he basic elements of the superorganism are not cells and tissues but closely cooperating animals
for - quote - the basic elements of the superorganism are not cells and tissues but closely cooperating animals - E.O. Wilson & Holldobler
he basic elements of the superorganism are not cells and tissues but closely cooperating animals
for - quote - the basic elements of the superorganism are not cells and tissues but closely cooperating animals - E.O. Wilson & Holldobler
Kommer den artificiella intelligensen att bli bättre på att tänka än den mänskliga? Kognitionsvetaren Peter Gärdenfors förklarar varför så inte är fallet. Den mänskliga intelligensen består av en rad olika färdigheter och specialiteter som har förfinats under tusentals år. Mycket återstår innan den artificiella intelligensen kan mäta sig med det tänkande som inte bara människor utan även djur har. När vi förstår att vår intelligens är en bred palett av många olika förmågor ter sig tanken på att AI-tekniken trumfar oss i schack och kan skriva avancerade texter inte lika skrämmande. Utifrån ett brett forskningsunderlag förklarar Gärdenfors varför AI-tekniken inte kan och inte kommer att kunna tänka på samma sätt som människor och djur gör. »Peter Gärdenfors tilldelas Natur & Kulturs debattbokspris 2025 för att han fördjupar AI-debattens centrala begrepp och utmanar dess utgångspunkter. Med lätt språk och stabil lärdom blottlägger han tänkandets evolutionärt slipade mekanismer, och skärper bilden av vad intelligens är och vilken plats tekniken intar i vår digitala värld.« – Juryns motivering
[[Kan AI tänka by Peter Gärdenfors]] via Sven Dahlstrand, dahlstrand.net Publ okt 2024 Seeks to define what thinking actually is, and how that plays out in other animals and humans. The 2nd part goes into sofrware systems and AI and how they work in comparison.
1971 – 5.15pm – UFO – Reflections In The Water (ATV Midlands)
Heavy Rain * During a rainstorm in the jungle, I indulge happily in the cool shower which takes away a devastating and thirst-inducing drought for all animals living there, and my mummy Lady Penelope joins me.
We are animals. And as animals, our most important need is a breath of air. Without air for more than three or four minutes, you're either brain damaged or dead. So surely to goodness, air ought to be, as a society, our highest priority. The protection of the quality of air should come before anything else. We are water. Go without water for more than a few days, you're dead. Have to drink contaminated water, you're sick. So surely, water, like air, should be one of our society's highest priorities. And we are created out of the food that we eat. So protecting the soil that gives us our food should be one of our highest priorities. And protecting the photosynthetic capacity of the planet is in our highest self-interest.
for - quote - we are animals - protect - air - water - food - David Suzuki
16:30 "But the only fatwa that has, in fact, said that no images of Mohammed are permitted, and that includes Islamic paintings, not just the cartoons, came out in 2013 in Saudi Arabia by a Salafi cleric whose name is Al-Munajid. And there are other fatwas like Asistani, the Shi'i cleric, who says these images are perfectly fine, as long as they're respectful."
20:00 Fatwas can be issued (like the above) in a vacuum without any real conversation within the Islamic community. Few years back even building a snowman fatwa as haram. Animals are decapitated in Saudi textbooks. People in 20th century having 14th century book that depicts a head, decapitating it (al-ras).
the increasing number of tourists is starting to make them feel like exhibits in a zoo
for: human exploitation, treating humans like animals in a zoo
example - human exploitation - Jawara
these guys are lemurs 00:19:09 taking hits off of centipedes so they bite centipedes literally get high and they go into these trance-like states I'm sure this is not at all familiar to anyone here 00:19:24 um they get super cuddly uh and then later wake up and go their way but they are seeking a kind of transcendent State of Consciousness Apes will spin they will hang on Vines and spin to get dizzy 00:19:37 and then Dolphins will intentionally inflate puffer fish to get high pass them around in the ultimate puff puff pass right many mammals seek a Transcendent 00:19:57 altered state of being and if they communicate they may well communicate about it
can we build one of these kinds of shapes for animal communication
for: question, question - universal meaning shape for animal communication
comment
In terms of evolution, animals adapt to their ecological conditions, but as humans, we have been able to control our ecological conditions.
