I know we are always talking and debating about intelligent life on other planets, but what if some animals on earth evolved to be as smart as humans are? Say dolphins intelligance leveled off with humans, how would we react to this? Would we accept them as equals or what? Of course this would take a thousands of years so we would have plenty of time to get use to it. If it happened once it could happen again...

I've seen some really smart animals, and some not so smart people. And what's odd is that I have seen a lot of pretty smart people who can't seem to handle other smart people, or even some good new ideas.

I think some people are having a difficult getting used to it now, with each other. I don't think they will react too well if animals started showing them up. Hmmm, now I'm beginning to ramble...

Bossman! I think this is going to be a highly debated topic, interesting!

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To be accepted as equals, they would have to demonstrate some considerable capability. Not just being able to poke the right button to get a treat, but actual communication on a higher language level would be necessary. It would also help if their demonstrated skills were useful to us. If that dolphin can program a wireless network driver, then there would be no problem accepting it as an equal - people would want to hire them.

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The chief problem will be defining "equal" or "equivalence". In a broad general sense I think we would accept them. Scorekeeping at the level of smallest details in search of equality would no doubt occur and be very difficult to solve or resolve.

The near term source of this problem will be the genetically engineered hybrids that nature unaided by its human component would not have generated whether they be marine mammals designed to aid us in deep sea exploration or critters fitted with balloon like appendages capable of hovering high in the atmosphere of any planet with one--especially the gas giants and venus.

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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
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I think we may be able to determine the combination of genetic characteristics that could allow some, or many of the higher mammals to develop language abilities comparable to our own.


This is the sort of possibility described here;
http://www.orionsarm.com/clades/Sapientchimps.html
http://www.orionsarm.com/clades/Enhanced_Dolphins.html

In fact once these animals have access to language, I suspect they will be more readily perceived as intelligent in themselves, even without genetic enhancement of their learning and cognitive abilities.

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the main reason I asked this question is because humans cant get along with themselves, so how will we get along with another species? They will want all the same rights we have, but will we give it to them?

If a species of animal were to display even 75% of the intelligence of our stupidest specimen, then I imagine that they would feel pretty agrieved at being left off the 'opposable thumb' shortlist. We as humans, have the physical abilities to make ANYTHING that we need. It's just that we fail to always make just things.

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If you pick up Marc Hauser's book "Wild Minds" you can get a sense to the limits and extents of animal intelligence...He made an exhaustive study and did some
very thorough experiements concerning how humans and animals think and perceive..

One of the interesting areas of study concerns counting..From experiments and the
interpretation of their results, it appears that all species can count and must do so to survive..Humans learn to count after just 4 days of life by recognizing a violation
of quantitative expectencies..Lions roar out of sequence to disguise their numbers
to distant prides..

Ants can be fooled with flashlights, mistaking them for the Sun and sending them on discourse as their shadows no longer move with the rythmn that daytime hours
provide.

Birds tap into the Earth's magnetic field and can read positions of the Sun and the stars to navigate. Surround them in a room with a magnetic field and a few lights
to pose as different Suns and they will become disorientated..

Humans can tap into the magnetic field as well. While blindfolded and taken on
journeys we can find our way back. But blindfolded and strapped with a magnetic fields around our heads brings a disorientation.

There is a trade off between what we know and what they do. Therefore, we are on an
equal basis with them..They have no need for money and government. We do.

blueshift

Interesting ideas blueshift.
Makes me think about what is intelligence.
Find it hard to believe "Humans learn to count after just 4 days of life by recognizing a violation of quantitative expectencies.."
or is it I don't understand what you mean?
Having had a 4 day old in my family, she definitely didn't show any signs of the potential she grew in to at 4 days.

I'm really quite eager to get into this topic, but for now I'll just let all the aussies know that on channel 7 tonight @ 6:30 is The World Around Us and it's specifically looking at animal intelligence. After that I hope to post something more.

For now I'll say that i think there are other extremely intelligent animals out there - like dolphins - and I see no reason why intelligence should be the benchmark for treating other species equally.

