New Miscellany 2: birds, chimps, snails, corvids (General)

by dhw, Monday, May 26, 2025, 14:16 (7 days ago) @ dhw

Bird migration

dhw: Their advance adaptations clearly occur because their bodies are sensitive to something in the atmosphere which warns them that the time is approaching for them to leave. Most species of bear also prepare their bodies before the onset of winter. And your dog starts growing his winter coat in autumn. Once a successful response to these changes has been found, it is passed on. It’s the same with the next article.

DAVID: How does a bird conceptualize the preparatory needs of such a trip? You have no answer.

From past experience which has been handed down through generations of birds and their intelligent cells that have learned what is needed. We follow the same process. All explained below, but you have ignored it.

Tibetan altitude adaptations

dhw: The cells of all life forms must not only respond intelligently to new conditions, but once their responses are established, the changes will become hereditary and the processes will seem automatic. And those individuals whose cells are best adapted are most likely to survive and pass on their superior changes, which then become the normality.

DAVID: Yes.

dhw: You have even agreed. There was no sudden overnight change of the bird’s/bear’s/dog’s anatomy – although there should have been if your God popped in to perform his operations. No doubt many birds/bears/dogs would have died when winter came, until the necessary responses took place in a few survivors, and became more and more “established” with each generation. Do you really believe that one autumn day, your God popped in to give birds their “mighty microchondria” de novo, plus a map to guide them to summer 10,000 miles away? Please answer.'

DAVID: The answer is God, the designer, speciates as I've said before.

We are not talking about speciation! We are talking about how our fellow animals adapt to or even prepare for changing conditions. Now please answer my bolded question.

Chimps ‘r’ not us

QUOTE: “This means that the actual difference between human and chimp DNA is 14 times greater than the often-quoted 1 percent statistic.”

dhw: Nobody has ever said that chimps are human. Does anyone really think our brain power is 99% the same as that of chimps? (It is the brain power that makes us so exceptional.) […] what are we left with? They and we now share 86% DNA. Does it mean we don’t have a common ancestor?

DAVID: It makes us less chimp than people wish to convey. It is not just brain power. Our muscular bodies function very differently.

dhw: […] And what human muscular activities do you think make us superior to our fellow animals?

DAVID: The sport of gymnastics is one tiny example.

dhw: Oh well, why stick to muscular activity? A dog’s sense of smell is at least 10,000 times more powerful than ours, and a cheetah can run at twice our speed, and a camel can go without water for 15 days compared to our three. So does that make dogs, cheetahs and camels superior to us?

DAVID: No, but you abhor our exceptionality as just demonstrated.

I have just pointed out (now bolded) that it is our brain power that makes us so exceptional. Where is the abhorrence? You, however, leapt in to say we were also exceptional because of our muscle power. I don’t agree, but if you regard muscle power as a reason for claiming superiority, you might as well claim that dogs, cheetahs and camels are also exceptional. Do you or do you not agree that it is the power of our brains that make us exceptional?

Armored deep-sea snails

DAVID: this could just as well be listed under extremophiles, as they show life survives by using whatever materials are available as well as using symbiotic bacteria for food.

Astonishing! Thank you, as always, for these wonders. I am in total agreement with your comment, which seems to me to encapsulate two of our favourite themes: yours of design and mine of a free-for-all. No matter what the conditions, the cells of which all organisms are made will find a way to survive. But I cannot believe for one second that they and every extremophile that ever existed, extant or extinct, were specially designed for the use of us humans. The design argument would apply to the origin of every species, which is the cell and its ability to “use whatever materials are available”.

Clever corvids

QUOTES:
Corvids show cognitive biases, similar to humans.
Corvids show remarkable abilities in their sense of self across time.
Corvids can even plan….
They not only recognize themselves in mirrors, but also understand other minds.
.we believe that there is scientific evidence for rich conscious experiences in corvids. For most species, it is a lack of research, not a lack of capacity, that keeps us silent on what their subjective experiences are like.

I for one am convinced that the researchers are right. It’s not just corvids that share so many traits with us. Our “large organs chauvinism” (Shapiro) makes us forget that we are descended from earlier cell communities, all of which could only have survived through a degree of conscious intelligence that enabled them to “use whatever materials are available” in order to survive.