Bees and chimps can also pass on their skills
phys.org
phys.org
So 14 out of 64 chimps learned a relatively simple trick after two months of "cumulative culture" exposure. Just over a 20% success rate?
> Thornton said the research again showed how "people habitually overestimate their abilities relative to those of other animals".
People learn how to tile floors, install dishwashers, change their cars oil filter, build websites etc. all from mediocre youtube videos. I don't think I'm overestimating humans "abilities relative to those of other animals" ...
Also, the human scientists figured out ape intelligence to the point where they can design puzzles that are too hard for the apes to solve, and they figured out how to use that to further study the apes. Underestimate the apes? These scientists seem to be absolutely dunking on the poor little guys. They should go pick on orcas or some other actually clever species.
Building websites or tiling floors (well) are much more complicated than following a set of instructions for changing an oil filter.
What percentage of humans could build a website purely from watching a few tutorials? Certainly not 100%.
Your comment makes me think that, indeed, humans do overestimate our abilities.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24955780
Also worth noting that bees can transfer navigational information to eachother by 'waggle dancing', so they have multiple possible vectors for information sharing going for them.
Humans may be good at learning from others and pick up stuff fast but that don't automatically mean we're unique in our ability to do so. This idea that humans are so special feels very odd to me.
My dog learned more stuff from hanging out with other dogs than I could teach it on my own.
If someone wants to train a dog best to have already trained dog to pass that just like shepherds did for centuries I guess.
Dolphins also use sexual coercion (amongst humans, we would call it rape) and the behavior is violent. Dolphins also commit infanticide.
Zooming out and looking down on the intelligence spectrum, we have to be humble and concede that we, too, while far superior to other living creatures we have encountered so far, probably also lack some dimensions that even higher intelligence would unlock.
Does this necessarily mean "learning" in the sense that humans use that word?
Approximately 15 millions years ago, leafcutter ants completed the 30 million year process of domesticating another species [1] (something also done by ambrosia beetles and termites, not just humans) - the Leucoagaricus gongylophorus fungus cultivated by the adults is used to feed the ant larvae, and the adult ants feed on leaf sap. The fungus needs the ants to stay alive, and the larvae need the fungus to stay alive, so mutualism is obligatory. All with 250,000 neurons!
Whether it was the fungus that domesticated the ant or the ant that domesticated the fungus, can passing on this skill also be considered a learned activity?
[1] - https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/crop-domestication-bala...
> After two months, 14 "naive" chimps had mastered it.
I am not sure the study is showing human like “cumulative culture”. It is showing that if humans train them, they can show others, which is different from humans learning a thing on their own, showing it to others, and then someone else using that as a foundation to discover something new building on that.
Basically, the study is showing that a chimp can teach other chimps something humans trained it to do.
I don’t think that is a novel or controversial finding. If you grow up around dogs, you know that one trained dog will help the other dogs learn.
Besides that: I haven't read either study, just the article, so who knows what were the actual claims, but…
The article opens with:
> chimpanzees can learn skills from their peers so complicated that they could never have mastered them on their own.
Which you object with:
> Basically, the study is showing that a chimp can teach other chimps something humans trained it to do.
and:
> I am not sure the study is showing human like “cumulative culture”.
That reads a bit like rejecting evolution because we haven't fully replicated abiogenesis (yet).
Is "humans trained it to do" in "a chimp can teach other chimps something humans trained it to do" so important?
This is just learning, there was no ratchet effect.
https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/220/7/1166/19555...
Teaching isn't some complex topic, you just transfer information from one individual to the other.
[Citation needed]
Teaching is sometimes very easy. Sometimes very difficult. Depends what you're trying to teach.
This sentence.
I’ve read and heard it so many times now, that according to Bayesian statistics, I should correct my assumptions and assume that, in the end, we will find out that there is not a single thing that’s unique to humans.
As a species we definitely have some narcissistic tendencies.
I think this is true. The evidence being our ruthless exploitation of our fellow animals without any regard to their interests, suffering, etc.
It is strange that people put other mammals in same category with birds for example. Thinking that humans are separate kingdom. I'm closer to pig than pig is to chicken.
But the differences in scale are so vast that it opens massively different capabilities.
At some point, quantitative differences are so large they become qualitative differences.
Although both can hold matrices in memory and do math operations, the M3 Max can hold so much more and run math operations so fast that LLM inference becomes possible making it seem “intelligent” on a whole different level than an 8086 even though they are at some fundamental level very similar.
However they can sense electromagnetic fields and can sense whether a flower they're interested have pollen or not without looking at it with their eyes.
Elephants and whales can communicate over vast distances via sound. Bats can see without eyes. Salmons and pigeons can find the point they have born without even trying. A dog can smell history of a place, plus get much more information from a single smell.
Humans can do none of these things without tools.
Also, in electronics, there are accelerators which are much simpler in transistor count and architecture, but which can do much more than a more complex counterparts. GROQ inference cards and FPGAs come into my mind.
So neither capability, nor capacity in numbers is a valid measure for intelligence or capabilities in practice.
