches
| to the 'recent'. 'Less' can't attach to 'examples' because
| you can't have 'less examples', because 'examples' is
| countable.
|
| "Fewer recent examples exist" is a negative assertion about
| the existence of newer examples. The 'fewer' attaches to
| the 'examples'.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > Research on Apes became immoral over time
|
| Teaching apes sign language became viewed as immoral?
| ReaLNero wrote:
| Raising them only by interacting with a single person
| (not of their species!) would be immoral for a human
| baby, and depending on your views of ethics, also immoral
| for a gorilla.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Oh, I didn't realize that was somehow required to teach
| them sign language.
| chrischen wrote:
| Still miles ahead of a dog. Can you train a dog to understand
| "put the pine needles in the refrigerator?"
| cgriswald wrote:
| It's hard to say what's happening in the video. If the ape
| is given a command-object-location and must discern all
| three to correctly complete the task, that would be
| difficult for a dog. (However, I suspect with as many hours
| of training as the ape has had, a dog could probably do it.
| I speculate it would learn all possible trios and remember
| them as individual commands rather than reconstructing
| them.)
|
| If the ape is instead given an object and already knows
| he's supposed to put it in the fridge, yes, a dog can do
| that easily. Given a command-object or command-location, a
| dog can do that as well. A dog can discern "Go bed" or "go
| kennel" or "fetch ball" or "fetch toy". "Put ball bed"
| would be tough. (Dogs won't "hear" all the cruft words like
| "the", they'll focus in on words they know and puzzle
| away.)
|
| In any case the degree to which the ape in the video
| "understands" isn't clear. It's possible even with command-
| object-location test, the ape is doing what I suspect the
| dog would do. The difference between them might be scale,
| rather than kind.
| chrischen wrote:
| I think they implied the ape could distinguish because
| they mentioned the trouble was dealing with two items.
| suifbwish wrote:
| Worst mobile webpage of all time. Cant read anything because it
| constantly jumps around loading ads and pop ups. I would expect
| this from the daily news not something like the smithsonian.
| a3n wrote:
| Use an ad blocker. It viewed just fine for me.
|
| Your poor experience is justification enough for blocking.
|
| I await the day when internet ads are not resource sucking,
| malware vectoring, PII leaking surveillance systems. Until
| then, I block.
|
| Online venues say they need ads to survive. I say they need
| _benign_ ads to survive much longer.
|
| It could even be a form of competition, like Volvo marketing
| themselves as "safe."
|
| EDIT: Cut to child reading a tablet with, er, childlike wonder,
| and two parents giving each other a visual "whew!"
| neonological wrote:
| Look up the story woman who lived with a dolphin in a house for
| the specific goal of teaching the dolphin English.
|
| Literally the house was made water proof and filled up to the
| waistline with water and the dolphin and the woman lived
| together. This wasn't a separate tank.
|
| The two developed sort of a one sided sexual relationship where
| the woman would stimulate the dolphins genitalia before the
| lessons could commence as the dolphin wouldn't be able to
| concentrate otherwise.
|
| Not even slightly joking. True story, the above actually
| happened. There's a podcast of it somewhere where they
| interviewed her.
| seg_lol wrote:
| Reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode where an earthling and an
| alien meet on a far off planet. The earthling isn't smart enough
| to learn the alien language, so she learns english.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probe_7,_Over_and_Out
| jobigoud wrote:
| There is also another Twilight Zone episode where common words
| gradually change meaning and the hero slowly lose his ability
| to communicate and has to fake understanding. Pretty scary one.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordplay_(The_Twilight_Zone)
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| The audio in question:
| https://m.soundcloud.com/smithsonianmag/noc-the-beluga-whale
| Iv wrote:
| Thanks!
| system2 wrote:
| Isn't there a single video of it?
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Audio: https://m.soundcloud.com/smithsonianmag/noc-the-beluga-
| whale
| tempestn wrote:
| There's an audio recording in the story.
| ironmagma wrote:
| There are also recordings of orcas imitating human speech.
| https://youtu.be/hqB1jRVw7Bw
| montenegrohugo wrote:
| It seems to me more and more like the biggest, only real
| difference between most animals and humans is their lack of
| sophisticated communication. Certainly they communicate; but they
| do not have access to our rich verbal symbols with which we can
| convey anything imaginable. Perhaps you could add the lack of a
| prehensile thumb and deft fingers to build tools with, but I
| think communication is even more fundamental for the recipe of
| civilization.
|
| Anyone can empirically recognize some form of intelligence in
| animals, whether it be your pet dog, a smart street crow or a
| beluga whale.
|
| Additionally, I've never found the relative brain size theory
| sufficiently satisfactory to explain our superiority. How can the
| brain of an elephant, or a blue whale (about 7 times the mass of
| our brain), be that much inferior? I don't think it is; I think
| it is just different, and that we are not capable to really
| empathize with it enough (unless we reach some absurd degree of
| anthropomorphizing it).
