[HN Gopher] Animals changed by proximity to humans
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Animals changed by proximity to humans
Author : hiddencache
Score : 79 points
Date : 2021-08-20 14:17 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| > Successful escapes by smarter fruit flies may have left
| scientists breeding from a less intelligent pool of lab subjects.
|
| This line of reasoning has really got a lot of geneticists
| concerned their findings may not be generalizable.
| dalbasal wrote:
| This comment feels like a Douglas Adams joke going slightly
| over my head.
| jerf wrote:
| No, it's just the biological analog of those stories you hear
| about AIs exploiting the rules of the simulation to crash it
| and score infinite points or whatever. Evolution/natural
| selection is at work all over the place, it can't be stopped,
| and it's even less able to be controlled and corralled than
| in the AI case. When you breed a long line of lab animals,
| you can't help but start imposing new selection pressures
| that didn't exist in the wild specimen, while having also
| removed other selection pressures, and the result will be
| that fairly quickly you don't _quite_ have fully natural
| specimens.
|
| How much that matters depends on the nature of your
| experiments. Many cases it won't matter at all. Some
| experiments may entirely wrecked.
| dalbasal wrote:
| OK... I have to. jerf, are you a mouse?
| jerf wrote:
| I believe in this context the correct question is whether
| I'm a hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional creature whose
| rodent aspect represents merely a three-dimensional
| projection of my actual form, to which I can safely say,
| no comment.
| dalbasal wrote:
| just checkin. I hope the unintelligent fly problem isn't
| causing you too much nuisance.
| acomjean wrote:
| I work in a fly lab (in the computer support part). I've seen a
| stray fly from time to time (they have traps set for them...
| they love vinegar.) but I'm not sure the ability to "escape" is
| some great intelligence test. The vials are tapped, the flies
| fall of the sides. insert new vial, flip and tap again..)
|
| There is a lot of sequencing so you'd think they'd be pretty
| sure what is going on. I think its hard to measure fly
| intelligence, though the brain has been mapped
| https://www.hhmi.org/news/unveiling-the-biggest-and-most-
| det....
|
| You can buy all sort of fly stocks with genetics you might need
| for your research. https://bdsc.indiana.edu/information/fly-
| culture.html
| [deleted]
| whalesalad wrote:
| Why so many headlines of really common-sense "duh" science?
|
| Who would have possibly imagined that creatures on this earth
| would evolve to endure their surroundings?
| yunohn wrote:
| Maybe you misread the headline? It specifically talks about
| which animals and what behaviors they observed that were
| changed by human<->animal interactions.
| truculent wrote:
| It is nonetheless useful to rigorously understand exactly how
| and why common-sense patterns occur.
|
| Also, I would guess that the speed and type of change being
| experienced as a result of human activity (that animals are
| responding to) is relatively rare and thus valuable to
| understand.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| You need to test 'duh' things because sometimes they're right
| and sometimes they're wrong. Doing this is good science.
|
| Flat Earth was 'duh' science at one point. Good thing we tested
| it.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _Flat Earth was 'duh' science at one point._
|
| This is probably a myth; anywhere you can see water, you can
| see things going over the horizon. We knew the Earth was
| round (and its size) well before circumnavigation.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| People didn't understand the horizon. What do you think
| went over the horizon until we had ships? Many people would
| have _never seen the sea_ or other large bodies of water as
| they didn't travel far.
| Retric wrote:
| Most people lived near water for most of human history.
| As to seeing stuff across the horizon even static objects
| along shorelines show the same effect. You can't see the
| base of trees across a large lake.
| kbenson wrote:
| Near water does not necessarily mean near an Ocean or
| Sea, or lake large enough to have similar properties with
| regard to the horizon.
|
| There are in fact many benefits to living next to a river
| or lake instead of the coast. A large one is that the
| water is mostly potable, instead of largely not. I would
| hazard a guess that most ancient coastal communities were
| actually ancient coastal _river_ communities, and that
| rivers are actually the thing humans lived next to (there
| 's some indication in the abstract here[1] that this is
| the case). If that's the case, proximity to water is a
| poor indication of how many people would have seen ships
| sailing over the horizon. As to how obvious bases of
| trees would be over large lakes, or how likely large
| lakes would be compared to the norm, I don't know.
