I was pushing him in the stroller while he was napping, and at the orangutan exhibit, one came up to the window and gestured towards the stroller.
I turned the stroller to face the window, and removed the hood.
The orangutan blew my son a kiss, waved then went back to the otherside of its enclosure.
Made me rethink what I knew about animal intelligence.
Staring into their eyes it is impossible to deny we are them and they are us. Their facial expressions, emotions, reactions, playfulness and also anger, jealousy and all the rest are incredible to be a part of. Often I was on the other side of a fence, but the times I was right in the middle of it all are something I will never forget as long as I live.
I have no doubt future generations will look back on us as heathens for keeping intelligent animals locked in cages.
I find out use of wording interesting, and it helps justify putting them in cages and doing experiments on them.
https://twitter.com/amazlngnature/status/1782416298636345452
Excuse being the kill joy: the fellow might be mimicking a gesture it learned from other visitors. That's not to say they don't have an inner life--we're all made of the same substrate, after all.
And that differs from us how exactly ?
Not that the anecdote proves their guess is more right than yours, but afaik there is more evidence of animals mirroring unthinkingly than understanding.
I have learned this from my toddler son who picked up some 2 3 word sentences from the cartoons that he watches. He ofcourse has no clue what those words mean, but he does know when to use them and what response he gets from them.
English isn't the language we speak at home but he picked up "wake up" when I am sleeping and try to wake me up, "careful" when doing something where he or one of us could fall. All by seeing and hearing things said repeatedly on similar actions in cartoons.
It wouldn't shock me if we did learn they can learn that way, but it also wouldn't shock me if it was just blindly copying human gestures without learning anything from what happens when they do.
Orangutans likely don't blow kisses in the wild, so it not only imitated it, but also used it in an appropriate manner and context, without an immediate need to satisfy.
Chimps are roughly as smart as a 5 year-old human, and toddlers sure blow kisses and wave goodbye with full intention.
Great apes are more human-like than most people think: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/science/17chimp.html
A dog asking for beggin strips…
Of course my dog will whine for food, or smack it’s water dish with her nose, but this felt much different akin to similar experiences I’ve had with strangers who smile and comment about how adorable my son was as an infant.
orangutan chef's kiss?
All the primates and megafauna especially, it is a tragedy.
I'm certain they'll be looked back on with shame.
Even as zoos market videos of animals "eating birthday cake" on social media.
See also zoos' dark history entwined with ethnological expositions https://archive.is/xsuEU
Many zoos provide homes, food, and veterinary care for animals that would not be able to survive in the wild. For example, the mountain lion at Arizona Sonora Desert Museum is blind, and many of their other animals had been kept illegally by their previous owners, were confiscated by Arizona Game & Fish, and needed a place to live so they wouldn’t die.
It's objectively the greatest evil humans have ever committed, and for our own pleasure at that. We inflict pure hellish suffering because "tAsTe bUdS gO BRRR!"
It's hard to even comprehend something more comically, absurdly evil, both in terms of motive and sheer scale of suffering.
At least zoos do trigger an empathy response and get people to care about animals more.
Purely for taste.
> We need to eat meat.
False. 10-20% of the world population does not and we're just fine.
> So we need to kill animals for that.
No, you want to kill animals because you want tasty food. Not because you "need" meat. No one living in an industrialized country does. It's trivial to create a plant-based balanced diet (and a tasty one at that.)
> Zoos absolutely not required for humans to survive.
Neither are factory farms. They exist to satisfy "taste buds go brr." But that is not worth literally torturing[1] an animal to death.
Our interaction with other life on this planet is very human centric, some call this human supremacism. A line is drawn between us and other animals, and the justification is quite arbitrary in my opinion. A line that is used to justify a vast number of atrocities and systemic exploitation. I don't believe there is no meaningful difference between a human and a cricket. But between a human and a dog or pig? That's close enough that I'm willing to extrapolate.
Now a bird/snake generally will be gone given the chance- but they truly are wild animals, while dogs are bred to be co-dependent with humans.
In addition the chances they want to escape are smaller than for birds. I looked it up and found this source https://www.petlink.net/blog/chance-dogs-coming-back-run-awa... that says "The unfortunate reality is that 15% of dogs across the United States go missing.". For context that's not 15% of dogs want to leave and do so. What's the percentage of dogs that had the chance to leave? Let's say 50%, which would imply that given the chance 1 in 3 dogs left. Albeit not all of the because they disliked their home/prison.
Looking at the language used in that article exposes some mental gymnastics. They simultaneously state that dogs could find their way back if they wanted and compare it to loosing a child! No, the dog is not a child, and if the reasons you provide why they "go missing" are "Fear from loud noises, Easy escape routes, Boredom and Prey drive" I find it hard to ignore that these are adult conscious beings that may not want to live with us, and only do so when given no alternative.
I wouldn’t be able to survive in the wild.
Some dog breeding is nonsense. But for the most part, we adapted to each other. If you look at the most efficient land predators, it’s humans, cats and dogs. (Dogs are also the only fellow persistence hunting mammals and, apart from some lizards, the only animals to practice it period [1].)
Our domestication of herbivores is exploitative. Our domestication of dogs and acceptance of cats is far closer to an alliance.
This is not true of any pet I’ve had. The dog was always gunning for an open door. And the cat enjoys unsupervised time outdoors when weather permits. They both always came home.
Also, cats aren’t truly domesticated. If there is a creature that “chooses” to live with us, it’s cats.