|
| If we accept these premises, what does it make to our worldview
| and the morality of how we treat animals?
| stormbrew wrote:
| > Certainly they communicate; but they do not have access to
| our rich verbal symbols with which we can convey anything
| imaginable.
|
| I mean, this whale seems to be doing about the same thing I do
| with my cats. I don't really see how you can derive any
| directionality here about how 'rich' their communication is
| from that. It's likely cats are intrigued and also baffled by
| what we're 'saying' when we do this.
|
| That's not to say I think cats have as rich of communication as
| we do, just that we can't even manage to make much sense of
| other species' vocal communication, let alone mimic any meaning
| present in it, _even when we are pretty sure it is actually
| simpler than ours_.
|
| From that it seems way overly confident to state that _all
| failure on our part to recognize depth_ is because of a lack of
| it.
| lrem wrote:
| There's been some research on coyotes or similar animals,
| can't remember. They managed to figure out about 30 "words".
| Interestingly one of that tiny budget was for a human and
| another one for a human with a gun.
| crooked-v wrote:
| You may be interested in this Youtube channel, wherein a dog
| owner has been teaching the dog to use a gradually expanding
| set of talking buttons:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXy7NTGHAyQ
|
| There's another channel where someone's been doing the same
| with some measure of success with a cat:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooCEYMaNL8I
| stormbrew wrote:
| You seem to have accidentally pasted the same youtube link
| twice? I'm definitely curious about the cat one and haven't
| seen that before :)
| crooked-v wrote:
| The duplicated link is now fixed.
| matz1 wrote:
| Not sure why my morality has to change, doesn't matter if pig
| turn out to have conscious experience like mine, I will still
| eat it.
| jonathanlb wrote:
| Ok, I'll bite (no pun intended): if it were socially
| acceptable to eat people, would you?
| [deleted]
| matz1 wrote:
| I wouldn't, like I wouldn't eat dog/monkey even though its
| socially acceptable in certain place, in my mind its
| disgusting. Pig on the other hand its delicious.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| That's what I don't get. Why are some animals acceptable
| to eat and some are aren't? I know people who get totally
| outraged over dog or horse meat at but have no problem
| with beef or pork. Pigs are very intelligent and
| emotional. Way more than horses who aren't that smart in
| comparison.
| matz1 wrote:
| I can only speak for myself. I don't eat dog/monkey i
| think it because my upbringing/culture thus it create
| disgusting feeling in my brain.
|
| I have no problem with pigs because I've used to it since
| childhood and i find it delicious. It has nothing to do
| with it being intelligent/emotional.
| Larrikin wrote:
| I find it hypocritical too, but there are some animals
| that also just don't taste that great compared to what is
| "common". Whale meat for instance resembles beef, in kind
| of the way alligator resembles chicken. But whale and
| gator are pretty terrible in comparison to the more
| common animal so they just aren't worth it to eat.
| jobigoud wrote:
| > only real difference between most animals and humans
|
| But if I'm not mistaken this is not true of early humans, even
| "anatomically modern" humans. We don't really know when
| language evolved but it's probable that early humans did not
| "speak" for a long while.
| Matumio wrote:
| A major distinction of humans is that we are a cultural
| species. We have evolved to pass down large amounts of
| knowledge to the next generation.
|
| Being good at communication (and motivated to use it for
| teaching) kind of follows from this. We are not game-changing
| smart at figuring out new tools. But we are excellent at
| copying innovations from others, remembering them and fine-
| tuning them over generations.
|
| On this I highly recommend Joseph Henrich's book: "The Secret
| of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution,
| Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter".
| gizmo686 wrote:
| There are a lot of components needed for civilization. In the
| case of humans, agriculture was a big one, as it led to the
| feasibility of cities and specialization of labor. Absent
| specific adaptations to agriculture, tool making is essential
| for it. Advanced civilization is greatly helped by written
| communication (although human history shows we can get pretty
| far without it), which again depends on tool making. Without
| the ability to make tools there is only so far a species can
| get.
|
| Human superiority also depended on non-intelligent traits.
| Without evolving the ability to sweat, we might never have had
| the opportunity to develop civilization.
|
| Regarding brain size, larger animals need larger brains just
| control their bodily functions, so looking at brain size
| without controling for body size does not tell you much.
|
| If you look at brain:body ratio, humans are pretty high up, but
| not a crazy outlier [0] (figure 7.13), and not the best [1].
|
| A simple ratio probably not the best test, and seems to favor
| small animals. A more advanced measure exists [2], but suffers
| from a bit of a fine tuning problem.
|
| There is also an implicit assumption that "intelligence" is a
| single dimensional value, which is simply not the case. For
| instance, beyond being a tool for communication, language seems
| to be a tool for thinking as well, but is clearly not a result
| of a general "intelligence" we have. Our overall intelligence
| is likely the result of a bunch of specialized systems within
| the brain
|
| [0]
| https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~ejchaisson/cosmic_evolution/do...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-
| body_mass_ratio#Compa...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalization_quotient
| rand0mx1 wrote:
| Regarding your brain-body ratio
| https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eabe2101
| jamesgreenleaf wrote:
| Environmental conditions are a big factor as well. We've
| existed as humans for ~300k years, but it was only ~10k years
| ago that we learned agriculture and civilization-building.
