Blackfish

[Fairweather]

Did any of you watch the documentary Blackfish on CNN last night? I'm not a big animal rights guy, but I've believed for a long time that Orcas and a few other species belong to a much higher order of sentient beings. The presentation was compelling and sickening at the same time. The bastards at SeaWorld and similar parks should be jailed the same as any other kidnappers and violent abusers.

[olyclimber]

what about ravens? they are the highest order of beings.

[Fairweather]

Smart little fuckers, for sure. One of the few species that have ever been observed using tools, I've read somewhere. And those barrel rolls they do up at Muir serve no purpose but fun.

[bstach]

Ravens on Mt Baker unzipped my backpack and stole my meat and cheese (while we were off practising skills). Fuckers just left me ichiban.

[ivan]

we should probably all be buddhists - americans have far more in company w/ bubbas though

[prole]

I missed it, but I did came across a great 2-part podcast on the state of the world's oceans recently, here.

[W]

My wife and I watched Blackfish last night. Indeed- powerful and compelling. The intelligence and perception abilities of these animals are remarkable. Seaworld's program is nothing short of outrageous abuse. Moreover, the apparent disregard for the safety of their staff by extension is criminal.

 

Ravens...ha. I love them. I once watched in dismay from two pitches up Weeping Wall in Canada as two of them attacked my backpack at the base- I'd forgotten and left an energy bar in the top lid. When I got down later, I expected to find my new pack shredded; instead I realized what I'd seen was one raven holding the end of the zipper, while the other bird pinched the zipper pull in his beak and unzipped the lid. They had then carefully removed my touque (this was Canada, eh?) and some spare gloves and set them aside then made off with my bar.

[tvashtarkatena]

Ravens on Mt Baker unzipped my package and stole my meat. Fuckers just left me ichi.

 

You were, indeed, exposed here.

 

Humans see animal intelligence and emotional range through a very narrow lens. We don't see most of what they do in the wild, our experiments are simplistic, and we've only crudely

deciphered a tiny fraction of their languages.

 

Adaption, nature's analog for distributed artificial intelligence, can seem like cognitive prowess - during his recent visit my biologist nephew told me of a spider that preys on other spiders than can mimic over 50 different kinds of prey when pretending to be stuck in its prey's web. Even a polar bear, the most imaginative predator in the world, hasn't been observed to have as many tricks up its sleeve (although it comes close).

 

Adaption sans higher intellect falls pretty short, however, when you observe, as I did in Vancouver several years back, 3 orcas after a marine show delicately balancing their last fish on their lower lip so they can tease the seagulls - presenting the fish, fading back - before gifting those fish to the seagulls in the end. It was the last part that really got me - lots of species play, but these animals have a strong sense of fairness that extends across the boundary of species - even a prey species no less. That's amazing.

 

Or, perhaps, those orcas were practicing some less than amazing seagull catch and release because they weren't hungry and had some time to kill. Maybe they were inviting those seagulls to become lunch next time. It would be great to be able to ask them.

 

We will eventually figure out how to communicate with orcas and the like. It will be interesting to hear their thoughts on their captivity and circus stardom.

Edited October 26, 2013 by tvashtarkatena

[tvashtarkatena]

The animal rights debate will become stickier in the future. That might be good practice for the inevitable sentient machine rights debate.

[ivan]

animals are raytarded - this goddamn dog i live w/ does fuck all but lick his balls all day

[olyclimber]

Yeah Pat, but humans also see you through a narrow lens as well, so there is that.

 

I think they would be interested in hearing your thoughts on captivity and circus stardom.

[tvashtarkatena]

Touche LOL

[Fairweather]

Ravens on Mt Baker unzipped my package and stole my meat. Fuckers just left me ichi.

 

You were, indeed, exposed here.

 

Humans see animal intelligence and emotional range through a very narrow lens. We don't see most of what they do in the wild, our experiments are simplistic, and we've only crudely

deciphered a tiny fraction of their languages.

 

Adaption, nature's analog for distributed artificial intelligence, can seem like cognitive prowess - during his recent visit my biologist nephew told me of a spider that preys on other spiders than can mimic over 50 different kinds of prey when pretending to be stuck in its prey's web. Even a polar bear, the most imaginative predator in the world, hasn't been observed to have as many tricks up its sleeve (although it comes close).

