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Comment by discardorama | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people refuse to believe that animals (or birds) can show any kind of advanced thinking. "Oh, the crow was probably carrying something in its beak; it saw the peanut, and dropped the thing in its beak" is their explanation. I'm sorry, but animals are far more perceptive than they're given credit for.

Also, how do you explain this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5NuBk5_Izc

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>He thought, he judged, as animals can be seen to do, if observed without prejudice. I must say here, since it has to be said somewhere about Hugo, that I think the series of comments automatically evoked by this kind of statement, the ticker-tape remarks to do with anthropomorphism’ are beside the point. Our emotional life is shared with the animals; we flatter ourselves that human emotions are so much more complicated than theirs. Perhaps the only emotion not known to a cat or a dog is -romantic love. And even then, we have to wonder. What is the emotional devotion of a dog for his master or mistress but something like that sort of love, all pining and yearning and ‘give me, give me’. What was Hugo’s love for Emily but that? As for our thoughts, our intellectual apparatus, our rationalisms and our logics and our deductions and so on, it can be said with absolute certainty that dogs and cats and monkeys cannot make a rocket to fly to the moon or weave artificial dress materials out of the by-products of petroleum, but as we sit in the ruins of this variety of intelligence, it is hard to give it much value: I suppose we are undervaluing it now as we over-valued it then. It will have to find its place: I believe a pretty low place, at that.

- Doris Lessing

I blame this on the "DreamWorks Effect", animators have done such a good job giving animals human traits and emotions that millinials+ really can't help but be animists.

Conversely, I think Christians (for one) do not like the idea of animals having "human traits", because it goes against their core mythology, which says that God created man in His image. If animals also started showing human traits, then Man isn't so special anymore, is he?

Edited: I'm being downvoted, but this was the exact reasoning given to me by a rather devout Christian; and it seemed to make sense. I'm agnostic, btw.

I don't support any downvotes of you, but there are many different types of Christians; this kind of thought is a bit foreign to me as an Orthodox Christian. Consider what St. Isaac of Syria says:

"The humble man approaches wild animals, and the moment they catch sight of him their ferocity is tamed. They come up and cling to him as their Master, wagging their tails and licking his hands and feet. They scent as coming from him the same fragrance that came from Adam before the transgression, the time when they were gathered together before him and he gave them names in Paradise. This scent was taken away from us, but Christ has renewed it and given it back to us at his coming. It is this which has sweetened the fragrance of humanity."

To an Orthodox Christian, restoring the relationship of humanity with animals, which includes that of their expressing intelligence, love, and other such "human-like" traits, is to work towards restoration of our pre-fallen state. The Image of God lies not just in these traits... without going into a deep discussion here, for Orthodox this Image can be seen in the Transfiguration of Christ: that of glorified, deified[1] humanity united with the energy[2] of God.

Some more information is available here: http://www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/articles/misc/flana...

[1] http://orthodoxwiki.org/Theosis [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essence%E2%80%93Energies_distin...

> Conversely, I think Christians (for one) do not like the idea of animals having "human traits", because it goes against their core mythology

Lots of Christians, including fairly devout ones, have no problems with recognizing human traits in animals; sometimes, this is in part because of a core theology that distinguishes between traits in the material universe and spiritual essences (cf., Catholic doctrines related to transubstantiation.)

> I'm being downvoted, but this was the exact reasoning given to me by a rather devout Christian

Christians are a rather diverse group, even when it comes to religious beliefs. The explanation given by a rather devout Christian on just about any issue is not particularly likely to be valid as a generalization of Christian belief.

Is this really a christian issue though ? I have friends who are hindu's, atheists, muslims, and buddhists, who intellectually seem okay with animals having human traits, but in the day to day pretty heavily deny animals having human traits ex. chickens. I guess it's cause people like to eat chickens, and don't want to feel bad ? I don't know

Counter-argument: The popularity of the Narnia books.

That's not a counter argument

Of course it is. It is evidence that many if not most Christians are perfectly happy with the notion of animals with souls, free will etc.

I'm guessing that the parent was referring to a story about talking animals with heavy Christian undertones.

Yes it is true. They have a particular concept of a "soul".

The ancient dharmic traditions (Hindu thought) always said being alive means having a soul. Advanced features such as intelligence are just part of the advanced body, not a litmus test of a soul's presence. The only litmus test is the symptoms of life.

Confused... you're saying that the crow in the video is not playing with the object? What other interpretation is there? It's not an instinctual nest building activity to go sledding on a foreign object, is it?

I'm a Gen-Xer, and I think that crow is sledding for fun.

If you look closely its trying to pick at something that it finds curious. Sledding could possibly be an accidental outcome of it being sitting on a thin edge, not the original purpose.

It could have been an accidental outcome the first time. But when the crow then picks up the disc and flies back up to the peak, fails to get any distance on an area with no snow, flies over to a snowy section, and sleds again...

Are you saying it figured out there was less friction with snow in matter of few seconds? All the while it's mind was occupied by something it had in its claws? It could be a genius crow(there has to be variation in intelligence amongst crows too), we will never know. I thought it got irritated with that thin edge quite quickly(being not able to stand comfortably) and hence flew away to look for a thicker one.

No, I think it's unlikely that the person filming caught the crow the first time it began to sled, and what we see in the video is a crow enjoying playing with physics the same way that we do. By "the first time" I meant "the first time the crow slid on something it was standing on, regardless of when that was", although I wasn't very clear about it.

The idea that humans do not share emotive traits with other animals would seem very unlikely, given what we know of the theory of evolution, observed animal behavior and neurology.

Also, you may want to have a look at The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness that was published for the Francis Crick memorial conference at Cambridge University.

“The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.”

http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConscious...

http://fcmconference.org/

bullshit. Perhaps you don't understand that crows use tools. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtmLVP0HvDg and that they also are social and communicate with each other. They do give gifts to each other as part of courtship. We don't need to anthropomorphize to recognize plain facts about crows being intelligent and intentional and social.

I used to have a similar theory but personification of animals has been a part of human storytelling since the beginning of time.

I'm just unsure if modern CGI is any more compelling in forming lasting notions of animism than, say, Bambi was.

Seems like a reversal of cause and effect. We don't see human traits in animals because our stories have them, our stories have them because we often see human traits in animals.

Indeed at the beginning of the 20th century animals with human characteristics were attracting so much literary criticism even Theodore Roosevelt felt tempted to join the debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_fakers_controversy

By the way, I think that you and Varcht may be misusing the term 'animism' here.

Belief systems like Shinto are animist, where you think things like rivers and trees and rocks and the different winds are conscious and have souls.

Even with all the down votes I wouldn't write it off. These generations spent huge amounts of time watching real looking animals behave as humans while their brains were still developing.

It is funny that the OP, with a good point, gives an example of exactly why people are stupid and anthropomorphize animals, sure that crow is skiing.....

Which is a shame since the opposite is also true, animals can have emotions and intelligence. Just it's doesn't necessarily look the same as humans characteristics.

"DreamWorks Effect" millinials+ sorry but I don't think you could be more wrong.

Disney has being doing this since the 40/50's.

Bambi, Dumbo, Disney nature docos were awful, even David Attenborough who improved the situation vastly is also guilty.

It is at least the post WW2 generation.

[edit] Science -http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/2012/0...

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