While we are still a while away from a Google Translate equivalent for animal languages that can decode the nuances of intra-species communication, technology, especially machine learning, is keeping this hope alive. The ability to understand animal languages could open up a realm of possibilities, potentially shaping conservation efforts, determining our future relationship with other species, and even offering insights into the evolution of human language itself.
The scientific community is, thus, increasingly using technological tools including drones, recorders, robots and AI to study the calls of a range of species, from chickens and rodents, to cats and lemurs.
“Digital technologies, so often associated with our alienation from nature, are offering us an opportunity to listen to nonhumans in powerful ways, reviving our connection to the natural world,”
Researchers are using drones, AI, and digital recorders to create a “zoological version of Google Translate.”
When the hen sees a white oval object on the ground, she cannot leave it; she must keep upon it and return to it, until at last its transformation into a little mass of moving chirping down elicits from her machinery an entirely new set of performances. The love of man for woman, or of the human mother for her babe, our wrath at snakes and our fear of precipices, may all be described similarly, as instances of the way in which peculiarly conformed pieces of the world's furniture will fatally call forth most particular mental and bodily reactions, in advance of, and often in direct opposition to, the verdict of our deliberate reason concerning them. The labours of Darwin and his successors are only just beginning to reveal the universal parasitism of each creature upon other special things, [p.191] and the way in which each creature brings the signature of its special relations stampted on its nervous system with it upon the scene. Every living creature is in fact a sort of lock, whose wards and springs presuppose special forms of key, - which keys however are not born attached to the locks, but are sure to be found in the world near by as life goes on. And the locks are indifferent to any but their own keys. The egg fails to fascinate the hound, the bird does not fear the precipice, the snake waxes not wroth at his kind, the deer cares nothing for the woman or the human babe. Those who wish for a full development of this point of view, should read Schneider's Der thierische Wille, - no other book shows how accurately anticipatory are the actions of animals, of the specific features of the environment in which they are to live.
Discusses how animals' special reactions are to their own type of animal or even offspring. A chicken doesnt look for the sent of a dog as a dog would not harbor a chicken egg.
now we go back to jakub von ogskul and we find him critiquing exactly the 00:09:20 same thing for exactly the same reasons 30 years after john dewey there on the left he has picked out the reflex arc pointing out that it is a linear throughput which leaves no room 00:09:34 for subjectivity no room for intentional action no room for meaning to arise if you if the middle is only animated by inputs then it's a puppet 00:09:47 he replaces this with a model on the right that will whose terms will not be entirely clear to you as you read the article but i want you to notice one thing about it it's circular it's not a linear 00:09:59 throughput it's circular he starts by noting the embeddedness of the body in the world and the fact that the activity of the 00:10:13 body is meaningful at all times and not separable into inputs and outputs his replacement of the linear throughput with this circular model that he elaborates in various ways 00:10:25 is remarkably prescient of the basic cybernetic insight that will arise after the second world war in which it's all feedback systems positive feedback systems negative feedback systems 00:10:37 homeostatic systems um reciprocity is always involved the fact that you do something and something is done to you at the same time that that we dance in the world 00:10:50 rather than standing apart from it and recording a movie of it so his um uncovery of this basic cybernetic principle with which one might approach the body and its being in the world is 00:11:02 remarkably prescient but these profound ideas of vulnerable are often hidden because he's well frankly so charming well he's a problematic character as we'll see lately 00:11:14 but he tells a good story and he does cool experiments
30 years after Dewey's paper, Uexkull affirms the same finding as Dewey in his article: A Stroll Though the Worlds of Animals and Men (1934).