Just because a bee has less neurons than a chimp doesn't mean it can't have some kind of comparable intelligence when you compare the things they can accomplish.
Oh, also crows understand and exploit physical phenomena and can manipulate things with tools to get what they want.
Intelligent is not a synonym for “have amazing capabilities” but rather the ability to process and adapt to new information and transform their environment.
No other life form comes even close to humans in that regard. Our abilities (for better or worse) are godlike compared to other animals. There is a reason this epoch is called the “Anthropocene”.
I think the argument in this thread is more between people thinking animals have 'zero' ability, it is just instinct, or some other mechanism different than what is taking place in a human. And the group that is saying, animals are using the same mechanisms as a human, just humans are scaled up. Abilities between Humans and animals is a sliding scale.
They are wanting to argue that Humans have a singular ability that does NOT exist anywhere else, kind of a 'divine' argument. And animals are doing something different.
"comes even close" is indicating, it's a scale, might be a big scale, but it is the same scale.
"Just enough better" is doing a lot of work when that leads to space travel and computers and inventing reasons to feel bad about our phenomenally efficient expansion and predation, whilst members of other species prove extremely limited at acquiring human knowledge even when we're expressly trying to share it with them.
>However they can sense electromagnetic fields and can sense whether a flower they're interested have pollen or not without looking at it with their eyes.
Which, yes, like your other examples, is an impressive feat, but not an impressive feat of intelligence. Perceiving one or another part of the spectrum isn't intelligence. Neither is hardwired responses. In contrast:
>Oh, also crows understand and exploit physical phenomena and can manipulate things with tools to get what they want.
That would be a feat of intelligence. But you're lumping all impressive feats into "intelligence", regardless of what's responsible for them.
While bees thrive in their ecology by using intelligent behaviors like dancing, counting, navigating, remembering colors and scents, and making decisions using a process that resembles cost-benefit analysis, the sheer scale and complexity of human intelligence is unparalleled in teh animal kingdom. Our neocortex facilitates advanced cognitive functions, including our capacity for reflection, conceptual thought, and technological innovation generally puts humans at a higher level of cognitive complexity.
Everything is a sliding scale.
Eagles can 'see' better than humans. No one is is up in arms about how wonderfully unique human eye-sight is, how Eagles are using 'just instincts'. Humans are divine in how complex their sight is, that it could never occur in other animals or machines. Totally impossible that we would ever have a machine that can 'capture images'.
But there is laundry list of features that some animal does better.
Humans on whole do everything 'ok'. Humans have a lot of features, and for each feature they aren't the 'best', but on aggregate they do them all together on average better. They are one animal that combine total features better than any single animal.
Guess my point, is when it comes to 'mind' people are still thinking humans are divinely 'exceptional'. But really, it is one more 'feature' that the human animal does best, but that does not mean other animals don't have the same feature, but scaled down.
Seems like people complaining that 'bees' aren't intelligent are just trying to keep humans propped up on a pedestal. When really, it is one more feature that is scaled.
I think it is all on a continuum, humans are animals. But putting us on that continuum makes all the animals look like absolute garbage, intelligence-wise. If we want to put humans in the game, we’re going to be absolutely dunking on, like, every animal in terms of ability to abstract and teach concepts.
I'm arguing against the group that think humans aren't animals, that they are imbued with some extra metaphysical secrete sauce that we are incapable of understanding.
This group usually come out strong against any of these studies that hint at some continuum that includes humans and animals on same scale. Even if humans are on far end of the scale.
A few candidate "unique to humans" characteristics:
- surgical replacement of defective organs. I wouldn't be surprised if some animals have processes for amputations - especially insects - but I'd be pretty surprised if there are any kidney transplants going on.
- written language systems for durable information passing, phonetic alphabet systems. As far as I know, a phonetic alphabet was invented only once among humans, which makes it a rarity even for us.
- haircuts. This one is super plausibly wrong, but I don't think that any animals do this, and its a good example of something that they could do but just don't.
Write about history no one currently alive has seen
Make music
Go to space
Theorize
Not sure about those.
Make music - I know that birds sing, and a quick Google search shows whales and seals seem to make "music" as well
Theorize - Depending on what you mean of course (but I agree with you about e.g. scientific hypotheses to be tested), but as an example apparently birds "theorize about the minds of others", again by Google search
Writing - Definitely a stretch here (and so I agree with you) but animals do leave chemical markings for others
You show me one outfit, I raise you an entire textile, clothing, and fashion industry allowing us to show our features in displays of status all the way to enabling us to walk in space.
Compose music
> Theorize - I always thought cats who look at a gap for a while before jumping are theorizing if/how to make the jump.
Laika does not approve of this message :)
A bit of an aside, but I'm a bit puzzeled by this statement. There are many phonetic alphabets invented through history of course. Are you saying they all have the same root or inspiration?
I think you're thinking "alphabet", which indeed, has been independently invented multiple times. The most widely used alphabet is the one derived from the Phoenician script. Other alphabets that were independently invented include the Brahmic scripts and the Hangul script.
