Give animals a chance?

Discussion in 'Philosophy' started by bopphacks, Feb 21, 2009.

  1. Humans are obviously above animals in intelligence, simply because we have the ability to experience more of the world. Everything is shaped through experience, and thanks especially to technology, we have intellect right at our finger tips. There is a difference between intellect and experience, but to gaining intellect whenever you please is an experience in itself.

    Humans are constantly evolving, mainly because a species can never actually stop evolving. For a human to stop evolving, well, that would be a plight against existence itself. Humans are becoming smarter and more aware as time progresses. It used to be that everyone blindly believed in a God out of fear from the Church that so oppressed them. Now, humans are making their own choices on what they believe, which is a clear evolution of humans and society as a whole. (although, western society is mostly evolving in a materialistic way thanks to the government, but that is a different discussion)

    I theorize that animals, naturally, must also constantly be evolving, but due to hinderances such as 4 legs and inability to go farther than their habitat because of lack of food resources, they cannot experience much of anything. This is what has confounded them to being simply "animals." We were at one time neanderthals, and evolved into cro-magnons (through the missing link of course, but what that could possibly be has too many theories to go into), so something gave us that extra boost. Animals aren't so lucky to receive that extra boost, so their evolution works at what is seemingly a severly lower rate than our own.

    Everything for us in this world is shaped through perception and experience, (hypercommunication and intervention from higher beings is a possibility, too, if that's your belief) so quite simply, animals have just been unjustly fated to a restraining and slow evolution because of the rapidly evolving human race. Industrialization and agriculture have raped animals of their chances to ever rapidly evolve.

    This was all just thought up on the spot, but i still believe it has relevance, haha.
     
  2. What do you think about zoo's? We're taking wildlife and putting them in a confined area just for our own research. Hmmmm
     
  3. #3 blazin_busta, Feb 21, 2009
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 21, 2009


    Animals haven't evolved our kind of intelligence because that is not what works for them and thier certain enviroment. Intelliigence is our niche and for another animal to evolve such an ability would provide us wiith competition which we would have to cut down.

    Besides the point, animals don't evolve because they need to adapt, or what resources they have, most evolutions were random mutations which happened to benefit the creature in some way, and while all the other ones without the certain mutation died out, the one with the mutation lived.

    This, I think is were the current theory is at.
     
  4. um

    well thats why we have cognitive thinking and they dont.

    If we didnt take advantage of the animals around us we wouldnt be human, and we wouldnt be anywhere close to what we are today
     
  5. We wouldn't be animals if we didn't take advantage of other animals.
     
  6. exactly. We need to adapt to the world around us.

    If animals could do it, they would do exactly the same thing. So we lucked out.
     
  7. #7 Leapfrog, Feb 21, 2009
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 21, 2009
    We are evolving?...yeah, backward!

    We are destroying our own world, animals are not.

    So who's (more) intelligent here?



    On edit: Title should be reading: "Give humans a chance!"
     
  8. give all animals a change homies.

    I recently moved less than a year ago into a town house but at my old house there was a very severe stray cat problem. Well my mom decided that she wanted to help the situation because she knows that feral cats can be very dangerous and she wanted to help them because she is such an animal lover. Well my mom started to feed these cats and take care of them because most of them were obviously cats that people had left behind. Some of the cats would just come to our house and stand at the door and watch us. And some of them always wanted to be pet. Now these were not dirty looking scary cats my mom kept them extemely well feed. Actually my mom captured most of the cats at least 95% of them and got them shots and nutured out of money from her own pocket. (she is a cafateria lady making 9 something an hour) so i mean it is really from her heart. Well after we moved the nieghbors did not like these cats and they captured them and killed them. I cant belive that those fuckers did that. Seriously these were the most loving cats. Those fucking nieghbors also transported possums and squirrels out of the nieghborhood. WTF have people lost love for nature? How could an animal that is so harmless make you so heartless to fucking end its life for no reason! One day though im going back to that house and slashing everyones tires that were involved i just cannot do it yet because i have sent them to much hate mail about them going to hell and peta magazines.


    sorry for the vent lol just everytime i think about it i get so upset.
     

  9. This due to the widespread pandemic of ignorance,
    given the chance, animals can create destruction of entire ecosystems,
    introduce a foriegn animal to an ecosystem and that animal can be immune
    to the dangers of said ecosystem and then that animal will continue to reproduce
    and reproduce and eat and eat untill that certain ecosystem has been destroyed, because there is nothing to cull down that spieces.
     


  10. Exactly.

    Just as you wrote as soon a human(s) come in to play things get out of control.
     
  11. Animals have way better abilities (i suppose is the right word) then humans. There are species with better senses then us sight-birds, smell-dogs, hearing-bats, as well as senses like ecolocation and communicating with dances, or using underwater magnetic feilds to navigate oceans, you get the idea. These animals use those abilities primarily to survive, and with their 'lesser' intelligence manage to survive quite succesfully until humans came along. Now humans are killing animals, but even more 'intelligent' is humans killing humans. You don't see that happen in nature regularly (there are exceptions). Killing and all the emotions that drive ourselves to react irrationally are all comming from our intelligence, animals don't do that. But i digress,

    Animals do evolve because they need to adapt to new enviroments or predators, they arn't random mutations, thats how whales ended up moving into the oceans. That example of whales, it took them thousands of years, and they faced alot of predators in the new enviroment (crocodiles, megalodons) and had to adapt (swim better, more agile in water) to escape. Eventually they move into colder waters were the cold blooded predators could not persue them. Evolution is maticulous, the majority of evolutions are for the better, very rarely do they cause a negative effect on the animal. Another example is playing an instrument, like guitar, after playing it for a while your fingers develop callouses (sp?). That isn't random, that is your body adapting to a change.

