Animals Not Advancing

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22 Mar 2013, 9:44 pm

Interesting. I actually like Terence Mckenna's "Stoned Ape Theory" suggesting our ancestors' development was shaped around the consumption of natural psychedelic plants. Our first technology was probably a technique for harvesting some kind of drug.

If felines ever get in the position to do so, maybe they would do something similar with catnip. Or if for some crazy reason humans artificially put cats in that position where performing certain tasks favorable to evolution rewarded them with catnip.

uwmonkdm
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22 Mar 2013, 9:58 pm

VIDEODROME wrote:

Terence Mckenna was exactly who I had on my mind.
Also, Panthers already have access to hallucinogens, and consume them on a regular basis.

naturalplastic
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23 Mar 2013, 7:52 am

ruveyn wrote:

naturalplastic wrote:

Now if humans vanished via some catastrophe ( asteroid, supervolcanoe, or by own our hands in a nuclear holocaust) that would be different. The niche would open up and one of the many bright non human mammals on the planet would enventual take our place.

.

In one of the "Life After Humans" episodes on cable there was speculation that some of the chimps who escaped from the nearby zoo (no humans left to guard them or keep them in) developed a culture in which they carefully husbanded the egg production of birds. Instead of gobbling up all the eggs they could (thus dooming the birds) they showed restraint and even protected the birds to assure long range production of eggs. Then they taught their bird husbandry to their offspring.

ruuveyn

There was a funny moment in a recent Public TV nature show in which real capuchin monkeys in the jungles of south america were using a big flat rock as an anvil and small rocks as hammers to break bones to get at the marrow for food. As you watched it ( and if you're over a certain age) you couldnt help but think of a certain movie, and sure enough they split the screen and showed the actors playing chimps in the opening of '2001: A Space Oddyssey" breaking bones on rocks alongside these real monkeys doing their thing in the nature show- the strains of "thus spoke Zarathustra" come in, and one of the movie apes tosses that bone into the air that morphs into the space ship.

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23 Mar 2013, 8:56 am

YippySkippy wrote:

So my question is: why does the life of a modern ape look exactly the same as the life of an ape that lived 1000 or more years ago? Why aren't they constructing villages and growing food? Why aren't the elephants writing words in the sand with their trunks? Really, why are humans the only ones who seem to be advancing as a species?

I think it depends on how you define "advancing." Agriculture has allowed humans to expand population and freed up time to spend on other pursuits; but this is human evolution - it's what works for us. How do we know what dolphin advancement is? Perhaps their existence is superior to ours. We have no way to know what success is for other species.

ruveyn
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23 Mar 2013, 9:10 am

naturalplastic wrote:

the strains of "thus spoke Zarathustra" come in, and one of the movie apes tosses that bone into the air that morphs into the space ship.

The segue way from bone to spaceship is the one best scene of the movie and makes the rather boring moving worth watching.

ruveyhn

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