| That coincided with the beginning of the Holocene Epoch, when
| the world got warmer, the glaciers melted, and the sea level
| rose by 400 feet. We must have had those capabilities all
| along, but it was only when the conditions were right that
| they were able to be fully expressed.
| firebaze wrote:
| Another point of view could be intelligent animals like whales
| see another dimension of existence we simply cannot understand.
|
| Maybe they just think further, they deeply understand the
| fractal nature of the laws of the universe and they came to the
| conclusion, that nothing they'll ever do will have an influence
| to improve anything at all, since nothing is really bad, so
| they just sing their songs and propagate reasonably? :)
|
| /semi-sarcastic viewpoint
|
| Maybe this comes across as an emo-anti-intelligence-nature-
| knows-it-best post. It wasn't intended to, at all. It even
| isn't meant to.
| bmitc wrote:
| > It seems to me more and more like the biggest, only real
| difference between most animals and humans is their lack of
| sophisticated communication. Certainly they communicate; but
| they do not have access to our rich verbal symbols with which
| we can convey anything imaginable.
|
| How do you know all that? There is ample evidence that whales,
| and in particular orcas, have complex intelligence and
| communication. If you can't understand what a whale is talking
| about, I'm not sure how you can make these claims.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Actually, I think many animals might communicate better than
| humans, but we don't know how they do it.
|
| I wouldn't completely suprise me if their are certain animals
| using telepathic thought? Or, some way if communicitating we
| haven't a clue existed.
|
| (And yes I know telepathic thought has been completely debunked
| in humans. Actually, there's a million sitting stomewhere if
| any person can successfully pass a institutes telepathic
| ability test. To date the money is still there, or a higher
| amount? My point is we know so little about other species.)
| [deleted]
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Well whales can communicate across thousands of miles without
| satellites so there's one example! :)
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| This is precisely why I've transformed my eating habits. I
| realized that while I can't prove these animals have a
| conscious experience like mine (or one I would value as I do
| the human conscience, I suppose), I also can't prove that they
| don't.
|
| We can all read and likely have many experiences indicating
| that animals, in many circumstances, actually behave much like
| humans do. And for all the arguments that animals do x or y
| because they're responding to stimulus, well... So are we.
|
| It really clicked a while back and since then, I just can't go
| back. I no longer feel sufficiently different from a cow or a
| pig in order to feel comfortable eating them.
|
| I certainly don't judge others for disagreeing either though.
| Just as I don't judge wolves for eating caribou or fish for
| eating fish. Humans operate under the illusion that they have
| free or stronger will than these animals, but I'm not sure
| that's true anymore. I'm not even clear on why I had this
| revelation or why it matters enough to me to act on it! It's
| all very absurd in a way.
| p1necone wrote:
| Occams razor tells me that other animals probably do have a
| concious experience just like ours.
|
| Sure, they could have all the same internal organs as us (at
| least with mammals, and reptiles/birds to a slightly lesser
| extent), a similarly structured brain, be evolved from the
| same common ancestors and exhibit all the same outward signs
| of being conscious and self aware but somehow be totally
| different from humans.
|
| But that would be much more complicated than the simple
| explanation that they are just like us, but less intelligent.
| jack9 wrote:
| > Occams razor tells me that other animals probably do have
| a concious experience just like ours.
|
| For most mammals, everything is so similar...including
| responses to stimuli like light, sound, temperature, pain,
| pleasure, even predictive behavior (knowing when they have
| done something to provoke a human response) that the same
| principle leads me to believe it's likely they have a very
| similar experience.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Everyone who has lived with a dog has seen the sheepish
| 'I fucked up look' when you've got home instead of the
| pure exuberance usually experienced
|
| You know immediately there's a mess to clean up!
|
| I mean they clearly dream too. If dreaming isn't evidence
| of an inner life I don't know what is.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I personally loved having this realization. All these
| creatures of the earth are probably having very rich and
| significant experiences. If it's not limited to humanity,
| then wow, the world really is so alive.
|
| I still struggle to imagine a bug having a conscience
| that resembles mine. I'm not sure why. I tell myself they
| don't have the brains for it or the sensory capabilities
| or whatever. I'm probably wrong.
| r721 wrote:
| Interesting book on this topic:
|
| >In The Gap, psychologist Thomas Suddendorf provides a
| definitive account of the mental qualities that separate
| humans from other animals, as well as how these differences
| arose. Drawing on two decades of research on apes,
| children, and human evolution, he surveys the abilities
| most often cited as uniquely human -- language,
| intelligence, morality, culture, theory of mind, and mental
| time travel -- and finds that two traits account for most
| of the ways in which our minds appear so distinct: Namely,
| our open-ended ability to imagine and reflect on scenarios,
| and our insatiable drive to link our minds together. These
| two traits explain how our species was able to amplify
| qualities that we inherited in parallel with our animal
| counterparts; transforming animal communication into
| language, memory into mental time travel, sociality into
| mind reading, problem solving into abstract reasoning,
| traditions into culture, and empathy into morality.