In his article, Uexkull compares two diagrams, a linear input/output and a circular with subjectivity in the middle. Uekull anticipates the fundamental cybernetic concept of positive and negative feedbacks - you do something to the world and the world does something back to you.
solo thinking isrooted in our lifelong experience of social interaction; linguists and cognitivescientists theorize that the constant patter we carry on in our heads is a kind ofinternalized conversation. Our brains evolved to think with people: to teachthem, to argue with them, to exchange stories with them. Human thought isexquisitely sensitive to context, and one of the most powerful contexts of all isthe presence of other people. As a consequence, when we think socially, wethink differently—and often better—than when we think non-socially.
People have evolved as social animals and this extends to thinking and interacting. We think better when we think socially (in groups) as opposed to thinking alone.
This in part may be why solo reading and annotating improves one's thinking because it is a form of social annotation between the lone annotator and the author. Actual social annotation amongst groups may add additonal power to this method.
I personally annotate alone, though I typically do so in a publicly discoverable fashion within Hypothes.is. While the audience of my annotations may be exceedingly low, there is at least a perceived public for my output. Thus my thinking, though done alone, is accelerated and improved by the potential social context in which it's done. (Hello, dear reader! 🥰) I can artificially take advantage of the social learning effects even if the social circle may mathematically approach the limit of an audience of one (me).
There was a statue still present, not of Baal, but apparently of a god with the head of dog-eared baboon, the representative of the god Thoth, lending credence to the astronomical theory of the pool’s function, Nigro says.
The presence of a chimerical animal is a potential indicator of mnemonic techniques at work in Phoenician culture.
Bennetts, Shannon. ‘Parent and Child Mental Health during COVID-19 in Australia: The Role of Pet Attachment’. PsyArXiv, 17 January 2022. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/r2xhq.
Kuchipudi, S. V., Surendran-Nair, M., Ruden, R. M., Yon, M., Nissly, R. H., Vandegrift, K. J., Nelli, R. K., Li, L., Jayarao, B. M., Maranas, C. D., Levine, N., Willgert, K., Conlan, A. J. K., Olsen, R. J., Davis, J. J., Musser, J. M., Hudson, P. J., & Kapur, V. (2022). Multiple spillovers from humans and onward transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in white-tailed deer. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(6). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2121644119
Dogs’ innate sense of fairness being eroded by humans, study suggests https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/dogs-wolves-unfairness-acceptance-human-owners-pets-behaviour-research-vienna-a7779076.html
While thinking about inequality in reading The Dawn of Everything, I started thinking about inequality and issues in other animal settings.
Why am I not totally surprised to find that animals' innate sense of fairness could be eroded by humans?
I wonder if this effect might be seen across all cultures, or only Western cultures with capitalist economies? Could we look at dogs in Australian indigenous cultures and find the same results?
While reading The Dawn of Inequality, it occurs to me that much less look at humans and inequality or fairness, there's been reasonable research on other animals and their perception of fairness.
This example is a simple example which scratches the surface and many more could be added.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97944783
Cats don't understand smiles, but they have an equivalent: Slow blinking. Slow blinking means: We are cool, we are friends. Beyond that you can just physically pet them, use gentle voice.
Equivalent of smiling in cats language = slow blinking
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/faith/witness/saints-and-beasts
Among saints remembered for their peaceful relations with dangerous animals not the least is Gerasimos, shown in icons healing a lion. The story behind the image comes down to us from John Moschos, a monk of Saint Theodosius Monastery near Bethlehem and author of The Spiritual Meadow, a book written in the course of journeys he made in the late sixth and early seventh centuries.
Looking back on these "mythical" stories of lion tamers and people with extraordinary facility with animals, one can now see that these interactions are much more common in the modern world.
People can earn the trust of animals, tame, and even train them. As a result, we view these people now as talented rather than magical and/or "helped by god" as they may have been in the past.