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Cambo,

When I first read it the first time myself I made an inner sarcastic reply,
"Gee, I know some people I work with in their 50s and they still can't count!"

The experiment goes like this:

" An experimenter shows an infant either one, two, or three Mickey Mouse
dolls on a stage, as well as a screen moving up and down. Test trials start once the
infant is bored, looking away from the stage. In the 'expected' test ( 1+1=2), an infant watches as an experimenter lowers one Mickey Mouse doll onto an empty
stage. A screen is then placed in front of Mickey. The experimenter then shows another Mickey and places it behind the screen. With the screen removed, the infant sees 2 Mickeys on stage as expected. No magic. In the 'unexpected' test the infant sees the same sequence of actions with one exception-a bit of backstage
magic. When the experimenter removes the screen, the infant sees either one
( i.e. 1+1=1) or three ( i.e. 1+1=3 ). Although their jaws don't drop, 5 month olds consistently look longer when the outcome is one or three Mickeys instead of two.
And precisely the same kind of result emerges from an experiment involving subtraction instead of addition."

That's a direct quote from Marc Hauser's "Wild Minds", page 52. Karen Wynn performed the experiments in 1992..Actual counting with numbers as symbols for quantities does not start until the second year of life. They start stabbing at answers and recounting when you ask them "how many cookies?" Three- and- a half to four year olds answer without recounting and only give the final count term,
giving us the signal they understand "cardinality"-the idea that the last term signifies the total number counted..

Now this lets you know how badly the memory banks of a 55 year old needs oiling.
I do know that ONE of the species counts after 4 days. I just forgot which one...
Maybe ants. I'll find it later.

blueshift

Well, then there is the matter of the usefullness of intelligence. After all, if a frog can do the counting trick faster, it certainly cannot build shelters or factories. So far as I know, we are the only ones to build computers or aircraft. Even supposing a dolphin species or something actually is capable of processsing or learning faster or at a younger age, you don't see them pointing periscopes out of the water.

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ASEI, re-True ASEI, but I worry about our perception of usefullness. We are the only species that can build thermonuclear weapons, and enough of them, to erase our existence. Although, I wonder about the goats and sheep too. They will eat the plants down to the roots to the point where things won't grow back, so no more food supply for them. :P

__________________
Pre-Quote: 'To survive one has to experiment. When the environment changes, the traditional way of doing things doesn't work.'

Quote:
"It's the outriders, the organisms that seem to be maladjusted before the change, which are the only ones that survive these changes...in that way a species continues."

Carl Sagan

As we grow more aware of and more accurately assess the properties of the universe including emphasis on our locality and its dangers and opportunities, we will possess a longer range view over ever larger sets of parameters and influences as well as how they are coupled. This will ensure that we live long and prosper by having learned to maintain the balance between resources and population densities of ourselves and the sheep and goats. We must not leave it to the sheep and goats and those of kindred mind sets.

__________________
For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?

Don't you think though, Gourdhead, that a lot of human activity is in the goat/sheep mindset? Look at the amount of habitat destruction and rate of extinction of other animals caused by us.

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Thanks for the heads up Josh. I caught the end of it. I think the beavers stole the show.

I think when we find animals painting in caves, they'll be in trouble. It's ok for an elephant or gorilla to paint to save it's species, but us humans get pretty cruel when we feel threatened.

I remember in first year pyschology the lecturer used to rave on why animals were inferior to us, yet in the same sentence, would outline a conversation held over the internet with a gorilla.

The issue that always strikes me is the frog in the saucepan. Will global deforestation force some animals to evolve or is it the water boiling to slow for them to notice?

Humanity conquired the fears of the wild with concepts of god and new technologies born of science, to the point where we talk about artificial intelligence and virtual organisms, the "random data", in I Robot. We are surrounded
by humans, yet we crave attention from another species. Our inherent ability to annoy and deny each other the feelings we need.

This sort of disatisfaction with each other, I feel, drives us to build zoos, to try and teach gorillas and chimpanzees to talk to us in our own langauge and to search out intelligence life out there.

When it comes down to real concerns though, we are blind to the complexity of animal communication, which has evolved over the same if not longer period of time that humans have, and still maintains other speicies.