|
| >Suddendorf concludes with the provocative suggestion that
| our unrivalled status may be our own creation -- and that
| the gap is growing wider not so much because we are
| becoming smarter but because we are killing off our closest
| intelligent animal relatives.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Gap-Science-Separates-Other-
| Animals/d...
| joe_the_user wrote:
| The arguments around this seem paradoxical.
|
| "Animal have a strong commonality with us, so we shouldn't
| eat them in the fashion that we don't eat each other.
|
| But
|
| "Animal has a strong commonality with us, and one species of
| animal will eat another species of animal. Even species
| considered herbivores will eat some meat when it comes to
| them (deer, etc). If we're like animals, what is wrong with
| behaving like them?"
|
| At which point, the argument skews to look at what's
| _different_ about humans (most often "we can choose good
| versus evil" etc)
|
| That said, for all I know, some different, intelligent,
| omnivorous animal species has had a group or subculture that
| also decided to stop eating meat. Of course we actually know
| little about these things.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| This is part of why I don't judge others for eating
| animals. Plus, I do still eat fish. If I'm to judge anyone,
| it should be me first.
|
| I also intended to some degree to be paradoxical, but I'm a
| terrible communicator so it wasn't evident outside my mind.
| Like I said though, ultimately it all seems absurd to me.
| Digging deep into what is good or right or moral when it
| comes to these things is incredibly challenging. Ultimately
| I wonder why I'm trying to figure it out. What a strange
| exercise.
|
| I definitely don't subscribe to any naturalistic ideas
| about how people should behave. I do believe we are much
| like the animals around us - far more than we'd like to
| believe or acknowledge at times. I don't believe that means
| what happens in nature and among other species is
| inherently good though. I don't believe what humans do is
| inherently good either. I just don't judge people for doing
| what animals, or humans, overwhelmingly tend to do.
| Hopefully that makes a bit more sense.
| brutal_chaos_ wrote:
| If I may, what made you become pescatarian (is that the
| correct term)?
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I can't pin point it and I wish I could.
|
| One significant contributor was when I began spearing my
| own fish and became intimately familiar with the moment
| of choosing if you shoot a fish or not. I realized that
| in that moment I'm deciding something based on a
| significant number of factors, but ultimately, I was
| deciding to take a life. I wondered how different that is
| from how I indirectly took the lives of fish by providing
| demand in a market which catches and sells fish, apart
| from the massive amounts of bycatch in the industry. But
| really, is my indirect demand different from pulling the
| trigger?
|
| I know those thoughts and experiences, along with
| experiencing fish in their environment, caused me to
| begin to wonder a lot more about the consciousness of
| other animals. Fish are quite aware of me, my eyes, where
| I'm looking or pointing things. They certainly suffer.
|
| It's a good question though and I wish I understood
| better what really tipped the scale. Sometimes it feels
| very irrational, but my 'gut' insists it's the right
| thing to do. I still question if I should be killing
| fish.
| quattrofan wrote:
| Sea World should be shutdown, it's essentially torturing these
| animals. We would never accept this being done to humans and we
| shouldn't for such extraordinary and intelligent creatures.
| masswerk wrote:
| What I find fascinating about this is that there are various
| species which have tackled human speech with at least some
| success (both actively and passively), while, conversely, we are
| apparently rather bad at participating in their communicative
| acts (like, imitating utterances in a meaningful way). Is it just
| for a lack of interest on our side, or are we lacking something
| else?
|
| Edit, regarding "something else": Apparently, we are able to
| recognize individuals of other primate species by face at a very
| early age, but lose this ability soon (even before we acquire
| speech), probably in favor of other social abilities. Which may
| be an indication for a high degree of intraspecies specialication
| regarding our communicative abilities.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| I always wondered if we would try to bridge the gap what would
| happen? Imagine a whale ambassador, driving around in a huge
| half-tracked aquarium, holding speeches about what the fishing
| fleets currently are doing is murder.
| TheGallopedHigh wrote:
| I'm sure any skilled hunter would argue differently. Just watch
| Meat Eater on YouTube for use of animal sound mimicary ant it's
| use in hunting.
| masswerk wrote:
| Certainly, but isn't this more like a replay, is it actually
| suitable for interaction?
| colechristensen wrote:
| There are degrees, a whole spectrum between tape-loop
| mimicry to a high fidelity sharing of mental states when it
| comes to language.
|
| Mimicry with context is a good way (the only way?) to
| develop an understanding of language.
| amilios wrote:
| I mean, this is the same thing that the whales are doing
| though. What's the difference? In both cases it's just
| mimicry.
| update wrote:
| apparently, turkeys have a pretty understandable language.
