Why MT doesn't believe in this.

[WD-40]

I would suspect that it's the actual 'development, makeup and design' of the brain, not the 'size' of the brain that makes a species smarter or dumber, or more advanced than others. Maybe look at 'that' angle and stop wasting time talking about head size.

[FaiL.?]

I would suspect that it's the actual 'development, makeup and design' of the brain, not the 'size' of the brain that makes a species smarter or dumber, or more advanced than others. Maybe look at 'that' angle and stop wasting time talking about head size.

[Jdg50]

Longest running topic here.

[THEWULFMAN]

Who is claiming to know what elephants think about?

I was reading through all the new posts in this topic, and I was thinking the same thing.

I love how things like "Elephants don't contemplate their existence" are being thrown about. I'd like to see the article where we learned how to read animal's minds. I'm not claiming Elephants think about anything, but I could say Elephants think about killing Rebecca Black, and have as much proof that they think that as any of you.

Bottom line, stop assuming you know what an animal is thinking, because you don't [m'kay]ing know.

[Col. Hstar]

Bottom line, stop assuming you know what an animal is thinking, because you don't [m'kay]ing know.

Really? This is what you want to hang your hat on? The discussion has not been as you put it about "what animals are thinking" the statement I made about how elephants don't contemplate their existence the way humans do was in response to an earlier comment that humans are only smarter then dogs because our brains are bigger. The statement was meant to show that an animal's brain while bigger in size does not match the capacity and capability that the human brain does. Really look at the conversation as a whole and keep things in context.

But since you also claim the we can't know what animals are thinking, I feel the need to point out some things. While no one can know what any one or thing is thinking at a given point in time, you can get an idea of what the limitations and capability is of that being, by looking at the actions and reactions from them.

Science uses the term hardwired when referring to the innate abilities, or predispositions of living beings. Elephants, like all animals are guided by a hardwired instinctive wisdom. In contrast humans are hardwired with the capacity to learn new things. All creatures have the ability to form concepts from what is seen, language out of what is heard, and thoughts out of experiences, but only a human mind can take that input and freely make decisions based on that knowledge.

i.e. The loud bang of a car backfiring will startle a person the first time, maybe a second time, but if it continues to happen the person becomes aware of the cause of the sound and no longer reacts to it. Take that same loud BANG and an animal will react scared every time to it.

i.e. A person looking in the mirror realizes that they are looking at themselves, a cat or dog looking in the mirror, sees another cat or dog

The point of all this is to show that the human brain is immensely superior to any other organism on the planet which was originally in response to this:

on the topic of why we do not act like animals, it's simply because our brains had more room to grow then a dog. We began to contemplate our existence. We grew into more then animals.

[THEWULFMAN]

I apologize for my rude response Hstar, there was no need for it. I've been through a lot of stress lately, and finding time to post in this thread properly had been a challenge while taking care of my mom at the hospital every waking hour. I didn't have the time to read all the posts, and I took it out of context.

I'd love to give a nice lengthy response to the real meat of your comment, but I'm afraid I do not have the time. I just wanted to apologize, since my rude comment was not justified toward a person of respectable intelligence such as yourself. Those kind of rude comments should only be directed towards unreasonable imbeciles.


Peace.

[11_Panama_]

I'm still waiting for my apology.

[Col. Hstar]

@wulfman

No Problem. I wasn't really offended. Sorry if I came off strong to you.

Let's just play BF2

[Yanoda]

It is time for me to be active on this topic again, good to be back. Enjoy the Wall of text!
Concerning the Homosexual discussion:
Research indicates that homosexuality is indeed mostly driven by genetics. There are other studies that delve deeper about this subject, here is an interesting article: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_an ... onism.html

Darth Crater and Wulf already explained the discussion on the relations of Evolution and mutation.

Concerning the color of plants and photosynthesis.
Sorry Duel, but you got the concept mixed up.
Chlorophyll does not absorb green light/wavelengths, it absorbs the red and blue wavelengths of the spectrum. The green color is what is reflected from the chlorophyll, which is not used.
Edit: Realized that Duel mixed up the concept, the site he posted indeed explains it well.

Concerning the intelligence of animals and humans.
We can be considered intelligent but at what scale? Here are some things animals show some level of intelligence:
Chimps use tools to get to food and/or use them to protect/fight. Experiments show that they're level intelligence are better than 3-4 year old children.
Several animals know the basic concept of math. http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/sci ... Math-.html and http://www.globalanimal.org/2011/12/25/ ... cal/61665/
Some animals even understand their reflections from mirrors. http://www.livescience.com/4272-elephan ... umans.html
There is even the claim that a dog knows the basic concept of calculus (though I'm not 100% convinced to be honest). http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story? ... zUxNrEge5I
Also, animals do get used to outside influences like loud noises. Otherwise we can't train horses or other animals to be in the city, they would constantly freak out then based on your claim Col.Hstar.

Concerning whether the Universe is finite or infinite.
We don't 100% know. What we do know is that based on observations and data, is that the universe that we 'see' is about 13 billion years old. http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_age.html
There are now hypotheses appearing that say our universe is situated in a multi-verse that could potentially exist/existed infinitely and creates/created universes similar to our own.

Cheers

Yanoda

[Col. Hstar]

Also, animals do get used to outside influences like loud noises. Otherwise we can't train horses or other animals to be in the city, they would constantly freak out then based on your claim Col.Hstar.

No they do not get accustomed to the noises, they are as you say trained. A trained horse can still get spooked. the fact that they are trained not to react to every noise does not show intelligence on the horse's part.

It does however show the intelligence of a human to be able to train them.

Chimps use tools to get to food and/or use them to protect/fight. Experiments show that they're level intelligence are better than 3-4 year old children.

Yes adult chimps can be trained to use use tools the way a 3-4 year old can. But that's where it stops. Those chimps don't continue to learn more. They don't progress far enough to know how to build houses. also they don't learn this on their own. Again the credit lies not with a chimp, but with the [i]human[i] trainer. You could train a chimp to type on a keyboard. (believe me I think we have seen some post on this forum ) but they wouldn't go beyond their training and type out their own thoughts.

Please remember. I am not at all saying that there is no intelligence to found in animals, my statement was about the ability to grow that intelligence beyond what is natural to is belongs to humans and humans alone. I actually feel there is a lot we learn from animals. many things humans use today follow concepts learned from animals. I actually liked the video and link about the elephants and mirrors, I thought it was cool, but I still don't think it puts them on the level of humans as far as intellectual capability. Yes animals know math but do they understand it. Showing intelligence in one aspect is not proof of ability to grow beyond their natural instinct.