Covid-19 vaccine did not kill every animal it was tested on—Full Fact. (n.d.). Retrieved June 27, 2021, from https://fullfact.org/online/covid-vaccine-animal-testing/
McKay, Jeremy Page, Drew Hinshaw and Betsy. ‘Over 47,000 Wild Animals Sold in Wuhan Markets Before Covid Outbreak, Study Shows’. Wall Street Journal, 9 June 2021, sec. World. https://www.wsj.com/articles/live-wildlife-sold-in-wuhan-markets-before-covid-19-outbreak-study-shows-11623175415.
F. (2020, October 16). COVID-19 Poll. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/wksqj MLA
19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals(AA) and all the birds in the sky.(AB) He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called(AC) each living creature,(AD) that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.
God had given Adam the responsibility to name all living creatures on Earth after the first days of creation. In Ursula K. Le Guin’s “She Unnames Them”, the idea of how labels or given names could take away from “personal choice” and “freedom” was explored throughout the text. Instead of believing that humans are above animals and living creatures, Buddhists view animals as very sacred beings and are to be shown with respect and to never be harmed. They also believe that humans can be reborn as animals, all interconnected within one another, supporting their beliefs of showing extreme care towards animals and allowing them to live freely.
"We find essentially no evidence for climate-driven extinctions during the past 126,000 years Instead, we find that human impact explains 96% of all mammal extinctions during that time"
numerous non-human species suffer from psychiatric symptoms. Birds obsess; horses on occasion get pathologically compulsive; dolphins and whales—especially those in captivity—self-mutilate. And that thing when your dog woefully watches you pull out of the driveway from the window—that might be DSM-certified separation anxiety. "Every animal with a mind has the capacity to lose hold of it from time to time" wrote science historian and author Dr. Laurel Braitman in "Animal Madness
Animals can have psychiatric issues as well.
Examples include:
schizophrenia. Though psychotic animals may exist, psychosis has never been observed outside of our own species; whereas depression, OCD, and anxiety traits have been reported in many non-human species
Humans are the only ones that develop schizophrenia
So inspiring!
Stalking Cat has had/coexisted with a variety of animals, including reptiles, wolves, snakes, birds, fish, and horses. Despite Stalking Cat's feline identity, they don't clash with dogs or wolves in a stereotypical fashion.
Maintains a general connection to animals, tied to both their experiences as an Indian, and tied to their identity as an animal themselves.
The dominion of man over animal that this naming manifests thus comes before original sin and the Fall,6
There's the argument about whether man's dominion over animals signifies man's power over animals to do as he pleases, or whether it means a responsibility to protect & nurture these animals. This is explored within the context of vegetarianism/veganism as a moral quandary for Christians.
Hou, Z., Lin, L., Lu, L., Du, F., Qian, M., Liang, Y., Zhang, J., & Yu, H. (2020). Public Exposure to Live Animals, Behavioural Change, and Support in Containment Measures in response to COVID-19 Outbreak: A population-based cross sectional survey in China [Preprint]. Public and Global Health. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.21.20026146
All this land is populated by people who cover themselves such that only their eyes can be seen; they live in tents and ride in camels. There are animals named lemp [orice] whose skin can be used to make good leather shields.
While there were many ways to travel throughout history depending on the environment/terrain camels were commonly used to travel in the East hemisphere. The reason for the use of camels is their resiliency and low maintenance. Camels were used to aid in trade as well a general travel.
snow monkeys in texas
Culture & Animals Foundation grant recipient
Culture & Animal Foundation
Cultural and Animals Foundation
Baynard
glander-pest
worms
cochineal insect
bird of Jove
humming bird
Juno’s bird
boar
Goat’s
birds
mining swarms
pest
ants’ republic
bugs confederate
Bugs of uncommon shape
reptile-life
insect
cochinille
pest
insects
cochinille
reptile
locust-breed
insect-tribe
poison’d fish
Halcyons
worms
mountain-dove
vermin
rats
Mungoes
Cane-rats
horses
mules
vermin-breed
Misnian arsenic
roasted crabs
alligators
Osyters
alligators
gallinazo
snake
Rats
savage cats
whisker’d vermine-race
monkeys
dogs
droles
pest of wealth
monkey-nation
mules
rats and other vermin
greasy fly
monkeys
yellow fly
steeds
fire-flies
zumbadore
Chigoes or Chigres
turtle
Iguana
doves
ducks
black crabs
ground-lizard
tree-lizard
Drummer
speckled lizard
Harpies
Cockroaches
sand-flies
Mosquitos
dog-star
Fregate
Albacores
Portugese man of war.