| There's a documentary, My Life as a Turkey [1]; he was able
| to decipher what each call meant (e.g. which squawk meant
| "snake" and which one meant "eagle"). So, if you were
| walking with a turkey, and you saw a snake and wanted to
| warn it about it, you could, in theory, communicate with
| it.
|
| [1] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/my-life-as-a-turkey-
| introduc...
| CyanBird wrote:
| And these probably would vary by region, just like how
| whales, dolphins and orcas have different languages too
|
| That's really cool, I didn't knew turkeys did that
| jimmaswell wrote:
| We can do some bird calls decently.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Maybe a bit off-topic, but here are some examples of humans
| communicating with animals
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child
| 867-5309 wrote:
| those are quite specific and questionable cases, usually
| involving neglect
|
| perhaps more pertinent:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%E2%80%93animal_communica.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_animal#Possibility_of_.
| ..
| loopz wrote:
| You can do dog language. Many people do. It's not about barking
| or asserting dominance.
| [deleted]
| warent wrote:
| > Is it just for a lack of interest on our side, or are we
| lacking something else?
|
| A combination of the two probably. I communicate with my pet
| cat by mimicking her different kinds of meows, hisses, and
| purrs. It makes it a lot easier because it's very obvious to me
| she understands that language, but of course it's not perfect
|
| It seems unlikely I'm the only person who does this. Probably a
| lot of people speak to their pets in the animal's own language.
| WalterBright wrote:
| There are dogs that have vocabularies of several hundred
| words. People should breed those together, rather than the
| incomprehensibly stupid existing breed characteristics.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Do you really want to breed half-sentient predators that
| survive just fine in the wild and human settled areas?
|
| Your cute little buddy living a hard life after a few feral
| generations after being bred for intelligence... I don't
| know most people live lives almost completely sheltered
| from wildlife, but let me tell you, wild dogs can be scary.
| KronisLV wrote:
| Yes, definitely. Because most of the dogs that would
| actually be looked after would be great for a variety of
| other tasks - everything from being service dogs, dogs
| that check for illegal substances by smell, police dogs,
| dogs who can herd animals and a variety of other tasks.
| Even new tasks that people still haven't been able to
| offload to canines.
|
| If the animals can provide more value to humanity and
| will be allowed to become smarter and somewhat evolve, i
| think it's definitely worth it. Otherwise, if selective
| breeding for utility wasn't a thing already, we probably
| wouldn't have breeds that are passable for any of the
| tasks above.
|
| As for wild dogs, this hasn't ever been a _major_ problem
| in my country. I haven 't seen any, there have never been
| any news stories about people being bitten or killed by
| wild dogs, i don't know anyone who has had run in with
| them and frankly there are bigger problems in the country
| - things like racoons and other small animals that carry
| rabies, foxes and the occasional wolves that kill off
| young deers and does alike, beavers that build dams and
| flood portions of the forest and so on.
|
| _Edit: looked for any studies that i could find, sadly
| there were none that 'd attempt to quantify how many
| stray dogs there are in the country and how many of those
| have attacked people and how many have attacked other
| animals. Just found a news report of one person being
| bitten by them:_ https://baltics.news/2021/03/16/in-
| rezekne-region-a-woman-is...
|
| Just to be clear, i am not attempting to say that wild
| dogs are not a large problem, just that it's not a
| problem everywhere to the same degree and that quite
| possibly there are other social factors at play - why
| would there be more wild dogs on one region of the world
| as opposed to another, especially when humans are the
| ones who breed these animals in the first place? Do the
| people not look after them? Are there puppy mills that
| get abandoned? Do people generally not view having dogs
| as a great responsibility? Are there no services that
| take care of wild and stray animals?
|
| It's not like humans couldn't do anything about it either
| - if wild dogs are an inevitability in certain parts of
| the world, why not disallow "importing" dogs of these
| breeds to those regions and disallow breeding them there?
|
| Here's an example of concentrated effort in regards to
| eradicating rabies in the country, i don't see why
| something similar couldn't be done in regards to stray
| animals (though it may only work on a smaller scale like
| in this country, at least without lots of coordinated
| effort): https://ec.europa.eu/food/sites/food/files/anima
| ls/docs/reg-...
| greesil wrote:
| Smart dogs are working dogs. If they've got no work,
| they'll get up to _bad things_ usually because you 've left
| them in your house all day. If you want a pet, get a dumb
| dog. Or, a very lazy breed, like a greyhound.
| rangibaby wrote:
| Agreed. I think people forget that smart animals are
| smart enough to do bad things because they feel like it
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| The donkey has the reputation for being stupid and lazy
| because it, unlike the horse, is smart enough to tell the
| human "I don't care"
| hackflip wrote:
| I had a super smart poodle mix growing up, and it was
| smart enough to easily open the latch on its cage from
| the inside with its tongue. It also knew how to rearrange
| chairs in order to climb onto the dinner table.
|
| The ones that are too smart outsmart the owners, which
| some dog owners see as a bad thing.
