Political Crossfire Forums

[connermt]

Interesting stuff!! -> "WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Bottlenose dolphins can call each other by name when they whistle, making them the only animals besides humans known to recognize such identity information, scientists reported on Monday.
Scientists have long known that dolphins' whistling calls include repeated information thought to be their names, but a new study indicates dolphins recognize these names even when voice cues are removed from the sound.
For example, a dolphin might be expected to recognize its name if called by its mother, but the new study found most dolphins recognized names -- their signature whistles -- even when emitted without inflection or other vocal cues.
More than that, two dolphins may refer to a third by the third animal's name, said Laela Sayigh, one of three authors of a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"They are known to produce these individually distinctive signature whistles, like names," Sayigh said in a telephone interview. She said the researchers wanted to know what information in the whistles helped dolphins identify each other's names.
The scientists already knew that dolphins responded to whistles, but wondered if something in the actual voice of the whistling dolphin was making the identity clear, or if the name itself was enough for recognition.
To find out, they studied bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota Bay, Florida. Instead of playing recordings of actual dolphins making signature whistles, the researchers synthesized signature whistles with the caller's voice features removed and played them to dolphins through an underwater speaker.
In nine out of 14 cases, the dolphin would turn more often toward the speaker if it heard a whistle that sounded like a close relative's.
"It's a very interesting finding that encourages further research, because they are using whistles as referential signals -- that's what words are," said Sayigh, of the University of North Carolina Wilmington. "Dolphins appear to be using these arbitrary signals to identify another dolphin."
She stopped short of saying dolphins might have a human-like language.
"I tend to shy away from using the word 'language' myself, because it's such a loaded term," Sayigh said. "I still really feel strongly that there is no evidence for something like our language. (Dolphins) have got the cognitive skills at least to have referential signals." "

[micfranklin]

I read about that somewhere. So this right here proves that dolphins are smarter than people would like to admit.

[perdidochas]

micfranklin wrote: I read about that somewhere. So this right here proves that dolphins are smarter than people would like to admit.

Huh? Most people recognize that dolphins are probably the smartest non-primates.

[bob.appleyard]

perdidochas wrote: micfranklin wrote: I read about that somewhere. So this right here proves that dolphins are smarter than people would like to admit.

Huh? Most people recognize that dolphins are probably the smartest non-primates.

Obviously that isn't smart enough!

[Infinite911911]

Is this not reason?

(waiting for another John Galt rant on how all animals are stupid and deserve to die)

[connermt]

Infinite911911 wrote: Is this not reason?

(waiting for another John Galt rant on how all animals are stupid and deserve to die)

John Galt = :roll:

[John Galt]

Mentioning me, or any member, by name in which you know they would not approve of in a thread said person has not commentated on is trolling.

[connermt]

John Galt wrote: Mentioning me, or any member, by name in which you know they would not approve of in a thread said person has not commentated on is trolling.

Wow, glad I didn't say what I really want to say....



John Galt, may be a great guy, but his opinions on some things = :roll:

[Infinite911911]

John Galt wrote: Mentioning me, or any member, by name in which you know they would not approve of in a thread said person has not commentated on is trolling.

Sorry John :) But let's hear your opinion on this. Is this not reason?

[John Galt]

Infinite911911 wrote: John Galt wrote: Mentioning me, or any member, by name in which you know they would not approve of in a thread said person has not commentated on is trolling.

Sorry John :) But let's hear your opinion on this. Is this not reason?

I require reason to know your handle is Infinate911911? It pains me that you think that reason is something it is not and that you think so lowly of it. Perhaps your low expectations is why you think animals can reason.

[Æ]

It doesn't matter whether animals can reason or not; anything with free will has rights. Of course, mankind will never respect any rights other than their own; that's a given.

[Infinite911911]

John Galt wrote: Infinite911911 wrote: John Galt wrote: Mentioning me, or any member, by name in which you know they would not approve of in a thread said person has not commentated on is trolling.

Sorry John :) But let's hear your opinion on this. Is this not reason?

I require reason to know your handle is Infinate911911? It pains me that you think that reason is something it is not and that you think so lowly of it. Perhaps your low expectations is why you think animals can reason.

John, representationalizm requires reasoning. It requires the ability to understand abstract ideas and forms.

[John Galt]

Infinite911911 wrote: John Galt wrote: Infinite911911 wrote: John Galt wrote: Mentioning me, or any member, by name in which you know they would not approve of in a thread said person has not commentated on is trolling.

Sorry John :) But let's hear your opinion on this. Is this not reason?

I require reason to know your handle is Infinate911911? It pains me that you think that reason is something it is not and that you think so lowly of it. Perhaps your low expectations is why you think animals can reason.

John, representationalizm requires reasoning. It requires the ability to understand abstract ideas and forms.

No. My dog recognizes me. The deer flee from me. This is not reasoning. Merely being able to point things out an call it something has nothing to do with reasoning. Adam, in the garden, named all the animals and creatures. He was unreasoning at that point as well.

