Stupendous intelligence of honey badgers
the-tls.co.uk
the-tls.co.uk
1. As a throwaway: "But even here, other animals, insofar as they entered into the philosophical discussion of mind at all, were just that: animals. Not badger or beaver, bee or bull. Not geladas or gerenuk, chevrotain or fossa. But just generically animal."
2. As a juicy thread that is left completely unexamined. "But there are plenty of less familiar examples: from zebra fish and moray eels to the stupendous intelligence of the honey badger."
This is the quintessential example of clickbait.
Edit: Can anyone fill in the missing thread about the less familiar "stupendous intelligence of the honey badger"? I've seen the well-known clips of them escaping their area in the zoo. I'd love to read any other studies that shed more light on their behavior.
PBS produced a great documentary on them called "Honey Badgers: Masters of Mayhem", which exemplifies their intelligence, curiosity, and persistence. If you are a ferret owner (or just like ferrets in general), you will immediately relate to the honey badger and have an affection for them.
The documentary used to be on NetFlix but was pulled recently (not sure why). However, it is available to watch on the PBS website:
http://www.pbs.org/video/2365179375/
Amazon also has it for sale (absolutely worth the $6 they are asking for it), and of course someone posted it on YouTube. It is 53 minutes well worth spending.
It had been a mystery for a long time how the raccoons got in and out of the chicken coop without leaving any traces other than dead or entirely disappearing chickens. They basically set themselves up on top of a fast food restaurant. Hungry? Let's go grab some chicken.
[edit: spelling]
End of the day, humans aren't anything special. They're just another part of nature.
By definition been the single most intelligent species on the planet makes us special.
We get excited when other species display intelligence at a level we'd expect to see in a toddler because its fascinating to us, hell the fact that we systematically study other species itself puts us in another category.
Humans have become the dominant species for two reasons:
1. Our ability to reason
2. Our technological superiority
Many animals can rival or exceed the intelligence of the average human, but due to the fact that they're seen as "just animals" and that they can't communicate with us in a matter we understand (nor care about doing it) makes humans think they are superior in every way. Then, whenever scientific progression proves that animals aren't as dumb as they look, humans have to come up with new arguments to separate themselves from other species.
It's the typical arrogant and limited view of the common homo sapiens.
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. -- Arthur Schopenhauer
That is an absurd assertion, the 'average' human being can use language at a level far beyond what any other species that demonstrates language can, complex tools, create even more complex tools from those already complex tools, write down the things they have learnt and gain knowledge from the things other humans have learnt and written down, create sophisticated predictive models of the world and test them refining the models as they go.
Do animals have intelligence, absolutely, is it in the same realm as the average human, not even close.
The difference in vast, there were other species with intelligence comparable to our own, they went extinct (and it's arguable that we are the reason why) I refer of course to the other species in the Genus Homo, the neanderthal's and others.
We had competition from other species and we eliminated it not intentionally we just out-competed them (and interbred with them but since we where more numerous the end result was the same though their genes are still present).
And whether the extinction of neanderthals and other species close to ours is due to intelligence or other influences can't be reliably proven. It's just the way nature evolved and it could have gone any other way as well.
Tempting, but no; we've tried raising primates like human children, and teaching them sign language. Childrearing went fine until age... 3 or 5, I forget, and then they hit a wall and stopped getting smarter. ASL went alright but still falls short of human levels.
I also wrote taking it away, implying humans, not giving it to animals. Educate a dolphin all you want, I don't think you're going to get very far.
Technological superiority is a function of intelligence as well or to put it the other way - systematic education and systematic technological superiority are a result of the exact intelligence superiority you claim we don't have.
We took ourselves out of the food chain, You have to be astronomically unlucky or really try at getting eaten anymore.
I'm actually going to stop answering you now because I see no way we can reach any kind of satisfactory conclusion given that you throw out statements like "animals are smarter than the average human" and that education and technological superiority aren't dependent on intelligence.
It's human nature to think they are superior to anyone and anything.
It used to be that the difference between humans and animals was one is self-aware, the other is not. Then science has proven that to be untrue and humans craved for other reasons to distinct themselves from their animal origin, which one by one are disproved as well.
Claiming something that hasn't been proven beyond a doubt to be true doesn't make it true. It's a thesis that could work out either way. There are plenty of humans that think with a firm believe that earth is the only planet in the universe with life on it. Then there are scientists that think living organisms need water to exist, despite there being organisms on this very planet for which that does not hold true. Water is required for life the way we know it to develop. Outright dismissing it as the only option is a sign of ignorance, not intelligence. The first counter-example would be Artificial General Intelligence, which is estimated to arrive within the next three decades.
Dismissing the possibility of something outright because it doesn't fit into ones thesis or world-view is a sign of ignorance, not intelligence.
It is impossible to transmit speech electrically. The 'telephone' is as mythical as the unicorn. Professor Johann Christian Poggendorrf, Germany physicist and chemist, 1860
Huh?
The only animal on Earth known to be capable of exceeding the intelligence of the average human is the above-average human. Octopuses, dolphins, chimps, crows, and elephants are all extremely intelligent, but let's not get carried away.
I suggest you read the book 'Sapiens' by Yuval Noah Harari - humans are quite unique not only among animals but among our closest relatives (Neanderthals, Denisovans, and who knows how many other close relatives we likely wiped out). The difference is not necessarily a glorious one but a concrete and obvious. The difference is our capacity to hold unreal things as concrete which allows us to coordinate our life through thousands and millions of individuals ( and not just in small troops where everyone knows everyone else).