| Talanes wrote:
| I had a particularly smart and runty beagle when I was a
| kid that watched the cats jump the fence once, and then
| worked out that she could leave whenever she wanted.
| stavros_ wrote:
| Greyhounds are as full of love as they are glorious
| stupidity. I highly recommend them to anyone considering
| dog ownership.
|
| I do wish I had a border collie (very intelligent working
| dog) in my life though. I should go round befriending
| local farmers so I can play with their dogs :D
| CyanBird wrote:
| I do this a lot with my cats and dogs as well, they are
| smart, they just don't speak my language, so since they were
| small I spoke to them with sign language, for example if the
| dogs are still hungry after I give them food, I do the hand
| gesture of clapping in ASL and that way they understand that
| there's no more food and can see my hands that I am not
| hiding/holding anything
|
| There's not much else that I can do when they go insane
| barking tho..... But they do trust me a lot and I can tell
| easily when they are trying to tell me things such as "follow
| me" which happens when they find something weird like a dead
| frog or some other animal they don't know (neighbors have
| chickens)
|
| Also they lately have gotten into making holes in the yard
| (the dogs) if anyone has ideas how to stop that, that'd be
| great.....
| gverrilla wrote:
| why you want to stop your dogs from making holes in the
| ground? it's like making playing children stop
| jshmrsn wrote:
| Common reasons include holes in the ground leading to
| dogs escaping out of fenced areas, or just general
| property damage (dogs can quickly dig large holes which
| are walking hazards, and don't look as nice as a well
| kept yard). Also, when children play in the street, for
| example, wouldn't you stop in that kind of situation? Or
| if children were digging large holes on someone else's /
| public property?
| gverrilla wrote:
| Can't you just cover the holes, instead of trying to
| force dogs out of their nature?
| warent wrote:
| well you could say this about any behavior. Why teach
| children to stop peeing their pants, isn't that just
| trying to force them out of their nature?
|
| There's nothing abusive about training a dog about proper
| behavior. Anyway, I think a dog's nature is more about
| obeying humans than digging holes. That's kind of the
| deal we made thousand of years ago
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > Anyway, I think a dog's nature is more about obeying
| humans than digging holes
|
| The international Canis organizations call such speech
| _slavery_ and a canine revolutionary uprising is nigh.
| gverrilla wrote:
| peeing their pants will make them smell and mprobably
| irritate the skin. digging holes is a completely normal
| behavior for a dog (unless it's excessive or coupled with
| abnormal behavior).
| seg_lol wrote:
| I was at the beach a couple days ago and dug two
| excellent holes, one was artistic in nature an the other
| was a nice holder for a bottle of wine.
|
| Nice way to pass the time while chatting with friends.
| bArray wrote:
| The two noises I used with cats are:
|
| 1. "sssssshheeeeessh" If you want them to leave, like a
| hissing sound.
|
| 2. A squeaking (by pursing lips together) to calls them or
| tell them you are interested to play.
|
| Generally I don't believe cats really try so much to
| communicate - at least I don't get this impression.
|
| I would say that with dogs they understand a lot more. They
| understand the concept of pointing and use it to communicate
| something of interest to me. For example, one of my dogs ran
| out of the gate and the other dog pointed to where they went
| using their entire body as an arrow. Another time a ball was
| lost in a stack of tires, so the dog requested help from me
| to retrieve it my pointing. I can ask "where is <object they
| know>" and they'll take me to it, or help me search for it -
| to the point where one of my dogs will help me look for my
| keys.
|
| My dogs will also try to communicate with me too, mimicking
| what they believe I sound like. "Helllooooo" they really try
| to copy as a greeting. They also like to get involved in
| singing too - I think they somewhat enjoy some music.
|
| What I like about my dogs too is that they understand the
| more subtle things. When two people are arguing or speaking
| heatedly they will try to break them up by pushing in-
| between. They are not allowed into certain rooms unless
| invited, but a small sideways nod lets them know they have a
| one time pass.
|
| Dogs also very much like routine, the human world is
| confusing and if you delay feeding for a few hours for
| example, they don't understand why. They often do their best
| to fit in if you help them to.
|
| I think people really underestimate how smart dogs can be.
| They * really * try to communicate back, but they are mostly
| unsuccessful. Try sometime to take an interest in their
| attempts to communicate with you, encourage it even. If they
| think they can communicate with you, you'll have a much
| better time. My dogs even help me keep my daily schedule.
| viciousvoxel wrote:
| Thank you for writing this -- it's 100% spot on from my
| experience. Dogs are extremely social animals and naturally
| have a strong _need_ to communicate. Just a little time and
| effort put into understanding their signals as well as
| teaching them /guiding them towards ones that work better
| for you will go a long way.
|
| When my dogs have lost a ball under something they will bow
| at the location and look at me; if that doesn't work they
| will come up and make a little grumble and wait for my
| attention, then go and bow in front of the location again.
