Animal language (Animals)

by David Turell , Tuesday, January 13, 2015, 21:35 (3600 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: 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?-We don't know the origin of insect, bird or other animal planning. The fact that for a given species the nests or hives all look the same, means to me that the plans are solidly placed in the genome. How the plans got there is your question, and I don't know the origin. I can say that it is instinct, but I really don't know how that instinct developed. You want to assume the birds or some other animal did it on their own. You don't know that and neither do I. Did God give them the plans? I have no evidence for that anymore than you have evidence that the birds did it on their own.
 
>dhw: 	Bees Have Small Brains But Big Ideas - Scientific American: -> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bees-have-small-brains-but-big-ideas/-The fact that bees have search scouts who come home and dance the direction to good pollen is well known. I view this study as an extension of that instinctual ability.
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> dhw; 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?-I know the sounds appeal to our aesthetics, but you don't know if that is the level at which the animals respond. I think you anthoropomorphizing about animals, and that is not logical. Animals are not little less-advanced humans. You cannot apply you aesthetic feelings to them, but you do that because you are trying to deny the huge gap.