In killing our fear of nature, we may have left the canary behind as we continue to destroy the habitat of all the life in the Universe that we know of.

So in the intelligence stakes, every other kingdom on the tree of life seems to be winning hands down in the sustainability stakes, but this is not the intelligence we seek. What then is this higher intelligence?

The intelligence to stop us? The intelligence to save us? Or perhaps the intelligence to say "wow, we really like what you've done with the place, so why are you mob so lonely here?"

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The intellegence to be useful to us in any way would be a start. Come on, you know what we mean when we speak of intellegence. There is a VAST difference in capability between humans and animals. The Saturn V rocket proves as much. It may be only due to some very slight differences in our brain metabolism or something, but you have to admit, we have the best abstract reasoning, the best toolmaking capabilities, the best social cohesivenes, philosophy, communication, ect of any other species that we know of by an enourmous margin. If we could artificially get them to match that, then it would be earth shattering. But I don't expect to find it occuring naturally, because so far the dolphins haven't been invading our beaches with hovercraft, and there are no notable gorilla physics professors.

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<Standard drone stuff, anthropocentrism>

Yeah, just like those Albatross, and their drift nets killing hundreds of people.

Or the Whales, eating whole fish stocks depleting earth’s resources faster than they can replenish

ASEI, when was the last time you saw a Saturn V ?

Sorry man, I don't beleive Hype. Yes, some of humanity is pretty impressive, but ASEI, you sound dangerously uncritical.

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Hi All,
This is a subject near and dear to my heart, so I just gotta add my $.02 worth here...

Now first I have to agree with those who have already said, why do they have to be considered by us as intelligent to be considered equals. Humankind has adopted this attitude over the span of our time that if we're superiour to something, we have the right to control and manipulate it for our own benifit. How much damage have we as human's caused to other species, as well as our enviroment and our planet with this attitude? Why does "our" evaluation of a species intellect have to determine our amount of love and respect for that species?

Ansi said, "The intellegence to be useful to us in any way would be a start" and " It would also help if their demonstrated skills were useful to us"...why??? Why does something have to useful to -us- to be of value? Isn't it enough that something simply exists to have it's own purpose? Yes, humankind has achieved some impressive achievments due to our techinical skills, but does this make us "superiour" to other forms a life, let alone give us the right to impose our own values on them? More over, what have we done -for- them for us to be worthy in their eyes? Humankind has indeed achieved many great things, but we've also achieved great atrocities as well...no whale, dolphine, wolf, deer or other mammel of this planet has ever come close to destroying the planet (along with every other species on it) as we have with our great engineering skills.