| Similarly if they want to go outside, we set up a little
| bell by the back door that they can jingle. At first we
| would ring it every time we let them outside, or let them
| outside every time they accidentally knocked it. They
| learned the association pretty quickly. Now if they need to
| go out (or spotted some bunnies in the yard) they will ring
| it; if we don't respond immediately, they'll come up, make
| a little sound to get attention, and run back to ring the
| bell again. I also have the same experience re: permission
| into areas and one-time-pass signals. Also the singing --
| it's fun to get a choir going!
| mockingbirdy wrote:
| It seems that some dogs are even able to learn to
| communicate via sound buttons [1]. Maybe that's interesting
| if you have smart dogs, might be a good way to better
| understand their needs.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LQt5TCHq6E
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| I've tried to do this with cats, but they never seem to
| recognize that I am making a cat sound. Did you start when
| she was a kitten? (Alternatively, I could just be uniquely
| bad at it.)
| ianai wrote:
| Cats hear and respond better to high pitched sounds.
|
| I absolutely do mimic cat language and they very quickly
| pick up on it.
|
| I've got sounds I make that call just about any cats. Like
| I've made the sounds to stranger cats while out walking and
| they immediately respond. It's a clicking sound - pretty
| sure it's a common sound.
| monocasa wrote:
| There's strong implications that we as humans have dedicated
| wetware hardware for streaming out speech from the data
| structures in our mind. That hardware seems to be bandwidth
| constrained to about 39 bits per second.
|
| https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/human-speech-may-hav...
|
| It makes sense that other animals may be able to cargo cult
| some of the underlying mechanical representations of speech,
| but would lack the neural hardware that propelled us to
| dominance on the incredible short time spans of human history
| and prehistory.
| Gauge_Irrahphe wrote:
| I see no reason for that, it seems more like a pragmatic
| choice of reliability over capacity. (in other words to make
| speech comprehensible in noise)
| brigandish wrote:
| Isn't it the absence of hands that has held them back? (from
| dominance)
|
| Having hands plus less of or less good neural hardware means
| less dominance, as we see with our simian cousins, yet having
| the greatest brain on the planet wouldn't provide dominance
| without the ability to fabricate things.
| proc0 wrote:
| Yeah but there's something different about this. Given how
| smart whales are, this must also have some form of awareness as
| to what they're doing. Parrots mimic words and phrases and
| focus on the micro-pronunciations. This feels like the whale is
| doing an impression of humans in a conversation.
| daurinhack wrote:
| Shaun Ellis seems to communicate wih wolf alright. Also i
| believe quite a few people in the world knows how to express
| the "this territory is claimed, don't come around here" howl
| message.
|
| national geographic about him :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eerUnxonS-I
| smcameron wrote:
| > we are able to recognize individuals of other primate species
| by face at a very early age, but lose this ability soon
|
| I don't know if I buy this. We can recognize individual dogs
| and cats that we know easily, even reliably distinguishing
| between very homogeneous looking variants (various golden
| retrievers that look incredibly similar to one another. I've
| seen zillions of golden retrievers but would never mistake any
| of them for my childhood pet.) Why should primates be different
| than dogs and cats? I suspect it is only because almost nobody
| has more than passing views of individual primates. I would buy
| that we cannot easily recognize individual primates that are
| _strangers_ to us, just as we cannot recognize individual dogs
| and cats that are strangers to us. Give us half an hour with a
| primate and I think we 'd recognize them just fine.
| masswerk wrote:
| As I know it, there are tests with babies, where they react
| to primate individuals, they have seen before, just like to
| humans they have already seen, and are able to identify
| strangers. However, this ability is soon lost and the "in-
| group" focuses to humans only. I haven't a source link on
| this, but there should be some documentaries on early
| development on YT (or similar platforms) covering this.
| colechristensen wrote:
| A lot of studies like this are done very poorly and should
| always be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. One
| immediate issue that comes up is infants can barely see at
| all, born with incompletely developed brains, the neural
| machinery that translates sensory input to perception
| develops with the help of the actual sensory input... it
| could very well be that babies stop reacting to other
| primates in the same way when they can see well enough to
| tell the difference. (just one guess of many potential
| issues with topics like this)
| masswerk wrote:
| Well, I wouldn't deem it that unconceivable. It's a
| somewhat sad, but well known fact that we do narrow this
| "in-group" even more to the effect that we are not that
| good at identifying individuals of ethnic groups, we're
| not so familiar with. It may be well that we start with a
| broad, hard-wired concept and refine this by adaptation
| to the given environment. (It may be interesting, how
| developments would go with an actual "wild child".)
|
| Edit: I always liked to think that the stereotypical
| alien face somewhat resembles this blueprint (plus
| excessive light bleed as we must have experienced it at
| an early age).
