What Makes Humans Human?

The flies showed a primitive emotion-like behavior. Prompted by a series of brisk air puffs delivered in rapid succession, the flies ran around their test chambers in a frantic manner, and kept it up for several minutes. Even after the flies had calmed down, they remained hypersensitive to a single air puff.

The research showed that Drosophila produces a pheromone — a chemical messenger — that promotes aggression, and directly linked it to specific neurons in the fly's antenna.

An animal living in a world where it is regularly threatened by predators will develop a negative emotion or 'mood', such as anxiety, whereas one in an environment with plenty of opportunities to acquire resources for survival will be in a more positive mood state.

The researchers argue that these emotional states not only reflect the animal's experiences, they also help it decide how to make choices, especially in ambiguous situations, which could have good or bad outcomes.....

I'm interested in Thomas idea of brain scans. People here are bestowing upon other animals a lot of traits (or lack there of) that are hard to prove given that the later don't communicate well with us.

Hi Fido!

I agree with almost everything you have written here, with one exception. I do believe that animals have a sense of past and future.

Why does a bird fly south? Why does a bear hibernate? Why do animals give birth in early spring? Why does a predator wait at an ambush site? Why does a bird build a nest? Why do creatures migrate?
Why do animals run from fire? Why do my dogs remember their old haunts? Why does an animal avoid certain places?

I won't go on, but I see this issue in a different way.

Kind regards!
Mark...

Hi!

As for the dog eating its own excrement. This is not unnatural. Some faeces has further nutrition to offer. Some animals do it to remove their scent from an area. Some to clean up a living area.
My youngest dog did it for a while, when young, because he was the litter runt, and his brothers always beat him to the food. The people we adopted him from told us that his mother did it to.

The dog's in question in these previous posts are not showing guilt, they are anxious as to how their owner will react. Whether you beat them is irrelevant - You always reacted negatively and this is what they are responding to. had you praised and patted them at these moments, they would do it more often with wagging tails.

I stopped mine from doing it by not reacting at all. I sprinkled a few drops of hot chilli sauce on it, whenever he went. It stopped shortly afterwards.

Kind regards!
mark...

Fido wrote:

Thomas wrote:

Have you ever had a dog? Have you ever caught it eating poop? I have, and the expression of guilt in their faces is so obvious and intense that seeing it makes me feel sad for them every time. [...]

You are clearly projecting... Maybe you have tried the crap sampler plater at Chez Butthole???

I will grant you that what I say about dog behavior involves interpretation. Then again, so do the things you say about my behavior, i.e., my post. I don't think there's any more projection on my part when I talk about dogs than there is on your part when you talk about me.

But never mind what I think. We are talking about natural phenomena here, so let's talk about testable, scientific predictions. Sometime not too far in the future, we will be able to run brain scans on dogs who had just done something they shouldn't have, and who are making the "guilty face". (Every dog owner knows just what face I mean.) I predict that the scans will show activity in the same areas of dog brains as the areas active in human brains whose owners feel guilt. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this type of experiment had already been run---in which case I would be grateful for links to its result.

Quote:

We have the teeth and the eyes of a preditor,

When australopithecenes broke from the older pongid lines, the family was certainly omnivorous, with carnivorous preferences, hence the teeth and binocular vision ("eyes in front, born to hunt, eyes on the side, runs and hide")

However, Australopithecenes and the earlier "Post common ancestors" were vegetarians (Like gorillas or the great apes who also have carnivore dentition but are "learned vegetarians").

You cannot make "Rules" based upon dentition since evolution deems that we are ALL intermediate species of something. There is no "plateau " of evolution, everything is "becoming something else"

this is easy. we love. show feelings and affection. what else really does, and if you say an animal, how do you really know. you can't talk to them.

Quote:

this is easy. we love. show feelings and affection. what else really does, and if you say an animal, how do you really know. you can't talk to them.

Other animals can't speak, but that is no proof of either side of an argument. They can neither tell you that they do love nor can they tell you that they don't love.

I'm interested in Thomas idea of brain scans. People here are bestowing upon other animals a lot of traits (or lack there of) that are hard to prove given that the later don't communicate well with us.

My son has a pair of eight or nine year old cats, brother and sister from the same litter. He moved four times after acquiring them and has noticed that they adapt different "vocalizations" with each move. His male cat has a particular cry he makes when he wants the litter changed and another when he is hungry. His sister has a cry she makes when she can't find him.

The oldest of our cats comes to fetch us when she wants something, patiently stopping and waiting if we don't catch her meaning.

plainoldme wrote:

My son has a pair of eight or nine year old cats, brother and sister from the same litter. He moved four times after acquiring them and has noticed that they adapt different "vocalizations" with each move. His male cat has a particular cry he makes when he wants the litter changed and another when he is hungry. His sister has a cry she makes when she can't find him.

The oldest of our cats comes to fetch us when she wants something, patiently stopping and waiting if we don't catch her meaning.

I have a 22 year old cat that does the same. I know from her sounds and gestures exactly what she is trying to convey to me. One example is when she wants water (she likes cold water rather than tepid which it becomes in the dish), she makes a sound that actually sounds like waaaaatr and she prances over to the sink and looks up. That is the only time she makes that particular sound.

Our dog, Kelsey, had the same expressions that Thomas speaks of. She had that guilty look and would look away and hang her head. She knew right and wrong, in certain circumstances. She conveyed love with her eyes and her 'hugs'. The cat even seemed to show emotion when Kelsey passed away.