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Stone-Throwing Chimp Back In the News With Better Plan
sciencehabit writes "Three years ago, a stone-throwing chimpanzee named Santino jolted the research community by providing some of the strongest evidence yet that non-humans could plan ahead. Santino, a resident of the Furuvik Zoo in Gävle, Sweden, calmly gathered stones in the mornings and put them into neat piles, apparently saving them to hurl at visitors when the zoo opened as part of angry and aggressive 'dominance displays.' But some researchers were skeptical that Santino really was planning for a future emotional outburst. Now Santino is back in the scientific literature, the subject of new claims that he has begun to conceal the stones so he can get a closer aim at his targets—further evidence that he is thinking ahead like humans do."
And yet we still keep him, and his relatives, in a cage.
He isn't just planning ahead, and then coming up with a new plan. He's being deceptive.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Instinctual behaviors are not considered planned behaviors. This is a unique display from the chimp in question that other chimps don't do, so it is not instinctual. Previous questions were if it was perhaps a learned behavior or that the initial gathering and stockpiling was unrelated to the use of the rocks to throw at zoo visitors. The fact that he seems to have recognized that he has a better chance of successfully attacking the visitors by portraying peaceful action and concealing his weapons gives much more evidence that this chimp is capable of advanced thought and planning.
Well yeah, if humans threw stones at people we'd put them in a cage too called "jail"
Usually the way that works is you throw the stones first and then get put in a cage. Not the other way around.
No. Cats are obviously evil genius masterminds who have plans stretching from the dawn of time until the re-awakening of the Great Old Ones. No instinct - just pure, unadulterated malevolence.
Oh no, that's not a banana.
-g
He should be a gorilla warfare expert in no time!
I live with two pit-bull terriers (both rescued strays), and unfortunately I must keep them in separate rooms because of a traumatic event where during play the one's jaw got caught under the other's collar -- They remember this episode, but confuse it with each hurting the other; Ever since they fight if left together unsupervised for a length of time.
The one dog, TC (named after the street T.C. Jester where she was found), likes being in the larger part of the house, and would rather not be in the den. So, when I say that "It's time to switch the dogs", and try to put her in the Den, she runs to the back door instead, as if she needs to relieve herself. She knows that the dog in the house usually ends up in the den when the outside dog is let back inside -- to keep them separated.
If while coming back inside she realises that I'll be putting the other dog outside -- making her more likely to be the dog in the den, then she's resistant to coming back inside... She not only thinks ahead, she's worked out several plans to achieve her goal. If TC knows its her turn to have run of the house, then none of this is an issue, she goes in and out without a care, knowing that it's the other dog that'll be relegated to the den -- Even if she sees the other dog going out when she comes in, she's not reluctant to come inside because she's not planning on being put in the den.
Furthermore, I'm beginning to run out of ways to say "Walk" and "Car" -- The dogs love riding in the car, and have learned that "C.A.R." means car, "Truck" and "T.R.U.C.K" is also out, can't say or spell "go" without them getting excited to leave -- Currently I've taken to saying, "Vamonos en el Auto" which is me butchering Spanish (never formally studied it, but I've run out of French and English words), because they've also learned "coche"; However, TC has started to pick up on this too -- You can see her perk up and look between the parties as if she's sussing out whether or not we'll soon be leaving. Names of vacation places, such as "Kerville" must be avoided at all cost -- I sometimes attend the Kerville Folk Festival for a week or so and have the neighbour care for one dog at the house while the other is in a kennel (to ensure separation), TC gets distressed when Kerville is mentioned -- She picks it up even in the middle of rapid speech with other parties. TC normally loves to get the leash so we can go for a walk, but Mention Kerville at all and she runs away from the leash for several days. She's planning not to be the dog in the kennel.
Humans are so damn chauvinistic. There's no such thing as "sentience" -- That's some made up Bullshit right there. There is only varying degrees of awareness and intellect depending on the complexity of the neural network. Bigger network? Smarter. That's all there is to it.
When (not if) machine learning neural networks surpass the complexity of the human mind by leaps and bounds: I sure hope they're understanding enough of our primitive nature, and don't treat us lesser minded humans as we treat the apes and other creatures with proportionally less neurons. Note that I didn't say I own the dogs...
"This is a cat. He doesn't hate you because you're black, brown or yellow, or because you're a homosexual, or a Republican, or a Democrat. He hates you because he's a cat."
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
You should be punished for that.
Quick! Start throwing stones!
First let's find one of us who hasn't done anything wrong. Then we'll let him throw the first stone.