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Comment by fiblye | Hacker News Reader

Really interesting article. It's seeming like the more we learn about other life, the more we realize not much separates humans but a couple of thumbs and some decent dexterity.

I wonder if someday we'll reach a point where we recognize consciousness in most animals and think it was ridiculous that earlier people didn't see such an obvious fact. Just like how "common knowledge" just a few decades/years ago was that babies and crustaceans couldn't feel pain, but it'd be bizarre for anyone to claim that today.

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Lots of animals have opposable thumbs: https://animalsake.com/list-of-animals-with-opposable-thumbs

The only thing that makes the Homo genus unique is control of fire.

And our genetic code. And schools and fire departments and lasers.

Exactly. And libraries, moon/Mars/deep space exploration....

It amuses me when there's an article that recognizes a similarity between humans and other species, many jump onto the "see, they're _just_ like us" meme.

What I'd be intrigued by is if there is any other species (is there _any_?) that has, century over century, via pure self- and collective-determination, advanced their state of being, achieved new capabilities, live in ways completely different than their ancestors, etc. I'm not including genetic adaptation or evolution to suit an environment -- I mean self-driven advancement. Seems we're quite unique, in that regard.

Actually we've evolved more in the last 50,000 years than in the 3 million before that. Civilization has definitely left its mark on us.

Right, that's called rationality. All other creatures are irrational, they act only on pure instinct, even if that instinct is sophisticated, such as the primates seen sharpening sticks for hunting, or the birds that drop hard shells into traffic so that cars crack it open and they get to eat what's inside, or the ways bees self-organize. Sophisticated, but still just instinct. We're the only rational creatures.

You’re joking, right?

No, but I think the confusion could be in the definition of rational. We're the only creatures who have the ability to reason abstractly, which is why we're able to do many things even the most intelligent other creatures can't.

From the article:

> These bees retrieved their spatial memories entirely out of context, at a time when there was no possibility of foraging and so no immediate need for communication. The function is unclear. They might have ‘just thought’ about these locations spontaneously during the night. Or perhaps the communication is a strategy for consolidating their spatial memory. Scientists have since found that a bee’s memories of the previous day are strengthened when they are exposed to elements of these memories while in deep sleep. Perhaps bees not only think and ‘talk’, but dream?

> The key implication of Lindauer’s discovery is that bees are capable of ‘offline thinking’ about spatial locations, and of linking these locations to a time of day, in the absence of an external trigger. That’s not what should happen if bees’ memories are merely prompted by environmental stimuli, combined with internal triggers such as hunger. Bees, then, appear to have at least one of the principal hallmarks of consciousness: representations of time and space.

That sounds like evidence that bees may be capable of "reason[ing] abstractly".

What can humans accomplish using solely "intelligence" that other animals can't?

All of the unique behaviors I see in humans involve use of fire-derived technology.

Isn't that enough? We can control fire. We can create technology from this one unique capability, which no other creature can. Others have the physical capability to control fire but they cannot actually do it.

>"Intentional Fire-Spreading by “Firehawk” Raptors in Northern Australia"

>"We document Indigenous Ecological Knowledge and non-Indigenous observations of intentional fire-spreading by the fire-foraging raptors Black Kite (Milvus migrans), Whistling Kite (Haliastur sphenurus), and Brown Falcon (Falco berigora) in tropical Australian savannas. Observers report both solo and cooperative attempts, often successful, to spread wildfires intentionally via single-occasion or repeated transport of burning sticks in talons or beaks. This behavior, often represented in sacred ceremonies, is widely known to local people in the Northern Territory, where we carried out ethno-ornithological research from 2011 to 2017; it was also reported to us from Western Australia and Queensland. Though Aboriginal rangers and others who deal with bushfires take into account the risks posed by raptors that cause controlled burns to jump across firebreaks, official skepticism about the reality of avian fire-spreading hampers effective planning for landscape management and restoration. Via ethno-ornithological workshops and controlled field experiments with land managers, our collaborative research aims to situate fire-spreading as an important factor in fire management and fire ecology. In a broader sense, better understanding of avian fire-spreading, both in Australia and, potentially, elsewhere, can contribute to theories about the evolution of tropical savannas and the origins of human fire use."

http://www.bioone.org/doi/10.2993/0278-0771-37.4.700

When they make a steam engine, then I'll admit to rational thought processes. Until then it could even be instinct.