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > we are able to recognize individuals of other primate species
| by face at a very early age, but lose this ability soon
|
| I don't buy this. I visit the Primate Rescue Centre (Monkey
| World) in Dorset, UK, and can recognise several individual
| chimps and orangutans by their facial features (especially if
| you include ears). Discriminators include size of brow ridges,
| facial colouration, distance between nose and mouth, eye
| separation, etc etc. Here are some facial shots of several
| individuals to illustrate the range of variations.
|
| https://monkeyworld.org/our-primates/primate-groups/bachelor...
|
| https://monkeyworld.org/our-primates/primate-groups/hananyas...
|
| If you factor in body mass and musculature and other bodily
| features the differences between individuals can be dramatic.
| w0de0 wrote:
| If you'll permit me, your identification sounds very much
| like a conscious exercise in reason: calling out and
| remembering unique physical features as mnemonic devices.
|
| That's different than the subconscious facial recognition our
| brains pull off for humans; I doubt you find yourself needing
| to look at the president's ears to tell if it's Bush or
| Reagan.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > I doubt you find yourself needing to look at the
| president's ears to tell if it's Bush or Reagan
|
| Indeed!
|
| But I was really just listing the discriminators for the
| benefit of people who perhaps haven't looked at chimps very
| hard. For a few of the chimps, I can look and immediately
| say "that's Bart" or "that's Thelma".
|
| This may of course be my mind having internalised a few
| distinct 'settings' of the discriminators. But the overall
| effect, coming back to my original point, is that
| apparently without conscious thought I can recognise
| specific individual non-humans. The Primate Care Staff, who
| work with these individuals 24/7, have very good at-a-
| glance recognition for the entire community.
| humaniania wrote:
| I really hope that people are working on machine learning
| projects for animal communication. If you listen to crows and
| ravens in the wild it seems clear that there are patterns.
|
| I would also like to see technology interfaces developed for
| animal use.
|
| I am worried that much of the natural language development that
| would occur from frequent interaction is being held back by the
| social isolation of most species that humans keep as pets.
|
| Maybe humans need to engineer the languages and teach them to
| the species?
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > I would also like to see technology interfaces developed
| for animal use.
|
| I feel like just asking this question is step one on the
| journey toward overdosing on ketamine and drowning in a float
| tank.
| matheist wrote:
| > I would also like to see technology interfaces developed
| for animal use.
|
| I'm working on a device for this! Stay tuned.
| secfirstmd wrote:
| Wow. Don't leave us hanging! Tell us more.
| momirlan wrote:
| Apparently horses have a body language.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| So do dogs: for example, if you do something that makes
| them stressed, they use calming signals such as licking
| their own lips or yawning.
| masswerk wrote:
| And it seems, we are much better at linking to this than to
| audible utterances. Compare the various "whisperers".
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| They're also incredibly adept at reading human body
| language and emotional state. Horses with the gift of
| clairvoyance read subtle shifts in weight of their rider
| and know to jump or turn left before the rider says so or
| uses the reins.
|
| I forget which book it's in, but there's an often-repeated
| tale of a horse who learned to do sums and could add
| numbers even without his owner in sight. It was eventually
| discovered that he read the anticipation of his observers
| and knew to stop stomping his hoof once they relaxed after
| peak tension.
| quercusa wrote:
| Clever Hans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
| Udik wrote:
| Obligatory Gary Larson:
|
| https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1d/b5/27/1db5279f8a07f1601bf7.
| ..
| krrrh wrote:
| Obligatory Achewood:
|
| http://achewood.com/index.php?date=07282004
| gizmo686 wrote:
| > Apparently, we are able to recognize individuals of other
| primate species by face at a very early age,
|
| Something very simmilar happens with language. Babies are able
| to distinguish speach sounds of all languages, but quickly lose
| the ability to percieve distinctions that are not present in
| their "native" language (native in quotes because this happens
| before they have made a single utterence)
| flir wrote:
| I believe they make all the noises, too? But as they zero in
| on a single language, some get abandoned.
| a3n wrote:
| Fascinating, hopeful and yet saddening.
|
| I would like to have seen something about Inuit experience with
| Belugans speaking HSL, Human as a Second Language.
| Igelau wrote:
| Pha loves Pa.
| ggm wrote:
| "The day of the dolphins" is both nearer and further away.
| pgcj_poster wrote:
| They should put the spectrograms of Noc's speech on the final
| exam of a phonetics class and tell students to identify the words
| without knowing that they were produced by a beluga. Then we'll
| know what he was saying.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| _We better not embrace whales trying to communicate with us.
| These finned "c!nts" are only interested in taking our jobs, our
| land, and even our women! Coming up here ... Onto our land ...
| With their barely developed lungs ... And their hopes and dreams
| "of a better tomorrow for whales". GET BACK in the SEA I say!!_
|
| _My name 's Tucker Carlson from Fox news, and I say we need to
| ensure the brightest and best whales STAY IN THE SEA, and
| concentrate on making it aquatically prosperous, instead of
| coming up here, onto our land, and beginning the process of
| evolution that will eventually lead to all life on Earth after
| the humans._
|
| (apologies, this was paraphrased from Stewart Lee's comedy
| vehicle "comin over here" bit and is satire)
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