The Universe

[Shook]

Man that would almost be worth paying an expert like 100 bucks to lie for me.


As far as " intelligent life " goes, I think this refers to 3 things:

1.) Any form of life that shows the ability to make conscious decisions based
on not only changes in it's immediate environment, but also based on
memories from similar environments or situations.

2.) A complex memory and the ability to recall and visualize people, places.
or things from your past.

3.) The " free will " of a conscious being that allows us to think about
something, estimate several different outcomes, and choose an option.
This goes hand in hand with our ability to commit an illogical action for
logical reasons.

ya and ants arent part of any of those

 

[skunkushybrid]

Man that would almost be worth paying an expert like 100 bucks to lie for me.


As far as " intelligent life " goes, I think this refers to 3 things:

1.) Any form of life that shows the ability to make conscious decisions based
on not only changes in it's immediate environment, but also based on
memories from similar environments or situations.

2.) A complex memory and the ability to recall and visualize people, places.
or things from your past.

3.) The " free will " of a conscious being that allows us to think about
something, estimate several different outcomes, and choose an option.
This goes hand in hand with our ability to commit an illogical action for
logical reasons.

ya and ants arent part of any of those

In what way? Ants do not make conscious decisions based on the immediate environment? Of course they do. All animals have memories.

We are merely an animal, yet you'd rather believe we are somehow special. Animals are intelligent, whether you believe it or not.

If we found a cow on another planet this would be a victory, we would have discovered intelligent life. Intelligence cannot be measured. There are those that say it can, and try with Intelligence tests, but these tests are HEAVILY flawed. You and you, may have your views on what intelligence is but your views are flawed.

The word intelligence and animals are often banded together. Ants have a socialist society.

That's one thing about insects that I don't understand. We know other animals feel emotion because we can see it. What about an insect? When we crush an ant beneath our boots, i wonder if there is an ant out there somewhere mourning.

 

[suicidesamurai]

In what way? Ants do not make conscious decisions based on the immediate environment? Of course they do. All animals have memories.

We are merely an animal, yet you'd rather believe we are somehow special. Animals are intelligent, whether you believe it or not.

If we found a cow on another planet this would be a victory, we would have discovered intelligent life. Intelligence cannot be measured. There are those that say it can, and try with Intelligence tests, but these tests are HEAVILY flawed. You and you, may have your views on what intelligence is but your views are flawed.

The word intelligence and animals are often banded together. Ants have a socialist society.

That's one thing about insects that I don't understand. We know other animals feel emotion because we can see it. What about an insect? When we crush an ant beneath our boots, i wonder if there is an ant out there somewhere mourning.

To quote the great Nim Chimpsky.

(in sign language)

"Orange eat me orange orange me eat orange eat orange me me me me orange eat orange orange me eat eat orange me eat me."

 

[Shook]

In what way? Ants do not make conscious decisions based on the immediate environment? Of course they do. All animals have memories.

We are merely an animal, yet you'd rather believe we are somehow special. Animals are intelligent, whether you believe it or not.

If we found a cow on another planet this would be a victory, we would have discovered intelligent life. Intelligence cannot be measured. There are those that say it can, and try with Intelligence tests, but these tests are HEAVILY flawed. You and you, may have your views on what intelligence is but your views are flawed.

The word intelligence and animals are often banded together. Ants have a socialist society.

That's one thing about insects that I don't understand. We know other animals feel emotion because we can see it. What about an insect? When we crush an ant beneath our boots, i wonder if there is an ant out there somewhere mourning.

ok goldfish are like 30x the size of ants, and they have bigger brains, but they only have a 3 second memory, so im pretty sure ants have worse memory then that

 

[SHOOT2KILL66]

All we are is nuclear waist thats how are bodys are made up from an explosion (the big bang) the key to us being born is water after the bang blillions of particals that were blasted over the universe made up are body carbon, iron ,zinc, ect all from the nuculer explosion

In the begining every thing all the gallaxys and stars were squeezed into 1 star say , the size of a match box and it got so warm that it exploded into billions of stars and planets more than there is grans of sand in are beaches
All the particals from that explosion is what made life but it was thousands of years after the explosion when water came
we are 80% water 10% carbon (i think, not sure on the %) and the rest made up from other particals iron zinc mg ect.

we are like some microscopic life that has formed on one of the tinyest parts of the univirse

 

[Erniedytn]

Wow I hate that I missed out on this one. I'm just going to say a few things.

I would consider Ants intelligent because they do form tribes, have slaves, a queen, etc, but they are not intelligent like us because they do not have imaginations, feelings, dreams etc. That is what sets us apart from every other living thing.