[Æ]

John Galt wrote: Infinite911911 wrote: John Galt wrote: Infinite911911 wrote: John Galt wrote: Mentioning me, or any member, by name in which you know they would not approve of in a thread said person has not commentated on is trolling.

Sorry John :) But let's hear your opinion on this. Is this not reason?

I require reason to know your handle is Infinate911911? It pains me that you think that reason is something it is not and that you think so lowly of it. Perhaps your low expectations is why you think animals can reason.

John, representationalizm requires reasoning. It requires the ability to understand abstract ideas and forms.

No. My dog recognizes me. The deer flee from me. This is not reasoning. Merely being able to point things out an call it something has nothing to do with reasoning. Adam, in the garden, named all the animals and creatures. He was unreasoning at that point as well.
Rights come from free will as evidenced by: 1.) an innate ability to (attempt to) resist force and 2.) an ability to exercise (some type of) control over the thing with free will's self (these two things taken together demonstrate the thing with free will's ownership of self and an innate ability to defend that property). The ability to reason finds itself somewhere between that of the highest order and that of the lowest order. As an example, we will have to skip the being of highest order since you don't believe in it and focus on something more tangible; this time something of the lowest order: a boulder falling down a cliff. Obviously, the boulder has no ability to control its descent or to exert any kind of control over itself. Therefore, it has no free will and consequently it has no rights. Now, let's take something in between the lowest order and the highest order: A horse. Does a horse have rights? Does the horse have free will as evidenced by: 1.) an innate ability to (attempt to) resist force and 2.) an ability to exercise (some type of) control over its action(s). In general, the answer to 1.) is the same as the answer to 2.), and that is the case with horses as well. Horses obviously have an innate ability to resist force. Horses also have an ability to exercise some type of control over their actions. In the process of breaking a horse, the horse has clearly disagreed to become a slave. Therefore, this action is harmful and a violation of the horse's right not to be harmed.

Taking objectivism's argument of reasoning, it becomes clear that if it is claimed that an inability of beings of a lower order to understand things a being of a higher order understands nullifies the rights of the being of the lower order, it must also be the case that the same argument applies equally to both humans and animals since there is a higher order that humans do not understand.

[John Galt]

Fight or flight is not free will.

More to follow, I am off.

[Sid]

That's pretty cool, I wonder if would be possible for some linguist/phonologist to derive some pattern, and if people could eventually converse with dolphins.

[connermt]

Sid wrote: That's pretty cool, I wonder if would be possible for some linguist/phonologist to derive some pattern, and if people could eventually converse with dolphins.

From what I have seen thus far about the subject, the scientist don't think it is language like ours, but it is a form of language. They have been able to see some pattern, which is in part what led to the discovery. But it took scientist a few years to come to this conclusion, so maybe there is more to it that we don't yet know (which is probable).
But yeah, it's pretty cool!

[Æ]

John Galt on 11 May 2006 wrote: Fight or flight is not free will.

More to follow, I am off.
I'm waiting...

[connermt]

John Galt wrote: Fight or flight is not free will.

More to follow, I am off.

Fight or flight is instinct.
The free will is rather the animal runs (flight) or turns to fight (fight).
The animal has the choice to act on 2 instinctive possibilities. That is not a form of free will? I mean, if you were attacked by someone, don't you have the same two immediate options (run away or fight it off)?

[bob.appleyard]

Anyone heard about the putty nosed monkeys?

Quote: Groups consisting of a single male accompanying 12 to 30 females and their offspring defend territories within this range.

Like other guenons, putty-nosed monkeys use two loud calls, usually referred to as "pyows" and "hacks." They use a series of pyows to warn of a leopard threatening the group and a string of hacks to indicate the presence of crowned eagles.

Zuberbühler and Arnold found that male monkeys often combine the two calls into a kind of simple sentence that they call a "pyow-hack."

To find out what the pyow-hack might mean, the researchers played recorded leopard growls to 17 different putty-nosed monkey groups in Nigeria's Gashaka Gumti National Park.

In nine of the groups, the males produced at least one pyow-hack sequence. In the eight others, the males made single-call series only. In response, some of the groups moved to evade the supposed predator.

After waiting 20 minutes, the scientists played a recorded series of monkey calls indicating the presence of crowned eagles. This elicited the hack call from all 17 males.

Putty-nosed monkeys avoid moving when threatened by an eagle—movement through the canopy would cause them to be more obvious to the winged predator.

With the monkeys no longer on the move, the scientists were able to re-locate the groups using global positioning equipment.

They found that the nine groups that produced the pyow-hack sequence had moved significantly farther than those that produced other call series.

The pyow-hack series, the researchers conclude, has a different meaning from the other calls, and "move farther and faster" might be a possible translation.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/monkey-sentence_2.html

Very primitive syntax.