 

Adaption sans higher intellect falls pretty short, however, when you observe, as I did in Vancouver several years back, 3 orcas after a marine show delicately balancing their last fish on their lower lip so they can tease the seagulls - presenting the fish, fading back - before gifting those fish to the seagulls in the end. It was the last part that really got me - lots of species play, but these animals have a strong sense of fairness that extends across the boundary of species - even a prey species no less. That's amazing.

 

Or, perhaps, those orcas were practicing some less than amazing seagull catch and release because they weren't hungry and had some time to kill. Maybe they were inviting those seagulls to become lunch next time. It would be great to be able to ask them.

 

We will eventually figure out how to communicate with orcas and the like. It will be interesting to hear their thoughts on their captivity and circus stardom.

 

At first glance, I'm a skeptic--after all, the behavior you describe is similar to that of an Angler Fish. But there are a few videos of pods cooperating in threes and more to create waves to wash seal pups off of small ice floes. And in at least one instance, they place a doomed seal pup back up on the ice as a training exercise for the young Orcas in the pod. Not to get all philosophical, but this is clearly a social construction post-priori. In other words, a Border Collie will herd sheep--even if he's never seen one. It's phenotypical behavior. It's in his code--the code that sits in his BIOS chip, for lack of a better analogy. But this Orca behavior is being learned and passed on, and this puts them in a higher category, IMO. I'm convinced. The documentary also presented MRI scans that show enormous emotional centers in the Orca brain, and a heartbreaking segment where an entire pod tries to defend their doomed pups in Puget Sound (in 1970) while the SeaWorld bastards perform a combo kidnap/murder. Finally, if language lies at the center of culture--as most social scientists believe--then these whales really are more than simple mimes looking for a meal or a booty call.

 

I'd probably put elephants in this higher-ordered category too. They imprint learned behaviors on their young, cry for their dead--and often bury them.

 

[tvashtarkatena]

Kruger National Park sells elephant jerky in the gift shop. I asked a ranger about it. He told me that, while all large animal populations in the park are controlled to prevent environmental degradation, elephants must be culled by family group, rather than individual. This is part mercy, part safety, he explained. Elephants really don't forget, and after a period of mourning, they become angry and very dangerous.

 

I went on a four day guided walk in Umfolozi - another SA NP. Before heading out, we were instructed on what to do if we were charged by an animal - rhino (slowly move towards a large visual object like a tree - don't move as they (hopefully) run past you), cape buffalo (climb a tree, even if its an acacia with 3 inch thorns), lion (stand your ground), hippos (don't camp on riverbanks and, for gods sake, swim elsewhere), etc.

 

"You didn't mention elephant" I commented.

 

"Don't piss an elephant off" he replied.

 

Apparently, there is no escape from an elephant if it wants a piece of you and you don't happen to have 2 well trained guys with .458s handy to even the playing field.

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

Regarding the orca and seagull, the answer may well be 'none of the above'.

 

And given our propensity for misunderstanding, despite language, science, and all the rest, I'd wager we'll increasingly find that our behavior is more pre-programmed than many of us would like to think.

Edited October 26, 2013 by tvashtarkatena

[Fairweather]

Hard to say. The current belief is that we're pretty much blank slates at birth with a few exceptions like crying, and smiling. The imprinting and manipulation begins almost immediately, however.

 

A good book on the topic--still relevant, IMO--is The Social Construction of Reality, by Peter Burger and Thomas Luckman. It's pretty standard fare in most social science graduate programs; you'd probably like it.

[Fairweather]

http://matrix.static.nationalgeographic.com/video/places/regions-places/polar-regions/orca-juvenile-training-lex/

[tvashtarkatena]

I was the second person in my extended family to visit our relatives in Ireland (the other branch of a family that has had no contact in two generations). My Irish relatives were shockingly similar in behavior and emotional makeup to their US counterparts, despite no contact and having been raised in very different environments (Irish - originally small farmers, with the Yanks starting out as NYC tenement dwellers) an ocean apart.

 

I used to be an all nurture, not-much-nature person regarding humans. Not any longer. That was too much data to ignore, however anecdotal. Cultural persistence didn't come close to explaining such remarkable similarities for me.

 

We haven't a clue how the consciousness works yet, so this is all parlor discussion at this point, really.