|
| 1: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08366-z
| Retric wrote:
| This is largely about water as a home to food sources.
| Rising sea levels are believed to have covered the
| majority of Mesolithic cites. For populations constantly
| on the move it's likely a majority of adults saw the
| ocean or a sufficiently large lake to show this effect.
|
| Realizing it was evidence of a round earth is of course a
| different story. My guess is most people simply never
| considered it.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Well lol go and tell them all this! I'm not responsible
| for their beliefs or why they believed it. Telling me
| that these people were unobservant for thinking the Earth
| was flat doesn't change the fact that they did.
| Retric wrote:
| To be clear I am not saying nobody believed it, in many
| areas the majority of people likely believed in a flat
| earth if they thought of it at all. I am rather saying,
| belief that earth was round was also quite common in that
| time period and people had evidence for such beliefs.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Fishers?
|
| Also, a flat stretch of land will do nicely, too. It
| doesn't take long to notice the discrepancy of hills...
| and we have the actual calculations of the ancients to
| prove that they knew; they're fairly accurate, too.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| You're arguing against widely accepted facts. I don't
| know why.
|
| > Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat Earth
| cosmography, including Greece until the classical period
| (323 BC), the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of
| the Near East until the Hellenistic period (31 BC), and
| China until the 17th century.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth
| Retric wrote:
| That's over stating the case, the Shield of Achilles
| doesn't demonstrate a flat earth cosmology, and shields
| of that time period where generally curved not flat to
| provide better protection to the arm. https://upload.wiki
| media.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/3196_-_A...
|
| Indian philosophy uses a spherical earth in 6th century
| BC as well as many thinkers in Ancient Greece like
| Pythagoras.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I don't know what to say - that article includes
| countless examples of societies that thought the Earth
| was flat until they learned otherwise. If you've got
| other theories then great for you but I'm guessing
| they're not mainstream.
| Retric wrote:
| I am not disagreeing so much as saying there was more
| nuance.
|
| For a direct quote from that link: "early Muslims _tended
| to_ also view the Earth as flat" In other words it was a
| common belief, but not universally accepted fact. So
| saying that culture believed in a flat earth isn't true
| anymore than saying they believed the earth was round.
| [deleted]
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I thought the classical period was earlier than that!
| Thanks for the correction.
| elzbardico wrote:
| FWIW, when I was some 3 to 4 years old I remember I was a
| flat earther and even had nightmares about that.
|
| My mother had to actually explain to me that the world is
| an spheroid so I would stop having those terrifying
| nightmares where I fell off the edge of the world.
| gotsa wrote:
| proving "duh" stuff is generally good as it makes us understand
| much more about the foundations of any field.
|
| Take for example the mathematical journey of laying our
| fundamental axioms starting at Peano all the way through ZFC.
| [deleted]
| in3d wrote:
| Dogs might be so friendly because they have their version of
| Williams syndrome:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/science/dogs-genes-sociab...
| autokad wrote:
| > "They are also bigger, lay larger eggs and have smaller brains
| than their wild cousins - differences that are also seen in
| chickens. ...Pets tend to have floppier ears and curlier tails
| than their wild ancestors. They also have smaller jaws and teeth,
| white patches on their fur and breed more frequently. This
| phenomenon is known as 'domestication syndrome'."
|
| I am not being glib, but I wonder if this is what happened to
| humans. allow me to explain. As short as 5,000 years ago, our
| brains were 10% bigger, our jaws were bigger, and our size was
| smaller. The former 2 have been associated with diet, but the
| shrinking brain is still debated. Maybe its simple though. Maybe
| humans domesticated humans.
| [deleted]
| rtkaratekid wrote:
| This idea is approached in an interesting way in the book
| "Against the Grain" by James C. Scott.
| kibwen wrote:
| Let's also keep in mind that brain size is not a proxy for
| cognitive ability. Ravens appear to be broadly as smart as
| chimpanzees despite their brains being 1/20th the size.
| Likewise neanderthals had larger brains than homo sapiens,
| which didn't stop them from being outcompeted.
| autokad wrote:
| those are just issues in how intelligence is measured. As far
| as Neanderthals, its my opinion they were smarter than us. we
| just came from down south (not effected by sudden surge in
| ice age) and higher birth rates. The intelligence of
| neanderthals keeps getting revised up every time we learn
| something about them.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Do you base your opinion on anything?
