Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

> As a young scientific researcher, Siegel had been confidently toldby his supervisor that humans were the only species that seek out drugs to use for their own pleasure

This upsets me to no end. How do they know? People constantly proclaim that "only humans do this or that" which means "animals don't do that", which means... well, nothing, since "animals" is not really a relevant category. Animals is short for "living things that are not modern humans", and in order for any phrase starting with "animals" to be true you need to examine ALL ANIMALS.

A very popular French author from the 16th century (Rabelais) once said "rire est le propre de l'homme" (only humans laugh); this sentence is taught in school here in France and repeted constantly; it's considered both insightful and obvious (which is a contradiction in itself; what's obvious and undisputable shouldn't be very interesting).

I was told this as a teenager and always considered it a gratuituous affirmation with nothing to back it up.

Why wouldn't some animals like to get high?

I'm reminded of an incident when I was a kid, when a freeway in Sweden was closed because of falling geese.

They'd gotten drunk by eating fermented berries, so much so that apparently quite a number were unable to continue flying, or make a safe landing. Some cars were hit before the local freeway was closed (I don't think there were any human casualties; not so sure about the geese).

Of course that could have been an aberration, but as it turns out, in places where fermented berries or fruit is regularly available, animals do often explicitly seek it out.

This is also the delineator between humans and animals presented in Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land", and I had a knee-jerk reaction against it. It is NOT obvious to me at all.

I've seen my cats play 'jokes' on my dog. I've seen the squirrels tease her too by jumping down in the yard, then laugh-bark for minutes, taunting her from the the trees. Don't even get me started on blue jays.

I've repeatedly seen animals engage in behavior similar enough to laughter to make me doubt this claim or those making it.

That echoes statements that seek to prove homosexuality is unnatural since only humans do it—which is demonstrably false.

How often would gratuitous affirmations like that arrive in your schooling? Did they ever stop?

In my experience the French educational system is very formal and structured; also strongly focused on the chronology of the ideas it teaches.

I feel it pushes many inaccurate ideas to later (while staying on topic) challenge them formally. Would you agree with this?

i think youre right

theres one type of monkey that commonly scavanges for rotted fruit for its alcohol

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