If we went to another planet and discovered something like an ant or a cow, it would be wonderful. It would let us know that even if that animal is not "intelligent" like us, it is still a living breathing organism.

Another thing is how did we get to the level we are at so fast? Humans have evolved immensly faster than any other thing, and this to me is also what makes us special. Something intervened, at some point and boosted our rate of evolution.

 

[skunkushybrid]

Animals dream. I have sat and watched my dog REM sleep on several occasions.

How do you know that animals do not dream?

 

[skunkushybrid]

Who's the Birdbrain?

Birds may have a reputation for being less than geniuses, but researchers are discovering that some are remarkably smart.

Some birds have the capacity to recognize, count, or name different objects.

Ravens, for instance, have the ability to solve difficult puzzles, such as untangling a knotted string to free up a tasty treat or figuring out how to steal fish by hauling in an angler's untended line. And, as shown in the first part of NATURE's INSIDE THE ANIMAL MIND, crows on the remote Pacific island of New Caledonia have learned a skill that people once thought only primates could master: the use of tools. The birds use long, specially chosen twigs to spear the plump grubs that hide deep beneath the bark of rotting logs.

Raven antics and New Caledonia's clever crows have helped make people much more willing to admit that many animals, including birds, are quite intelligent. Dolphins can follow complex instructions, for instance, while orangutans learn complex tasks, such as washing clothes by hand, after just a few tries. And even pigeons and parrots have shown an extraordinary capacity to recognize, count, or name different objects.

But no bird has done more to give a whole new meaning to the phrase "birdbrain" than Alex the African Grey parrot. More than 20 years ago, researcher Dr. Irene Pepperberg of the University of Arizona began systematically studying Alex and several other African Greys, parrots that are remarkable mimics, to understand avian intelligence. "Before I began my studies, I knew that parrots could reproduce the sounds of human speech, but that the general belief was that such vocalizations could not be meaningful," Pepperberg has written.

Today, her work with Alex has challenged that notion. For instance, Alex can name more than 40 objects and understands the concepts of "same" and "different," "absence," "quantity," and "size." Alex, Pepperberg says "has mastered tasks once thought to be beyond the capacity of all but humans or certain non-human primates."

 

[skunkushybrid]

Stressed Out

Happiness, sadness, anger, fear, love, hate -- emotions play a pivotal role in our lives. But do they loom large in an animal's world as well? Part Two of NATURE's INSIDE THE ANIMAL MIND explores that question in fascinating detail.

Like humans, baboons harass each other, compete for rank, and undergo stress.

In large part, researchers have found that emotions are accompanied by biochemical changes in the brain. Fear, for instance, is accompanied by the production of one set of brain chemicals that can make us alert and ready to flee, while pleasure triggers the release of other chemicals that soothe and calm. But some emotions aren't so biologically clear-cut. Shame, for instance, is a so-called "social emotion," the product of attaching an emotional meaning to a behavior, such as hitting another person, or lying, that may be appropriate in one social setting but out of bounds in another.

While researchers don't agree on how big a role such social emotions play in the animal world, there is widespread agreement that many animals share another emotional characteristic with us: stress. Indeed, like humans, many animals can be harried and "stressed out" -- with sometimes serious health consequences.

Among the most remarkable studies of stress in animals are those carried out on African baboons by Stanford University research Robert Sapolsky and his colleagues. For three months each year, Sapolsky travels to East Africa's Serengeti plain to examine how factors like a baboon's social behavior, personality, and rank within its troop influence the levels of stress hormones produced by the ape. By measuring the hormones found in each individual's feces, Sapolsky's team has been able to show that baboon troops are high-stress societies, with higher-ranked individuals maintaining order by intimidating lower-ranked troopmates. Indeed, Sapolsky says, "Baboons and us are surprisingly similar . . . they can devote a large part of each day to making each other absolutely miserable with social stress."

Sapolsky's team has also shown that such stress can have real health consequences. Stressed-out mothers, for instance, have more problems producing healthy offspring. And sustained production of stress hormones can also damage the hippocampus, a region of the brain central to learning and memory. So even though baboons may not commute, do their bosses' dry cleaning, or pay income taxes, they suffer very similarly from the scourge of stress.

 

[skunkushybrid]

Socially Aware

As you read this, you are probably aware of reading this. Indeed, you can also imagine yourself reading this -- a sort of picture within a picture in your mind's eye. But do animals share this kind of consciousness?

Many researchers believe that chimps are able to see themselves in relation to others in their groups.

That is the question asked by Part Three of NATURE's INSIDE THE ANIMAL MIND. The program ponders just what consciousness is -- and which animals might share this trait with people.