Now back to the idea of animal intelligence...all and all I have to question "scientific" proof here again (sorry...it's my nature). Let's take my dogs for example (my wife and I have 3). Now each of them knows between 15 to 30 of my commands..."sit", "stay", "come here", "outside", "next commercial" (err...don't ask), etc., etc.. Comparativly, I only know maybe 8 to 10 at most of their "commands"..."I'm hungry", "I want outside", "I want attention", "I want to play", etc....makes me wonder who's actually smarter! The fact that they know more of my commands then I do of theirs suggests at the very least their better and faster at learning that I am! LOL! Now in fairness to myself and my dogs, I do usually have a good idea of whats on their mind. I've grown up with dogs and have always considered them to be smart and have a "soul" if you will...I've never looked down on dogs (or most other species) because I thought I was superiour. As a results, I have a pretty good understanding of how they do in fact communicate...you not only have to listen, but you have to watch and pay attention as well. I know when my dogs are happy, when their sad, when their concerned about me, etc., simply by the way the present themselves. From the tone of their barks, I can tell when their playing, when their frustrated or when someone is messing around outside the house. In addition, as an observer, I've seen my dogs do things that I find as really amazing...sometimes even simple things. When ever my 3 year old Chow/Elkhound mix hears the National Geographic theme for instance, she runs in front of the TV and sits there and literally watches the show with us! Our Golden Retriever mix who passed away last year once pulled a corn cob out of the trash and was laying on it with her tail wagging when I got home like nothing was wrong...she had done something she wasn't supposed to and was literally -lieing- to me about it! There are so many situations such as these that I've encountered over the years, I could probably fill a book! And these were just dogs I grew up and lived with! Lets look at other species...dolphins and certainly whales have much larger brains then we do as humans (and we don't even use most of our brains according to medical research!). Could this not indicate that there is at least a potential for superiour intellect even if they don't show it by our standards? We tend to evaluate our intellect as a species by our achievments, but is this really indicative of how smart we are? Lets take dolphins for example...they swim, they play, the mate, they eat, they raise their young and generally speaking, their at peace...they don't have wars, they don't have to worry about paying this months bills, they don't have to worry about being to work on time, they don't get frustrated if the cable goes out.....I dunno about most people, but that doesn't sound like such a bad life to me! Maybe it takes a superiour intelligence to know how to simply enjoy life. How do we know that we're smarter then they are anyways simply because they don't relate to us on -our- level? I would also like very much to add that dolphins don't have hands! No their not going to be able to "build things" the way they do, but with that in mind, why would they need to? A dolphin or a whale doesn't really -need- skyscrapers or nuclear power plants in order to be happy so even if they had the techincal abilities and physical prowess of say a "aposable thumb", would this mean they need to start building things to be happy? We as humans build things we need because we are able to, but we also build -a lot- of things we -don't- need....my house is filled with things that I don't really need. Many of the things are "modern convieniences" and many of them simply make me happy, but I don't "need" them in order to be happy let alone survive. We build things because we can, but does this mean we are any happier let alone smarter? Does this mean that dolphins are less intelligent then we are because their smart enough -not- to build things to excess and use up the planets resources? Maybe the fact that dolphins have learned to be happy and survive without the use of cell phones means their perhaps a little smarter then we are! LOL! Also in regards to the dolphin pushing the correct button with his nose....hey...at least he/she gets a fish out of it! What do we get besides a good giggle and some scientific data? Now granted, I'm not all that fond of fish, but if say, someone were to offer me a Hostess Ho-Ho or a Klondike bar, you betcha I'd puch that button a few times with my nose! LOL!!! What would -you- do for a Klondike bar? Hehehehe....


On the issue of communication...
Now lets be honest here...with all of our wonderous achievments, we humans often have trouble communicating with each other even when we speak the same language! I challenge anyone on this board to tell me that they've -never- met a person who has misunderstood something they have said. Now if you take a person who speaks nothing but English and put them in a room with a person who speaks nothing but Chinese without an interpretter, in the course of time (years) yes they will find common references and learn to communicate with each other, but it's not going to be easy to say the least! Now this is two members of the same species who simply speak different languages...of course it's going to be more difficult to communicate with a different species...especially if we try to make them communicate with us. I've had a long time interest in "whale song" both as a person who apreciates whales and as a musician. I discovered many years ago that with an electric guitar and a few effects, I can mimic (pretty closely) the sound of humpback whales. I've often wondered if given time and the proper access to whales, if I could perhaps learn -their- language....it would be a facinating experiment to say the least. Language occurs on -many- levels...look at some of the problems that occur on the internet (such as those between Dave Mitsky and myself) when you remove everything but the words. Language is also conveyed in tone, body language (including facial expression), etc.. There are certainly things we take for granted, until you remove them and the result can be much less then effective (and again my apologies go out to Mr. Mitsky). In many animals even things such as smell may come into play...certainly something that we as humans arn't all that capable of. We as humans take communication for granted...it's easy to do. We're raised with communication from the moment we're born, we're submerged in it by the media, many of us are almost surgically attached to our cell phones, etc.. But how many of us really understand communication? It's a -very- complex issue even amoungst ourselves. Perhaps in order to communicate with other species, we should get past ideas such as "what do they have to offer to us" and work more on issues such as "Hi...how are you today?"

I recently read an article (sorry, I forget where) that in a nut shell said that if we're going to try and communicate with other species from other worlds, that perhaps a good place to start would be right here in our own back yard. Human's until recently have had this underlying thought that when we meet other intelligent species that they may look similar to us. This is very probab