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| I'm no where near a subject matter expert, but I thought
| there was a mild correlation within humans?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_and_intelligence#.
| ..
|
| I take your point on ravens and chimps, but surely whales are
| more intelligent than shrimps.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Are big people smarter than small people?
| itsyaboi wrote:
| As a rule of thumb, yes.
|
| (children vs adults)
| lordnacho wrote:
| There's a funny section in I think Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari?)
| where he quips that that wheat domesticated the naked ape. Got
| him to plow the fields, get rid of the rocks, sew the seeds...
| bts327 wrote:
| I'm not sure where the idea came from, but Michael Pollan has
| also propagated in his books this idea that human beings have
| been domesticated by plants. See, The Botany of Desire.
| Smithalicious wrote:
| AFAIK essentially yes, this is a popular (?) theory. The
| benefit of neoteny in humans is the retention of learning
| abilities, the human ability to learn doesn't decrease as much
| with age as it does in other animals
| nindwen wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-domestication
| magwa101 wrote:
| Absolutely the same effect is seen in humans when working in
| large organizations vs startups.
| vmception wrote:
| > They are also bigger, lay larger eggs and have smaller brains
| than their wild cousins - differences that are also seen in
| chickens.
|
| I wonder if something similar is also happening in amongst some
| humans in some selection process. Breeders with less cognitive
| material than others, the others being seen as less sexually
| attractive (like as seen in Idiocracy, and I posit: real life)
|
| I wonder how long it will remain controversial to consider that
| wincy wrote:
| People who believe in evolution have fewer kids.
|
| Is a belief in natural selection a negative selection pressure?
|
| If you bring this up people who are rational seem to get upset.
| elzbardico wrote:
| I think it is complicated because a lot of our long term
| fitness depends on the society. So, in the short term, you
| have some pressure for high promiscuity/low intelligence, but
| over time you'd have a very fragile society, and the slower
| reproducing more intelligent society would be more successful
| in the long run either because it obliterated the less
| intelligent ones in war, or just because it was able to
| overcome things like natural disaster, child mortality,
| hunger, cold, heat and disease
| philwelch wrote:
| Natural selection also applies to cultural beliefs and
| behaviors, albeit in a "selfish gene" sort of way that
| propagates the beliefs and behaviors rather than the
| practitioners thereof. For instance, universalist religions
| like Christianity and Islam have supplanted traditional
| ethnic religions.
|
| Anyway, there's definitely _something_ about the culture of
| contemporary developed countries that 's not adaptive, but
| I'm not sure it's belief in evolution itself.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Most likely functioning higher reasoning ability are a
| negative selection pressure in modern society.
| vmception wrote:
| I would take it a step further to say that we - as a society
| - sexually select for behaviors we don't like in society.
|
| As well as sexual dimorphism to the point of physical
| features being debilitating.
| animanoir wrote:
| Of course, tho I would like to stop making ourselves superior
| from them, and fix the headline with something like "Animals
| change by proximity with other animals". I think this "human
| exceptionalism" is changing nature for the wrong.
| eplanit wrote:
| When some other animal species starts building libraries and
| exploring space, I'll consider them exceptional, too. Humans, a
| kind of animal, are quite distinct from other animal species.
| We can't fly by nature, but we can build machines where not
| only we can fly, but we can fly to space. Most all other
| animals live today in the same ways, and with the same
| capabilities, as their ancestors have for centuries; but,
| humans have adapted and advanced in ways that hardly a
| generation lives the same as the one before it -- all from
| human-driven, intentional advancement. We're a quite distinct
| species (judgements aside).
|
| I don't see the harm in recognizing our superior differences;
| in fact, it's as important as recognizing our similarities and
| common bonds.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Our hands could be the drivers for a lot of this. Dolphins
| have no practical way to use or create tools, that is a
| pretty fundamental limitation on how you can advance,
| irrespective of intelligence. Who knows what kind of cool
| tools something like an octopus could have created and used
| with more intelligence though.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Octopuses are probably intelligent enough; it's lifespan
| and teamwork that are the issues. An octopus works out how
| to use tools, and then... that knowledge goes away. No
| future octopuses will ever build upon that.
