SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - Of cats and dogs

Recent years' experimental research results forced scientists to reconsider the former assessement of birds' inferior intelligence, and their brain structure. In case of ravens and parrots, the intelligence is obvious, but many more bird species have scored surprising results in according reasearch and observation projects.

It is also more and more understood that the capability to feel emotions and to read emotional states in others, is far more spread amongst different species, than was thought possible just short time ago. Most prominent examples are not only dogs and parrots, but also gorillas who express sadness and even depression about the death of their babies, and demonstrated the abilkity to understand the suffering of a human in their middle if he is hurt and weak. We are talking about empathy here.

Man has been underesti,mated the intellectual and emotional capabilities of anmials in general, since very long time, me is convinced of. And maybe he did so because we would not like to think og using, abusing, killing and eating a species we recoignise as intelligent, emotional, sometimes even self-aware. I do not want to antropomorphise all animals, or become sentimental or esoterical, but that's what I think.

We want to see ourselves as the crown of all life on Earth, and the master of life on this planet, and we claim the right to deal with all life on Earth just as we pleases, our legitimation we claim to be that we can do things, so we have a right to do them. But honestly said, I think this attitude demonstrates more just how small we still are, and how little we know about the huge system that "life" really is. I often think we are a frog sitting at the bottom of a well shaft, seeing the small round piece of sky above us and thinking: "That is the world, and I see it all and understand it all!"

Three inevitable ingredients of science: imagination, scepticism, and openness. The rest is just correct handling of methodology.

P.S. I like my last sentence. I think this is the first time I make a quote by myself my new sig! :D