I was lucky enough to spend a bunch of time with Chimpanzees and Gorillas in Africa (mostly West Africa). I got to carry them, play with them and just chill with them in the jungle [1].
Staring into their eyes it is impossible to deny we are them and they are us. Their facial expressions, emotions, reactions, playfulness and also anger, jealousy and all the rest are incredible to be a part of. Often I was on the other side of a fence, but the times I was right in the middle of it all are something I will never forget as long as I live.
I have no doubt future generations will look back on us as heathens for keeping intelligent animals locked in cages.
Future generations will look at us as monsters propping up highly western economy dependent sanctuaries in economic fragile regions just before the big crash, sentencing sentients to die out of romanticism and a unrealistic view of us in reality.
No I don’t, and it wasn’t intended that way. It was the opposite— they’re magnificent. They’re clearly not of our species. That does not mean they should be caged.
Excuse being the kill joy: the fellow might be mimicking a gesture it learned from other visitors. That's not to say they don't have an inner life--we're all made of the same substrate, after all.
It wasn’t so much the kiss; but the full interaction—it came up to me and wanted to see my son who was covered up in his stroller and not facing the enclosure, then it was seemingly satisfied with my reaction, and left.
Of course my dog will whine for food, or smack it’s water dish with her nose, but this felt much different akin to similar experiences I’ve had with strangers who smile and comment about how adorable my son was as an infant.
Yes. We are particularly accomplished mimics. Originality is exceedingly rare. We like to think of ourselves as different, but we are just inhabited by far more ghosts than animals without language.
We do mimic, but I was saying the animal wasn't exactly (probably) expressing its affection/adoration for a human baby with a flying kiss gesture. Had the animal picked up a vulgar gesture from a human visitor, it might as well have chosen that gesture at the baby instead, without necessarily knowing its inappropriate. A human parent, understandably, will not be very pleased with such an incident.
Obviously it would be interesting if that's what happened, but no, what they were saying is that it could well be that it had only been exposed to visitors doing nice gestures and was repeating them back with no understanding of nice vs nasty.
Not that the anecdote proves their guess is more right than yours, but afaik there is more evidence of animals mirroring unthinkingly than understanding.
Mirroring and copying unthinkingly is how we humans learn. If what we mirrored gives us the desired results we keep doing it. Questioning and understanding those actions comes lot later.
I have learned this from my toddler son who picked up some 2 3 word sentences from the cartoons that he watches. He ofcourse has no clue what those words mean, but he does know when to use them and what response he gets from them.
English isn't the language we speak at home but he picked up "wake up" when I am sleeping and try to wake me up, "careful" when doing something where he or one of us could fall. All by seeing and hearing things said repeatedly on similar actions in cartoons.
Sure, we learn by copying things. But there isn't, that I'm aware of, any evidence that an orangutan has done the learning part rather than just the copying part.
It wouldn't shock me if we did learn they can learn that way, but it also wouldn't shock me if it was just blindly copying human gestures without learning anything from what happens when they do.
I still think that said orangutan didn't have to blow a kiss and wave goodbye, after all it already had what it wanted: seeing a baby. It could as well just turn around and leave.
Orangutans likely don't blow kisses in the wild, so it not only imitated it, but also used it in an appropriate manner and context, without an immediate need to satisfy.
Chimps are roughly as smart as a 5 year-old human, and toddlers sure blow kisses and wave goodbye with full intention.
The concept of cargo culting came from a situation with humans; while a dog might also do it, it doesn't make sense to cite it as a reason why a behavior is somehow inhuman.
Factory farms will be looked back on with 10,000x more shame and horror than zoos. Zoos barely scratch the surface of the immense and unnecessary cruelty we inflict on animals. We torture 70 billion land animals to death every year and the poor things will never even understand why - they're just babies, mentally speaking.
It's objectively the greatest evil humans have ever committed, and for our own pleasure at that. We inflict pure hellish suffering because "tAsTe bUdS gO BRRR!"