Bees, for instance, appear to meet one of the requirements for consciousness. They can create "mental maps," images they hold in their minds that allow them to navigate around their environments by picturing themselves there. Chimps and elephants appear to exhibit another consciousness trademark: an awareness of death. Both animals grieve when family members die: elephants even linger over the bones of long-dead relatives, seeming to ponder the past and their own future. But are these behaviors enough to give bees, chimps, and elephants membership in the consciousness club?

Researchers are actively debating the answer to that question. "Consciousness is one of the hardest things to define and study," says Pete Chernika, an Austrian researcher who has studied consciousness in dolphins and other animals. "In experiments, for instance, dolphins appear to pass one consciousness test by recognizing themselves in mirrors. And dolphins also exhibit a keen awareness of the status and identity of other dolphins in their highly social groups, he says.They know who mom is, who the leaders of the pod are, and how they should behave around different individuals," he says. "They appear to be able to envision themselves in relation to all these other animals and then act accordingly."

Indeed, many researchers believe consciousness is more likely in highly social animals such as chimps and dolphins, who must be able to see themselves in relation to others in their groups in order to get along. "Complex social interaction puts a high priority on awareness of self and others," says Chernika. But he warns that the more people study other animals, the more we realize how hard it is to define consciousness -- and how hard it is to decide who has it, and who doesn't.

 

[skunkushybrid]

[FONT=Helvetica,Verdana,Sans-serif]Bees brighter than we knew, study finds
They pass cognitive tests usually given apes, people
[/FONT][FONT=Helvetica,Verdana,Sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=GENEVA,ARIAL]Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer [/FONT] [FONT=GENEVA,ARIAL]Thursday, April 19, 2001 [/FONT]




Bees are famously busy -- but they're also pretty brainy.
Our pollen-hunting friends possess "higher cognitive functions," judging by cunning experiments in which the creatures learned to compare and distinguish different colors and patterns, according to today's issue of Nature.
In what an outside expert praises as "an exciting discovery," the French researcher Martin Giurfa and four colleagues showed that honeybees -- that's Apis mellifera to bee fanciers -- excel at cognitive tests normally performed by lab primates and human volunteers.
In the current film "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" George Clooney announces to his little band of waifs that he should lead them because "I'm the one with the capability for abstract thought."
As the Nature article shows, bees also can engage in abstract thought. The creatures can "master abstract inter-relationships," specifically the cognitive concepts of "sameness" and "difference," Giurfa and his team report. Hence, "higher cognitive functions are not a privilege of vertebrates," that is, creatures with backbones and much more complex nervous systems.
To demonstrate this, Giurfa and his team exposed bees to a simple Y-shaped maze. The entrance to the maze was marked with a particular symbol -- say, the color yellow.
A bee flying through the entrance encountered a branching pathway. One branch was marked with the color yellow, another with the color blue. Bees that pursued the yellow-marked path discovered at its end a vial rich in sugar.
Bees that took the blue path got no sugar.
Normally, bees would have been just as likely to fly one way as another. But via Giurfa's experiment, the bees learned that sugar lay at the end of the route marked with the same symbol as that marking the outside entrance. In other words, "same" equals "sugar."
The bees demonstrated an ability to recognize "sameness" and "difference" --
fundamental skills on any test of cognitive abilities.
In a second experiment, the bees showed they could apply the concepts of "sameness" and "difference" beyond what they had learned in the first experiment.
In subsequent experiments, the opening to the maze was marked by a different symbol -- such as vertical dark lines. In that case, on entering the maze the bees re-encountered the two pathways, which this time were marked not with colors but, rather, with lines -- vertical lines on one path, horizontal lines on the other.
Had the bees remembered the lesson of the first experiment, namely that "same" equals "sugar"? They had. In the second experiment, more than 70 percent of the bees promptly flew down the path marked by vertical dark lines, the same symbol as that above the entrance.
Judging by the experiments, bees' capacity for abstract thought is so impressive that Giurfa, who works at both Laboratoire d'Ethologie et Cognition Animale in Toulouse, France, and Institut fur Biologie in Berlin, bristled when a Chronicle reporter characterized bee cognition as "low-degree."
"I disagree with your characterization of this being a 'low-degree' of intelligence," Giurfa replied by e-mail. "In fact, it would be the opposite!
"(In the past) many researchers thought that this kind of learning -- learning of an abstract rule, which is independent of the stimuli used -- can only be possible in primates and human beings. Here (in this experiment) we show that this is not true. Abstract rules can also be mastered by the mini brain of a honeybee."
"It is an exciting discovery," said a leading bee authority, Professor Michael S. Engel, curator of the division of entomology at the University of Kansas. "Early in the last century, (zoologist Karl) von Frisch shattered our concept of insect cognitive capacities by demonstrating that honeybees communicated by an abstract language -- that is, via the famous 'waggle dance. ' This eventually won him the Nobel Prize.
"The findings by Giurfa and colleagues further reveal the cognitive level of bees and at the same time suggest that seemingly complex behaviors may have a relatively simplistic neural (nervous system) architecture," Engel added.
In other words, if bees -- with their relatively simple nervous systems -- can be so smart, then human intelligence might eventually be explained more easily than previously assumed. E-mail Keay Davidson at [email protected].