    People commonly assume that nothing is changing/evolving around us, that is stupid, but I believe it is just because we think of animals as equals when it comes to evolution. Humans are also evolving, not quickly, i'd assume at the same rate as the other creatures on earth(its interesting to note that people are becoming aware and starting to fear anything that could evolve/mutate faster then us like superviruses, like AIDS so that could lead us to believe that some creatures have better abilities to adapt then others), but our technologies have expanded so much in the last 100 years or so, in the time of the industrial revolution, we channelled all 6 billlion of our people into their areas of expertise and our brains were able to create so much more technology then before. This, compared to the measily hunting and scavengings of animals is alot more impressive, especially when not many animals use group intelligences (well, that we don't see daily. Ants and whales are great examples, but we wouldn't think of them as equals in any sense). Also because comparatively there has been no human evolution in the last 10,000 years or any real animal evolution that was significant or we can remeber so becoming the dominante animal on earth overshadows anything they could ever show us.

    With humans best trait intelligence, it would stand to reason it is evolving (although I already told you our new technologies were just many humans working on a problem instead of one). But intelligence (imo) doesn't pass down through generations. If you think about some of the really famous thinkers, Newton, Einstein, any number of greek philosophers, they never had any famous kids. They never had any (well again, there may be an exception or two, but none I am aware of) equally or more intelligent offspring. I don't really understand why, but it could just be that humans are at a point were intelligence isn't going to help us anymore. Until we started settling parts of the world (when we were scavangers and hunters, thousands of years ago) it was practically a fluke we found the fertile creasant, and after we learned to use nature to our advantage (spending our time making tools and thinking, as opposed to fighting for survival and spending all day looking for food) we started dominating the earth. After we found out how to grow our own food we also colinized the area, so we wouldn't have to spend additional time looking for shelter and fighting the elements. No other animal had ever taken this much advantage of nature (and in my belief it was accidental, i think that may have happened with an action as simple as dropping some grain accidentally into soil. The fertile creasant had ideal tempuratures and weather so their food grew. They invented gods that controlled weather it would rain, or drought because they clearly had no idea how to grow plants and wanted an explination.)

    Humans (like most mammals) are curious creatures, this probably lead to exploration and colinizing other areas. Our populations grew and through more trial and error we invented a bunch of stuff until we found out how to invent stuff quicker specializing trades and depending on other. Animals have none of this, and its my firm belief that (although I'd like to believe we are alot smarter then every other animal) there isn't much that seperates us from animals. Infact i've seen a few brains in my day, and the creases in our brains are there because we are using so much of our brain that they need to fold into themselves to create more room. Many other animals have this and others don't. If you believe in the evolution of dinosaures into birds, then the brain of a bird is smooth, there are no folds in it. Birds are increadibly dumb creatures (making up for this with other specialized features ofcourse) but they have been on this world for hundreds of millions of years, and they have done shit all.
     
  12. #12 blazin_busta, Feb 22, 2009
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 22, 2009
    I didn't mean animals weren't evolving, just they weren't evolving in a certain way. If that's what you're getting at.
     
  13. Intelligence hasn't evolved for them because there's no need for it, not because they've been "hindered".

    There's more than one way to skin a cat and more ways than you can count to not die long enouh to have kids, which really is all any animal can hope for, including humans.
     
  14. #14 head dead, Feb 22, 2009
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 22, 2009


    I wasn't arguing against your point when I quoted it :rolleyes: o well. The first part of the post was sort of adding to whay you said. Humans were lucky enough to get the most valuable ability, animals are better at many things. Everything is evolving but humans make animals evolution look weaker when it isn't our intellegence at all that are being advanced. All that is getting any better is the ways we work and the ability to retain knowledge and learn from mistakes (notably sharks have this ability to remember very well). Our technology is advancing which doesn't dictate humans as a race's intelligence as much as it would appear so. We are highly organized in our thinking and most animals are instinctual. But I don't know if intelligence causes orginization, but I'd think not looking at how colonies of insects depend on themselves for survival. They have class systems and they all work towards one goal. They are orginized because on their own or without a colony they would die.


    We are also killing lots of species with pollution and habitat destruction. They cant adapt and that makes them appear weaker then us. We couldn't adapt either if we didn't have a constistant supply of fresh water and food and a place to sleep so it makes us look like we are much better off. But we have many tools to our advantage and all they have is evolution and as we saw, evolution takes way to long to help with sudden change.

    Alot of animals are near our intelligence levels, but could never build or use tools because of their bodys. They wouldn't (in a perfect world, with no humans) need tools to survive. Humans however are ignorant enough and also too proud to admit animals could be intelligent. But this ignorance makes it easier for us to destroy their habitat and torture them to death (dolphins, whales, sharks) without any weight on our concience
     
  15. I know most of yall are gunna call me crazy but I dont give a fuck.

    Animals IMO are a lot more intelligent then us humans. First thing, animals are able to speak telepathically with each other, we humans are to, but we tend not to use this ability because we are to caught up on trivial things. Yes, you have the ability to speak with your dog, its very hard but once you get the hang of it its pretty awesome.

    Secondly animal besides humans have found the best way to survive, by not killing and destroying the very place that they live in. We have a lot to learn from animals......

    Open up your mind to animals and you will know what they are saying.
     

Share This Page