It's hard to even comprehend something more comically, absurdly evil, both in terms of motive and sheer scale of suffering.
At least zoos do trigger an empathy response and get people to care about animals more.
False. 10-20% of the world population does not and we're just fine.
> So we need to kill animals for that.
No, you want to kill animals because you want tasty food. Not because you "need" meat. No one living in an industrialized country does. It's trivial to create a plant-based balanced diet (and a tasty one at that.)
> Zoos absolutely not required for humans to survive.
Neither are factory farms. They exist to satisfy "taste buds go brr." But that is not worth literally torturing[1] an animal to death.
I’m not sure that’s a fair statement to make categorically.
Many zoos provide homes, food, and veterinary care for animals that would not be able to survive in the wild. For example, the mountain lion at Arizona Sonora Desert Museum is blind, and many of their other animals had been kept illegally by their previous owners, were confiscated by Arizona Game & Fish, and needed a place to live so they wouldn’t die.
There is also the grim reality that most pets would run away and not come back if you were to open the "prison doors". Think of birds, reptiles, dogs etc.
Our interaction with other life on this planet is very human centric, some call this human supremacism. A line is drawn between us and other animals, and the justification is quite arbitrary in my opinion. A line that is used to justify a vast number of atrocities and systemic exploitation. I don't believe there is no meaningful difference between a human and a cricket. But between a human and a dog or pig? That's close enough that I'm willing to extrapolate.
My dogs that have escaped the yard go walkabout for a bit and then make their way home. My daughter's covid puppy has zero desire to be away from his human family- he's constantly looking for a human family member to hang out with and won't scamper away given the chance.
Now a bird/snake generally will be gone given the chance- but they truly are wild animals, while dogs are bred to be co-dependent with humans.
Indeed dogs have been genetically modified over millennia to the point many wouldn't even be able to survive in the wild, whether you think that justifies our actions is up to you.
In addition the chances they want to escape are smaller than for birds. I looked it up and found this source https://www.petlink.net/blog/chance-dogs-coming-back-run-awa... that says "The unfortunate reality is that 15% of dogs across the United States go missing.". For context that's not 15% of dogs want to leave and do so. What's the percentage of dogs that had the chance to leave? Let's say 50%, which would imply that given the chance 1 in 3 dogs left. Albeit not all of the because they disliked their home/prison.
Looking at the language used in that article exposes some mental gymnastics. They simultaneously state that dogs could find their way back if they wanted and compare it to loosing a child! No, the dog is not a child, and if the reasons you provide why they "go missing" are "Fear from loud noises, Easy escape routes, Boredom and Prey drive" I find it hard to ignore that these are adult conscious beings that may not want to live with us, and only do so when given no alternative.
> many wouldn't even be able to survive in the wild, whether you think that justifies our actions is up to you
I wouldn’t be able to survive in the wild.
Some dog breeding is nonsense. But for the most part, we adapted to each other. If you look at the most efficient land predators, it’s humans, cats and dogs. (Dogs are also the only fellow persistence hunting mammals and, apart from some lizards, the only animals to practice it period [1].)
Our domestication of herbivores is exploitative. Our domestication of dogs and acceptance of cats is far closer to an alliance.
> most pets would run away and not come back if you were to open the "prison doors"
This is not true of any pet I’ve had. The dog was always gunning for an open door. And the cat enjoys unsupervised time outdoors when weather permits. They both always came home.
Also, cats aren’t truly domesticated. If there is a creature that “chooses” to live with us, it’s cats.
Once had a cockatiel that escaped via a loose window, it flew around the neighbourhood for a few hours, then sat on a branch near the window waiting to be let back in.
I was pushing him in the stroller while he was napping, and at the orangutan exhibit, one came up to the window and gestured towards the stroller.
I turned the stroller to face the window, and removed the hood.
The orangutan blew my son a kiss, waved then went back to the otherside of its enclosure.
Made me rethink what I knew about animal intelligence.