The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/03/09/chimp-stones.html

This particular chimp would collect rocks (as well as breaking throwable chunks off of large boulders) and storing them in piles.  He would then rapidly throw these piles of rocks at the human visitors.

The surprising thing about this is that he did this for 5 days before the zoo opened (during the zoo off-season).  This is being called the first clear sign of a (non-human) ape making plans for an event in the non-immediate future.  I think it's a pretty interesting insight into our "cousins".

My dog hides food so that he can eat it later.  I'm sure that proves evolution too.

No offense but we have chimps that can communicate to an extent through sign language.  Show me a walking talking chimp if you want to impress me. Where are the missing links to our cousins?  I just don't get it. 

My dog likes to eat dryer sheets. (I don't know why.) I keep finding him with the dryer sheets even though I stopped bringing them in the house from the laundry room. A couple of days ago I was cleaning some of the less cleaned areas of the house and found tons of "stashes" that he had. He's been hoarding the dryer sheets for ages and hiding them so I won't take them away from him.

There is a significant difference between the self preservation technique that is engrained in most living animals, as opposed to the ability to realize something is going to happen and to find and stockpile weapons that nature did not embue you with at birth.
Don't worry religion will not be falling anytime soon.

bsmooth is correct.  There are plenty of animals that store food for later; squirrels are famous for it.

This is one of the first known instances of an animal independently planning for a future mental state (in this case, anger) before it happens.

Every "missing link" that is found just creates two more.  Finding the "missing link" is a perpetually moving goalpost.   For example:


Animal A ------  Animal B ------ Animal C

"We found the missing link between A and B!"

Animal A --- Animal AA ---  Animal B ------ Animal C

So where are the missing links between A and AA, and between AA and B?  It's a hopeless pursuit.

"missing link" is self explanatory .. if they weren't missing they would just be "link"

I'm certainly not worried about God.  In fact, if He can be proven fake then I get more free time.

On a serious note ... I get the whole missing link thing but if we came from monkeys then the last remnants of a speaking monkey wouldn't be too hard to find. In fact seeing as how everything doesn't evolve at the same rate it would stand to reason there should have been some around during recorded or spoken history. They should be much easier to find than dinosaours that existed prior to man.

Do we really have a good enough model of chimp consciousness to say that  this is definitive evidence of planning for a future mental state or non-immediate event?

I don't really know whether there's evidence to say that chimps have the same (quality or quantity of) self-awareness as people, such that the observable data leads solely and definitely to the conclusion that the chimp "planned" his rock-throwing. Think of it like this:

We have 2 bits of observable data:

1. rock piling
2. later use of rock piles
   a. for offensive or safety purposes

Couldn't this very well be a chimp randomly partaking in one activity (rock piling), then later abandoning said activity (perhaps for another activity, like eating), then even later using the products of the earlier activity (the piles of rocks) for then-current purposes (attacking visitors)? That would not imply planning or consideration of future mental states or purposes, but rather would imply blind luck and chance.

I bring this up because it reminds me so much of a dilemma that, I'm told, arhcaeologists and those who study the pre-historic past face. When an archaeologist finds a rock that has been filed down to a point for use as an arrowhead, and they attempt to date it, is there any way to tell whether the arrowhead was made from unimproved material or was a repair (a re-filing, in this case) of previously manufacturered material? Unless the object is one which is known to be in one time period definitively, and not in another, there is no way to tell. The arrowhead that the archaeologist now holds could be the refinement of three larger and duller arrowheads which came before it, and any statement about the date of first manufacture would be difficult to ascertain and the prpduct of pure guesswork. I think the same logic can be applied to this situation as well.

I would rather have a rock thrown at me than poop anyday.

You mean other than australopithecus, homo habilis, homo erectus, neanderthals?

Unlikely, since history indicates that homo sapiens eliminated all of our closest relatives (i.e. the competition) well before recorded history.

The youngest neanderthal fossil we've found is approximately 30,000 years old.  Written language is about 6000 years old.

i thought i read something where neanderthal wasn't in the line of homo erectus to homo sapiens .. that it was a divergent branch from homo erectus and that homo sapiens wiped them out..

That's my understanding as well.

Hunted/fought them into extinction is one theory.  Another is that "we" out-competed with them for food and resources, etc.

We did not come from monkeys.

It is not the theory, nor has it ever been the theory.  I've said that MANY, MANY times on this board.  Why do people keep ignoring this?

There was some confusion about where different forms of prehistoric man fit in in the 70s and early 80s.  The most recognized theory now, because of new fossil findings is that neandertal and erectus weren't in the same branch, but were divergent branches, as Fau and Run said.

This "if we came from monkeys" crap is so irritating.

You're right, Dave.  I know that humans and monkeys are two separate branches from the same original trunk, but I'm too lazy to point that out every time.

Its a a figure of speech and really doesn't mean anything. Geez.

Because Dave Gray has yet to be recognized as the world's authority on anthropology...?  ;) :D

In a shocking follow up to this news story, the chimpanzee Santino today took a handgun from a zoo security guard and fired 5 shots into the crowd of zoo visitors, killing 3 people and severely wounding a fourth, before turning the gun on himself and ending his own life. Police investigators found a roughly scratched note on a piece of cloth in Santino's sleeping area that read "Fuck you...I hate bananas."

LMFAO!!!!!  I just spit Aquafina all over my monitor!!!!!!

the same reason religious people keep ignoring the hard science that says there is no god/supernatural occurrences....

when creationists point to the gaps in the fossil records, they're conveniently forgetting that mass extinctions have occurred in the past, and it has taken life countless millennia to rebound each time.

Hard science?  Are you for real or just trying to stir things up?  I have to go with the second because I really give you more credit than that. 

Would love to see some of this "hard science." I'm sure John Polkinghorne, Alister McGrath, Francis Collins, William Lane Craig, and Kenneth Miller would too...

Wonderful...a perfectly good thread reduced to another going-nowhere religious debate. I wish you were all standing in front of Santino's enclosure, so he could chuck rocks at all of you.

I thought Santino was dead.  Didn't the Barzini Family get him on the Jones Beach toll road?  Yeah, that's right, and Michael Corleone took them out, along with Carlo Rizzi.


Now this thread is really going nowhere

Would love to see the "hard science" that there is a god? See it goes both ways. Now can we get back on subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SH8w-ZD_t0

If there was a God, he'd make you stop your evil derailing of this thread...

I didn't start it.

There is no scientific proof that there is no God.  Such proof cannot exist.  You can't prove a negative.

There is, however, Scientific proof (as much as you can prove something) that does go against some of the more popular beliefs held by major religions (like the age of the Earth and stuff.)

That doesn't really have much to do with chimps stockpiling rocks, though.  ...and even if it did, while I'm a huge supporter of evolution and I think that this chimp story is really interesting, it's not proof (or even suggestive of) evolution.

There are other, better cases of observable evolution in our lifetimes, not just fossils and studying the long past.

Not to further derail, but -

You certainly CAN prove a negative.  Its widely accepted scientific methodology, but must be carefully applied.

If I can't prove that the sky is blue, I can try to prove that the sky isn't yellow.  If I am successful, then the possibility exists that the sky is blue.  But, the sky not being yellow isn't proof that the sky is blue.

It's time to start bringing in imaginary numbers (i), setting derivitives and running some functions.  ;D

One more religious post in this thread and I swear that, for the rest of my days on this board, any time God is mentioned, I will refer to him as "The Monkey God."

Don't say I didn't warn ya...

God

I suppose so, but then you have the question of whether you can really prove anything, ever?