Animal language (Animals)

by dhw, Tuesday, January 13, 2015, 15:35 (3601 days ago) @ David Turell

Tony: The difference in our brains is in our ability to create, and in particular to create in abstract. That is the one thing animals do not do. If we are made in God's image, as none of the other animals were, then the ability to create is an apt differentiator coming from someone titled the "Grand Creator".-DAVID: Right on the money. Great way to put it. Planning for a universe, planning for life requires abstract thought. Different in kind.-I have no quarrel with the argument that our creative abilities and abstract thinking far exceed those of our fellow animals. But the suggestion that only we have the ability to create and think abstractly once again carries human self-aggrandisement to the point of absurdity. You (David) are always on about origins. How do you think the first birds made their nests, the first beavers their dams, the first bees their honeycombs, the first ants their great cities etc. etc.? Did they just happen to put all the elements together without knowing what they were doing? Or do you think God came down and gave them engineering lessons? Over and over again you have offered us articles demonstrating the abstract reasoning powers of animals, birds and even insects. Here's another for you:
 
•	Bees Have Small Brains But Big Ideas - Scientific American
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bees-have-small-brains-but-big-ideas/-The Sunday Times article mentions the songs sung by gibbons, whales etc. Sometimes such activities are for the sake of attracting a mate (ditto certain modes of display). Do you think the prospective mates have no sense of aesthetics? Once upon a time, people in the West dismissed African art, because it was associated with primitive religions. Same problem: a refusal to acknowledge that there may be other modes of thinking that are abstract and creative in different ways from our own.