How many steam engines have you made?

Furthermore, this kind of stuff always makes me wonder if/when other genus will eventually evolve into "intelligent" beings (with "intelligent" being loosely defined).

The Homo genus evolved around ~2-3 million years ago; homo sapiens came about ~250K years ago. What's not to say that 2 to 3 million years from now, there'll be some other intelligent species from other genus branches? It always tickles my brain to think about this.

Also relevant: https://io9.gizmodo.com/5780020/if-humanity-went-extinct-wha...

I've had the same thought. Unfortunately at the rate we wipe out other species I don't know that they'll get the chance! But when debating conservation efforts for various species it does seem like there is the possibility that on one hand we could be allowing the extinction of a species on the cusp of "intelligence".

It's not that they don't recognize it, it's that the knowingly don't want to believe it, authorized by religions to kill animals for food and mistreat them in general.

It's a stretch to say that religion 'authorizes' us to mistreat/eat animals.

Animals eat other animals. We're animals, so we do that, too.

If anything, religions largely promote treating animals properly, because they're some form of gods' creatures.

> It's a stretch to say that religion 'authorizes' us to mistreat/eat animals.

"Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that crawls upon the earth."

Of course people would do it anyway, especially when they had no other choice (nowadays we could live without exploiting animals, it would even be cheaper and more ecologic - but before we knew chemistry and biology we had at least some excuses).

But at least Bible-based religions clearly legitimize abuse of animals, and treating animals as mindless things that don't have feelings nor rights. Even now in my country ecologists/vegans are one of the groups considered enemies of "natural order" by influential religious media (Rydzyk media-empire in Poland for one example).

It's not an accident that animals don't have souls according to Catholicism.

Unfortunately, those groups, like many others who intend to control people with religion, cherry picked an example that fits their rhetoric.

The bible is often contradictory, and in it you can also find these:

> 'He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man' (Isaiah 66.3)

> 'For meat destroy not the work of God' (Romans 14.19-21)

> 'A righteous man regardeth the life of the beast' (Proverbs 12.10)

Christianity doesn't represent the majority of religions (~31.5%). Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism all advocate for animal rights (~45.3%).

Islam is Bible-based as well (to some point). And their halal butchering practices aren't particularly humane by modern standards, even if at some point in the past they were.

The key thing humans got is replacing the genetic evolution by memetic evolution, aka culture, powered by structured communication aka speech. This allowed for organizations above the Dunbar number, and very quick evolution of behaviors without constantly killing and re-spawning physical bodies.

Some advanced animals, like wolves, have something resembling a passing of cultural knowledge: they teach their young how to hunt particular prey, and this may differs seriously between packs and types of prey. But they lack speech, so they can't pass more complex ideas.

Cetaceans are said to have consciousness not unlike humans'; maybe they have speech and an advanced culture; we don't know. But they lack means of manipulation and live mostly floating above abyss, so they don't have a material culture and technology.

Quite possibly it's not an exceptional intellectual capability that singled out humans among comparably intelligent animals, but the (proto-)speech ability. The advances in intelligence then followed, being evolutionary beneficial.

> Cetaceans are said to have consciousness not unlike humans'; maybe they have speech and an advanced culture; we don't know. But they lack means of manipulation and live mostly floating above abyss, so they don't have a material culture and technology.

You refuted your own argument. Sounds like it's more about the "material culture and technology", which started with control of fire.

No living species other than Homo sapiens harnesses fire.

Australian raptors do - http://www.bioone.org/doi/10.2993/0278-0771-37.4.700

Yes, fire was a key thing in the development of technology, and then (a few hundred thousand years later) domination of the biosphere.

What I mean that animals which did not develop technology may have other kinds of advanced culture, such as that we would recognize as culture, e.g. in social organization and explanation of the world ("philosophy"), and/or art — it they have a capability for structured communication and thus capable to pass more and more complex knowledge across generations.

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