monkeys
rats
wild hogs
worm
narrow conception which we have of it; and therefore are wholly confined to the knowledge and use of words:
From what I remember in History of English Language, language has been defined more broadly since Sheridan's day, if language was really strictly defined to words. I think language is now considered as a system of intentional, conventional signs. Unfortunately, animals and the "melancholy mournings of the turtle" (shoutout to kpolizzi and gilmanhernandez) are not considered language within this definition. This reading and the definition of language from the HOEL textbook by Algeo both heavily emphasized oral-aural communication, so I'm curious about the deaf community's perspective on language. Also I was definitely not expecting to bring up disability as much as I have been; I can try to limit my annotations on that subject.
Sancho had not thought it worth while to hobble Rocinante, feeling sure, from what he knew of his staidness and freedom from incontinence, that all the mares in the Cordova pastures would not lead him into an impropriety. Chance, however, and the devil, who is not always asleep, so ordained it that feeding in this valley there was a drove of Galician ponies belonging to certain Yanguesan carriers, whose way it is to take their midday rest with their teams in places and spots where grass and water abound; and that where Don Quixote chanced to be suited the Yanguesans' purpose very well. It so happened, then, that Rocinante took a fancy to disport himself with their ladyships the ponies, and abandoning his usual gait and demeanour as he scented them, he, without asking leave of his master, got up a briskish little trot and hastened to make known his wishes to them; they, however, it seemed, preferred their pasture to him, and received him with their heels and teeth to such effect that they soon broke his girths and left him naked without a saddle to cover him; but what must have been worse to him was that the carriers, seeing the violence he was offering to their mares, came running up armed with stakes, and so belaboured him that they brought him sorely battered to the ground.
This passage of Don Quixote seems to give readers a great image of Rocinante's personality. This also further proves that even the animals in Cervantes's book are characters that take on life and add to the plot. In this case, it was Rocinante who wandered into Yanguesan carriers. Rocinante's actions of trying to mate with their Galician ponies did not sit well with the Yanguesans, who began beating the horse. Seeing this, Don Quixote and Sancho were dragged into the fight, making this another notable scene in the plot.
Animals which have disappeared from the country include the jaguar and the crested eagle; endangered animals include two types of bat, the giant anteater, and Baird's tapir. Monkeys, pumas, wild boar, ocelots, reptiles, and several hundred bird species still thrive in the country's mountains and forests, especially where protected by the government.
oh geez, this is bad and actually really shocking....why are these animals disappearing?
The secret to the country's impressive biodiversity is its wide range of habitats. Few countries can match Colombia's diversity with its mountains, lowlands, seas, lakes, deserts, and swamps.
large range of habitats= diverse
f birds, with 1,754
many types of birds
a large Newfoundland puppy and two or three terriers
According to the American Kennel Club, The Newfoundland is a massive breed of English working dog, used for pulling nets, carts, and carrying loads. Newfoundlands also make excellent guard dogs. Henry's puppy would look something like this,
but would grow to be a very large dog.

Terrier is a group of breeds, originally bred to hunt vermin. Some examples include the West Highland White Terrier,
Cairn Terrier,
and Norfolk Terrier. 
These dogs were kept not only as companions, but as useful parts of the household: the Terriers to control rats and other vermin, and the Newfoundland (when grown) for protection and labor. Even so, the Newfoundland’s sweet disposition would make for an ideal companion (American Kennel Club).
some of which players can kill and eat (or tame, if they want pets)
Notice how many options there are here: "some," not all the animals, kill and eat or tame and make pets.