 

Reckon we'll find out eventually. Then we'll be faced with the age old question of just how perfect we really want to be, who defines that perfection, and what we're willing to do to each other and ourselves to realize that.

Edited October 26, 2013 by tvashtarkatena

[tvashtarkatena]

Lots of pack predators cooperate similarly. Tag team hunting. Bubble nets. Once you've got a language ginned up, mealtimes come more often for those animals who can't rely on more basic means of communication and organization like chemicals and whatnot.

 

 

 

 

Edited October 26, 2013 by tvashtarkatena

[Fairweather]

Lots of pack predators cooperate similarly. Tag team hunting. Bubble nets. Once you've got a language ginned up, mealtimes come more often for those animals who can't rely on more basic means of communication and organization like chemicals and whatnot.

 

 

 

 

Not sure that any other species forgoes the kill and sets it up again like this. I'm probably wrong, though. Cats playing with mice? (God help me if I have to put cats in the "agency vested" column.) Wolves are almost certainly way up there, and the analogy with Orcas has been made for centuries.

 

As for your Irish nurture/nature thing, I agree it's compelling. But don't forget that a human newborn is one of the most helpless creatures on the planet. My guess is that there are hard phenotypic protocols that control behavior at birth, and then there are genes--maybe even ortholog code--that control how we interpret the social data we start accumulating at birth. If I had to guess right now, I'd say we humans are a 50/50 mix of nurture-nature. To go beyond this on the nature side, it seems to me, is a dark path that leads to a place my own European ancestors dabbled in not too long ago. Going back to my crappy BIOS/RAM/Hard-drive analogy, maybe the hard-wired cultural differences you describe on the nature side are akin to the way we process data--say, an Intel chip versus an ADM processor. Same bios/board instructions, same data inputs, slightly different interpretations hardly noticeable to anyone but "the other." Just spewing here.

Edited October 26, 2013 by Fairweather

[tvashtarkatena]

The fish gift is a seemingly unique behavior I've not seen before among wild animals. I have seen plenty of animals play with their food, including us, and cats and dogs do leave use presents now and then, but we aren't one of their typical prey species (well, not often, anyway).

 

As for just playing with food -

 

I once saw a raven with a mouse in his beak do the following near one of the Gorge's windy ridges:

 

He swooped up from the leeward side and into the slipstream, which tumbled him in a backwards somersault - during which he transferred the mouse from beak to talon, then dove whole transferring the mouse back to his beak. He repeated this over and over again.

 

The mouse probably didn't enjoy the ride as much as his air frame did.

 

There is a general principle here: we don't know as much as we think we might about the world. We would do well to keep this in mind when taking actions that will have a significant impact on it.

 

We also don't know as much about each other as we may think - even the people closest to us. As pattern recognition machines, fighting the urge to fill in the blanks is a necessary but difficult part of achieving a truer understanding of the world around us.

[Fairweather]

[video:youtube]eEhQ5nauXgY

[ZimZam]

Tillicum sure gets a lot of hand jobs. Couldn't believe the number of offspring he sired. Talk about fuckin' up the gene pool. Hopefully the Seaworld's of the world will dry up and go the fuck away. Mebe they can train Nodders instead.

[Fairweather]

Tillicum sure gets a lot of hand jobs. Couldn't believe the number of offspring he sired. Talk about fuckin' up the gene pool. Hopefully the Seaworld's of the world will dry up and go the fuck away. Mebe they can train Nodders instead.

 

That part was pretty funny. And, after all, what girl wouldn't want that on her resume? Can you describe your responsibilities during your time at SeaWorld? Um, yes, I frolicked in a small tank with kidnapped Orcas. I tossed them fish when they performed prescribed tricks and, on occasion, I gave them supervised handjobs.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Tillicum sure gets a lot of hand jobs. Couldn't believe the number of offspring he sired. Talk about fuckin' up the gene pool. Hopefully the Seaworld's of the world will dry up and go the fuck away. Mebe they can train Nodders instead.

 

That part was pretty funny. And, after all, what girl wouldn't want that on her resume? Can you describe your responsibilities during your time at SeaWorld? Um, yes, I frolicked in a small tank with kidnapped Orcas. I tossed them fish when they performed prescribed tricks and, on occasion, I gave them supervised handjobs.

 

Till-i-cum