You know how....

[RageBeoulve]

So do you think cats or dogs do this? Do chimps?

[Beardy McFuckface]

Chimps, definitely.

Dogs and cats are more of a mixed bag.

[RageBeoulve]

Chimps, definitely.

Dogs and cats are more of a mixed bag.

Mixed bag. What is that?

[ZEGH8578]

Rage, intelligence is much more fluid than being categorizeable species by species.

Intelligent organisms may adapt their cognition to associations they have never experienced before. Think of, for example, how an animal reacts to a window for the first time, hard transparent "air". This does not exist in nature, there "should" "logically" be no way for any organism to adapt to this. But they do, and quickly so.

So some cats can, some can not, look at human intelligence. We the range and variation is quite wide, even within a single neighborhood.

[RageBeoulve]

Rage, intelligence is much more fluid than being categorizeable species by species.

Intelligent organisms may adapt their cognition to associations they have never experienced before. Think of, for example, how an animal reacts to a window for the first time, hard transparent "air". This does not exist in nature, there "should" "logically" be no way for any organism to adapt to this. But they do, and quickly so.

So some cats can, some can not, look at human intelligence. We the range and variation is quite wide, even within a single neighborhood.

I guess I should narrow it down to intelligence that we can identify with then. That cat in the video is obviously having a realization that I thought only human babies and some chimpanzees were capable of.

I was wondering if this was more common than I thought.

[ZEGH8578]

Rage, intelligence is much more fluid than being categorizeable species by species.

Intelligent organisms may adapt their cognition to associations they have never experienced before. Think of, for example, how an animal reacts to a window for the first time, hard transparent "air". This does not exist in nature, there "should" "logically" be no way for any organism to adapt to this. But they do, and quickly so.

So some cats can, some can not, look at human intelligence. We the range and variation is quite wide, even within a single neighborhood.

I guess I should narrow it down to intelligence that we can identify with then. That cat in the video is obviously having a realization that I thought only human babies and some chimpanzees were capable of.

I was wondering if this was more common than I thought.

hm, intelligence is incredibly difficult to understand because of several factors
1 thing is that everything we have, we inherited. so you shouldnt be surprised chimps got what we got, cus they got it first, then we inherited it. Even spiritualism which derives from creativity which derives from anticipation - is an intelligence trait common in actively hunting animals - anticipate what turn a prey will take: it imagines what hasn't happened yet, it guesses, it visualizes what is not yet true - what does not actually exist at the present moment.

2 you can and cannot precisely "imagine" how a cat thinks. The brain, thus perception of reality, will inevitably differ. Yet it will probably be similar, light, sound, thought-process, visualization, ideas and concepts, these basics go far back, deep into the roots of animal evolution.

3 intelligence comes down to necesity, but also sexual selection and many other factors. Human intelligence, you could say, has spiralled/evolved out of hand, since what was useful at first, has turned into dangerous delusions in many cases - all thanks to intelligence developing.
As a general rule mammals and birds are all intelligent, compared to the rest of organisms on earth.
Among the most intelligent organisms on earth are typically
   
Omnivorous, oportunistic and social animals (apes, corvids)
or
Carnivorous, actively hunting, tactics using - social animals (cats, dogs, dolphins)

These are often fewer in ratio than herbivorous animals, or insect or seed-feeding animals. Cows and horses are significantly less intelligent than most dogs or cats, but will still be einsteins compared to lizards. The span here is enormous, lizards are still highly cognitive and intelligent animals compared to for example invertebrates.
But even a spider will see you from a distance, recognize you as moving and large, thus scary, and flee, this seeing, registering, analyzing, understanding and reacting to something external.

[Pyraxis]

Ballastexistenz: Cats can use mirrors

[RageBeoulve]

I have to admit. This challenges like almost everything I thought I understood about perception and intelligence.

['andersom']

It's only achieved by teaching. If you don't, they won't know.

Same with talking or anything else, neglecting the child will cause developmental problems in such areas.

You don't think that a group of children left completely out of the loop in learning any known spoken language, would develop one amongst themselves?

I do.

Sometimes twin babies indeed make up a language of their own, and they don't do well on the language the people around them speak.

[Adam]

Octapuses are very intelligent

[RageBeoulve]

It's only achieved by teaching. If you don't, they won't know.

Same with talking or anything else, neglecting the child will cause developmental problems in such areas.

You don't think that a group of children left completely out of the loop in learning any known spoken language, would develop one amongst themselves?

I do.

Sometimes twin babies indeed make up a language of their own, and they don't do well on the language the people around them speak.

Indeed. I'm really starting to question the line between humans and animals in many ways.

[Pyraxis]

Humans are animals with an overgrown frontal cortex.

[ZEGH8578]

It's only achieved by teaching. If you don't, they won't know.

Same with talking or anything else, neglecting the child will cause developmental problems in such areas.

You don't think that a group of children left completely out of the loop in learning any known spoken language, would develop one amongst themselves?

I do.

Sometimes twin babies indeed make up a language of their own, and they don't do well on the language the people around them speak.

Indeed. I'm really starting to question the line between humans and animals in many ways.

There is no line. At all. I challenge you to find _researchers_ who study the very _definition_ of humanity - the very evolution of mankind, and ask them to tell you what - exactly - a "human" is.
It's not possible.
The very experts on the field of defining what makes-a-human have no idea, each one got their little personal definition, some try to keep it to H. sapiens, some say it is limited to Homo, some let it include all of Hominini making it include Australopithecines and chimpanzees.

Here I'm not even talking about wether or  not humans are animals, but wether or not other animals fall into the category of "Human", such as the animal fossil species Homo floresensis, Homo erectus, Homo habilis or Homo neanderthalensis. Save for the latest species, these were all quite likely naked animals, without clothes or art.

The point is - what makes human is not defineable scientifically. It is an emotional decision you yourself must do. As for what concerns nature itself, there is no such thing as "species" even - it's all a big blur. No animal STOP being one thing, before it STARTS being something else. It would require an animal to disappear entirely, before reappearing as a new creature, that's not evolution, that's just pure magic.

We are all - quite litterally - the same.

[Beardy McFuckface]

Anyone who thinks humans are not animals are talking out of their arse. No matter how much we try to differentiate ourselves, we are part of the animal kingdom regardless. We just happen to be pretty lucky in our evolution, that we got to the point of exploiting an entire planet and having the means to destroy it if we wanted to. Pretty impressive for apes, I have to say.

Before anyone thinks we are somehow "special", there were other species similar to us back in the stone age, ie. the Neanderthals. They didn't survive, but we did.

[Adam]

Speaking of Neanderthals, just saw this today: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24031-first-bone-tools-suggest-neanderthals-taught-us-skills.html#.UgpmPpKThAo

And yes, humans are animals. I think most people accept that now, but still seem to have this weird idea that, while we ARE animals, we're somehow at the top of some evolutionary ladder. Which is not how it works. We're just as much animals as any other animal.