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[skunkushybrid]

Animals have complex dreams, MIT researcher proves

Study may advance understanding of human learning and memory


January 24, 2001

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Animals have complex dreams and are able to retain and recall long sequences of events while they are asleep, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers report for the first time in the Jan. 25 issue of the journal Neuron.
While any pet owner knows that animals seem to dream, and studies show that animals' brains follow the same series of sleeping states as ours do, this is the first time that researchers know what animals are dreaming about.
"No one knew for certain that animals dreamed the way we do, which can involve replaying events or at least components of events that occurred while we were awake," said Matthew Wilson of MIT's Center for Learning and Memory. "We looked at the firing patterns of a collection of individual cells to determine the content of rats' dreams. We know that they are in fact dreaming and their dreams are connected to actual experiences."
Wilson says that this new ability to eavesdrop on the sleeping brain provides a basis for analyzing the content of dream states. It could be a valuable tool in treating memory disorders such as amnesia or Alzheimer's disease, or it may help devise ways for people to learn and memorize more effectively.
"It has been a century since Freud brought forward the study of the subconscious and the examination of the content of dreams as a tool for understanding the nature of cognition and behavior in humans," Wilson said. "We now have the means to bring this world of dreams into the study of animal cognition, and by doing so, gain deeper insight into our own."
Running in circles

Wilson, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, and biology graduate student Kenway Louie trained rats to run along a circular track for a food reward.
They monitored the animals' brain activity during the task and while they were asleep. While the animal ran, its brain created a distinctive pattern of neurons firing in the hippocampus, a brain area known to be involved in memory.
Like us, rats go through multiple stages of sleep, from slow-wave sleep to REM sleep. In humans, it is during REM sleep that most dreaming occurs.
The researchers then examined more than 40 REM episodes recorded while the rats slept. About half repeated the unique signature of brain activity that was created as the animal ran. The correlation was so close that the researchers found that as the animal dreamed, they could reconstruct where it would be in the maze if it were awake and whether the animal was dreaming of running or standing still.
These memories were replayed at about the same speed that the animal had experienced them while awake.
Not-so-instant replay

Wilson explores how sleep may be involved in the formation of long-term memories. Scientists believe that memories are formed in at least two stages: an initial process that occurs during the experience itself, followed by a consolidation period in which the experience is transformed into long-term memory. The hippocampus is believed to be involved in both stages.
The long-term encoding of memories may occur when memories are reactivated during sleep.
Wilson's research focuses on how memories are incorporated in the brain during sleep and how reactivating memories during sleep affects long-term memory and performance.
"If you learn five things when you are awake, which ones are retained?" Wilson said. He speculates that if certain bits of information are replayed during sleep, this might determine which events we then remember.
Studies have shown that humans learning repetitive tasks can use REM sleep to enhance performance. In some cases, this "off-line" practice session seems to be just as good as practicing the experience when awake. Tests have shown that both rats and humans are better at a recently learned task after a period of sleep.
Likewise, dreams may represent an opportunity for us to continue to work on a problem while we're asleep. Some people report waking up with a solution to a problem that had been puzzling them for days.
"One theory regarding the role of dreams in memory is that dreams may provide the opportunity to bring together experiences that were related, but did not occur at the same time, in order to learn from them," Wilson said. "For example, replaying a series of pleasant or unpleasant experiences may allow us to learn what these experiences had in common and use this to guide future behavior."
Animal dreams

Why do animals dream about one experience and not another? "This work allows us to evaluate the content of dreams and create tests to see which awake patterns create patterns when the animal is asleep," Wilson said. "If we are able to evaluate the content of the dreaming state, we may be able to find out why certain events get replayed and others don't."
This work also raises questions about long-held assumptions about animals' thought processes. Only a handful of species -- among them chimps and dolphins -- were thought to have any ability at all to recall and evaluate detailed sequences of events after they occurred. Wilson points out that "dreams are the ultimate off-line experience. This work demonstrates that animals are capable of re-evaluating their experiences when they are not in the midst of them."
The Center for Learning and Memory (CLM) at MIT was established in May 1994 as an independent research center between the departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biology. The mission of this multidisciplinary center is to decipher the brain's molecular and cellular mechanisms and the neural circuitry underlying learning and memory and to piece the puzzle together into an understanding of the intelligent and complex functioning of the brain.
Wilson's work is funded by the National Institutes of Health and the RIKEN-MIT Neuroscience Research Center.