However, the "phonetic alphabet" (also known as the NATO phonetic alphabet) was only invented once. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet#
In contrast, alphabets have been invented multiple times completely independently without knowledge of the others.
There are many other writing systems but they tend to be pictorial or syllabic.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/writing/Types-of-writing-sy...
Over time, humans have demonstrated a vastly more impactful ability to manipulate our environment and ourselves than any other living organism we have encountered.
It does not even need scientific study to see these. Its common enough for causal observation.
There is, make fire and cook.
Cooking is to apply heat to transform raw ingredients into a different, often edible form. Bees make honey by collecting nectar from flowers, storing it in their honey stomach, and then regurgitating it into honeycomb cells. During this process they add enzymes to the nectar and fan their wings to reduce the water content, transforming it into honey. Bees transform raw material, but not by heating it.
Also, figuring out how to make fire is pretty hard. I’d argue it isn’t something “humans do” in general. It is one of the earliest examples of something that somebody figured out, (or maybe it was figured out independently in a couple different places) but mostly it is a taught skill.
Teaching and long distance running are our special abilities. In both cases other animals might do the thing, but we’re much better at it than they are.
IIRC that's more like a Australian media stunt from one single source, never verified or replicated.
There's this one guy trying to explain why there's wild fire and it's not any human's fault, which inadvertently caused a great debate "animals can utilize fire".
It doesn't bother me. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Far more interesting than the fact that animals “can” ape behavior is how they do - and how that differs from humans.
Check out the work of Richard Byrne [1]. Our best theories suggest that the way primates share behavior is through literal parsing and replication of sequences. A chimp is able to watch a fellow chimp complete a complex maneuver to open a nut, and can replicate that sequence. But the sequence can contain odd moves that obviously have no effect, and those moves too will be replicated. This signals a lack of understanding. Primates use an advanced copycat mechanism, which makes innovation very slow.
The way humans learn and transfer behavior is vastly different. We watch another complete a task and develop an explanation for how it works. Our reproduction isn’t us following a literal sequence, but using our understanding/mental model to solve the task. For example, if I watch a complex sequence to open a tricky nut, I’ll have developed a model for the physics of the nut, weak points, ways to get leverage, etc. I might memorize and repeat your sequence, but I might also get creative with my own method, knowingly or not.
And, of course, we can do this one-shot.
It’s the difference between a parrot mirroring words and a person retelling a story they heard.
We are super different than animals, and denying that fact will hide important secrets about knowledge and creativity.
[1] https://web.media.mit.edu/~cynthiab/Readings/Byrne-99.pdf
We’re not unique in our ability to imitate, but we are unique (for now) in our ability to imitate well enough that imitated behaviors are stable enough to evolve.
So for instance I think it's pretty well known that monkeys in Bali have taught themselves how to steal from tourists and then exchange the goods for treats. [1] And that was entirely self-learned/taught. That, to me, seems somewhat more impressive than putting a ball in a drawer, yet didn't really leave me with any awe beyond what one would normally have when interacting with monkeys. And such things leaves me decidedly unimpressed with chimps and a drawer, and even more cynical about the language used to describe it.
[1] - https://www.sciencealert.com/how-wild-monkeys-in-bali-took-t...
Edit: Going to the source papers clarifies a little, the hypothesis they're challenging relates specifically to social learning for "the knowledge of the production of a particular trait" and not learning in terms of recreating existing behaviors.
This would probably also be why pets and birds would be excluded. While they can learn and teach each other various things, most of those things are not relating to production and can be difficult to separate from behaviors that should be considered to already be part of the species' repertoire. Bird song or whale song may be a sort of learned "culture" but it's so endemic to their species that it's treated as distinct from what's being discussed.
But the point of this study is about extremely difficult problems that an animal couldn't solve by itself, unlike my fence that the cat would have probably solved by brute force given a certain time.
I tried to capture in when I noticed it happening on 2015, but you can't easily hear the sound, some of it was audible to me, but not with the camera I had (I had to grab the closest thing I could find).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYl_d7dc-EY
If you watch at 0:50, you'll see in a few seconds the crow is doing a whole-body movement. That's it making the sound, which I could feel against my skin. If you crank it, you can hear the weird, audible part of it.
Then, before they really went to work again... one of the crows noticed me. And you can see at the end, the other gets really pissed that it didn't notice me.
Basically, he walks to where he can see in my house, spies me, and is all "YOU BASTARD!"
Part of an email I sent to a friend at the time: -- This is the first time I've noticed this behaviour.
Crows can make sounds, and hear sounds, outside of our range of hearing.
And, it was raining. Soaking the topsoil.
It is also grub season. Soon, June bugs will appear, but right now they are in grub form, but pupating. I'm not sure if the added density helps in detection or not.
You'll likely have to turn this up. I had to grab the nearest device I had, so the resolution sucks too.
Watch the larger crow, as it walks around, sounding for grubs. It did this over a large portion of my lawn.. systematically.
Wild stuff. --
From what I've read, beavers build dams instinctually if they hear running water. This applies to beavers raised in captivity that were separated from their parents. It's both an unusual behavior and one that seems (on the surface) like it would take plenty of reasoning.