| dota_fanatic wrote:
| On the one hand, sure. On the other hand, not so much. Most
| of us aren't exceptional and live today in the same way as
| our ancestors have for centuries. Our needs and desires and
| behaviors across our lifetimes aren't so different from other
| large mammals. The exceptional things about us are largely
| provided by our civilization, but even including those
| things, it's the same song, different day.
|
| The harm in "recognizing our superior differences" is in the
| unfortunate proclivity of humans to take that as
| justification for not recognizing any rights of the
| "inferior".
| svachalek wrote:
| In what part of the world do people live as their ancestors
| have for centuries? I witnessed that a few decades ago in
| rural China. I don't think it's true there anymore. I can't
| imagine there are enough places now to constitute "most of
| us".
| dota_fanatic wrote:
| I sleep every night. I wake up and spent most of my
| energy on maintaining homeostasis
| (eating/drinking/waste/temperature), provision of
| resources, being social, raising young, and play. This
| involves walking, talking, gesturing, squatting, etc.
| Take someone from a thousand years ago and they engaged
| in the exact same behaviors. So there weren't living in a
| stick-framed house and using written forms of
| communication via personal computing devices and
| listening to recorded music or watching recorded stories.
| They still did a lot of the same stuff from day to day.
| We are more alike than we are different, same as how
| we're vastly more alike to other apes than different.
|
| Our subjective experience isn't all that different. This
| is especially true if you consider humanity as a whole,
| not some 0.1%er who has inordinate access to the fruits
| of civilization.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| IMO this line is reasoning is flawed. You're judging us as
| exceptional purely because of the technology we have _now_.
| For most of the time our species has existed the only
| exceptional thing about us was our ability to control fire.
| bordercases wrote:
| That sounds like a distinction without a difference in
| order to establish the claim. Surely technology now would
| make us even _more exceptional_ than before
| nine_k wrote:
| Is the influence that the article is talking about
| happening now, or has happened a long time ago, when humans
| did not change the environment noticeably?
|
| Certain other animals are very peculiar in their ways of
| living. I'd say that a headline like "Insects are affected
| by living next to ants" is more informative than the bland
| "Insects affect each other when live next to each other".
| chess_buster wrote:
| Australian Fire hawks do it, too.
| seph-reed wrote:
| > our superior differences
|
| Best to get out of this line of thought before our
| understanding of genetics really takes off. To quote Gattaca
| "We now have discrimination down to a science."
|
| It's already common to allow the oppression of inferior genes
| so long as they aren't human. What happens when we can
| measure human genetic inferiority? Will you be talking about
| superior differences then? Will you still dismiss the
| "differences" inferior to yours?
|
| Besides, animal genes might not even be truly inferior
| anyways. I suspect they have better foundations and potential
| than we do. It's just not utilized yet. Maybe humans aren't
| so great, just first to market (and only by ~20k years, which
| is nothing at all). I personally wouldn't be surprised if
| humans are actually embarrassingly stupid on the cosmic scale
| of sentience.
| elzbardico wrote:
| The animals simply don't care. The predators would eat both of
| us without a care for your highly superiorly developed morals
| concerning inter-species relations compared to me.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > I would like to stop making ourselves superior from them
|
| Alright then, if humans are not permitted to consider
| themselves superior to animals, I have one question for you.
|
| What is your view on the veterinarian profession ?
| animanoir wrote:
| Using our unique traits of complex language and education to
| help other animals. Done. Did I included any sort of
| "supremacy"? No, just different capabilities.
|
| I get your point, but no, I refuse to "feel" superior to any
| other life form. We're just different. I'll like to rephrase
| my statement, I want to respect other life forms as I respect
| my fellow human animals. I believe changing such little
| things like the headlines of articles could permeate in a new
| kind of consciousness involving every living form as part of
| the world, not "us and them".
| exoque wrote:
| Humans changed by proximity to animals ;)
| laumars wrote:
| The article is largely about domestication and as far as I
| know, animals don't widely domesticate other animals. So the
| title here is apt.
|
| Plus your point doesn't even make sense on a more general
| level. There's stacks of evidence that proves humans have
| changed nature from global deforestation, climate change,
| mining, farming and war, to even the innocent act of building
| towns on what used to be green spaces or flood plains full of
| wildlife.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| https://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/meet-earths-oldest-
| farmers-... Some ants do, curiously enough.
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