 

[Erniedytn]

The fact still remains that we are more advanced than these animals. We obviousley have something they do not, or else they would be walking around going to work and the mall with us. Whatever that is, is what makes us different...that is what I was saying.

 

[Shook]

Animals have a basic understanding, but the wont see and feel a refrigerator and understand what it is, or how its done, they cant build things like humans, they cant manipulate the environment liek us, and you are also far away from what i originally said, which spawned this whole thing, i said: there are 400 billion stars in this galaxy alone, if just one of a million of those had planets, and a million of those had life, and a million out of those had intelligent life, then there would be millions of civilizations, ants, apes all those fuckers arent a civilization now stop.

 

[skunkushybrid]

The fact still remains that we are more advanced than these animals. We obviousley have something they do not, or else they would be walking around going to work and the mall with us.

Some obviously have things that we do not. Dolphins can live in the sea, can we? Does this make them better than us?

Animals have complex conversation, build complex societies, sleep, eat, fuck. What's the difference? They are just alien to us this is all. We cannot understand them so we assume them to be stupid, living on automaton.

Animals are not robots, they are seeing, feeling sentient beings. Just like us. As we LEARN MORE, scientists are discovering that there really isn't much difference between us and the rest of life on this planet, after all.

Animals have as much capability to learn as we do, they see the same things we do. Suffer stress, sexual frustration, cancers. They build societies, hunting parties, solve puzzles, take drugs. Apart from the obvious differences, basically all life on this planet is the same.

 

[skunkushybrid]

Animals have a basic understanding, but the wont see and feel a refrigerator and understand what it is, or how its done, they cant build things like humans, they cant manipulate the environment liek us, and you are also far away from what i originally said, which spawned this whole thing, i said: there are 400 billion stars in this galaxy alone, if just one of a million of those had planets, and a million of those had life, and a million out of those had intelligent life, then there would be millions of civilizations, ants, apes all those fuckers arent a civilization now stop.

Animals won't see a refridgerator because they don't know what it is. Just like a young child taking his first steps. We only know it's a refridgerator because we were taught that this is what it is.

A chimp cannot communicate with us, so how do you know that if the chimp was around a refridgerator for a week that it wouldn't learn that this is where food comes from? Then that it keeps food cold, after they hold it in their hands. Just like a child, animals need to be taught.

Animals do have civilisations. For a start, we do. Then ants, also chimps, baboons, bumble bees...

civilisation... an advanced stage or system of social development.

 

[Erniedytn]

Animals have as much capability to learn as we do, they see the same things we do. Suffer stress, sexual frustration, cancers. They build societies, hunting parties, solve puzzles, take drugs. Apart from the obvious differences, basically all life on this planet is the same.

Ok I'll give you this much...chimps and apes have the ability to learn like we do.

BUT...

You can't teach a dog, cat, goat or a cow how to drive a car or use a refrigerator...they are not like us.... all life is not the same.

 

[skunkushybrid]

Ok I'll give you this much...chimps and apes have the ability to learn like we do.

BUT...

You can't teach a dog, cat, goat or a cow how to drive a car or use a refrigerator...they are not like us.... all life is not the same.

Yet there are things certain life-forms can do that we cannot. I'm not saying that you can teach a dog to drive a car, only that intelligence cannot be measured in this way. There are certain people that will never get to grips with driving too. This doesn't make them stupid, their minds just work in a different way.

We are more intelligent than the rest of life on this planet, this does not make the rest of life unintelligent.

 

[Erniedytn]

We are more intelligent than the rest of life on this planet, this does not make the rest of life unintelligent.

This is what sets us apart from everthing else...the question is how did we get this way?

 

[Token]

All life is complex just because we are advanced doesn't mean we're better and animals r worst, By the way who the HELL cares about who is better, Life is Life and if we find it out there then it proves that you just need the right element to make life happen, it does not have to even look like us (w/ legs head arms) it can be a microorganisms and it still proves that we don't have some person(God) sitting on the clouds design life for everyone, thus hopfully making people more resonpible for there actions.