They state that tentacle waving serves "as a communication system between cuttlefish."
Merely showing that a thing reacts to another thing doing something in a certain way is NOT showing the existence of a communication system between them.
(some ai said this, but I think AI should be perfect for defining common words :)
You can drum your fingers because you are bored, not to signal to the outside that you are bored. Strictly speaking me picking up on your boredness because you drum your fingers makes it communication anyways I think :).
A better example would be waving at someone, communicating "hello / look at me / I see you / here / I'm happy to see you / goodbye"
I do wonder if some of these people realize they may not be neurotypical, even if just slightly. A huge amount of human behaviors and communications are encoded how we move and how our face reacts. If for some reason you can't pick up on or interpret this, then human behavior can be quite confusing.
Even if someone were deliberately trying to convey they were bored via finger drumming, that communication only works in a social framework where we've mutually established a meaning to that behavior. If an alien were finger drumming on a table that would not necessarily indicate they were bored nonetheless that they wanted to convey that they were bored.
The storyteller uses some very impressive body language; it's great to see. It made me wonder if this is a particular strength of deaf storytelling, given that the audience has to be watching closely anyway.
Similarly, 99% of people will not appreciate an expressive signer as much as a vocalist.
That is just reality. I doesn't mean it is without value.
"But look, there are tons of people who speak English but still use Spanish to communicate with others who only or mostly speak Spanish"
"99% of those people would not be interested in Spanish if they or a loved one did not have problems speaking English".
Are you claiming everyone can "easily appreciate" a Spanish language singer as much as one they actually speak?
"Hearing folks can as easily appreciate a talented and expressive signer as a vocalist. " is a silly claim.
If that were the case everyone would be going to sign language concerts they dont understand.
Lots of folks feel similarly about opera.
It sounds like you've formed these opinions without ever exposing yourself to the things you have opinions about.
Like I said in my original response, that's ok. It can be a valid art form with less mass appeal. More people like swift than Miles Davis. That doesn't invalidate Miles Davis.
Sign languages are for humans. Even those of us with sharp hearing can learn to take greater advantage of the bandwidth available to us.
What they have actually shown - that cuttlefish react to another cuttlefish waving its tentacles - is clearly not showing that tentacle waving "serves as a communication system between cuttlefish.
The communication isn't the waving in "reaction" (it's not clear it's simply a reaction, but let's assume it is) to the original wave, but the original wave itself.
And the fact that it's also triggered by videos indicates it's not just a mechanical reaction (like some of the research about how plants "communicate" is which are essentially mechanical responses to stimuli).
However, this doesn't necessarily mean that the communication is meaningful. It just shows that a means of communicating exists.
Can these signs be an alphabet of some language?
I will donate my body as stockfeed to those remaining pets that your family/friends have after I die. Does that give me a pass?
You're really just saying that it's not immoral enough for you to justify actually bothering to do anything about it, such as inconveniencing others with your opinion. I can pretty much guarantee you it was impolite for people to share their opinions against slavery back in the day, too. All I can really hope is future people will look back on today as a dark period of ignorance about animals and sentience.
> There’s a clear difference between deciding not to eat something for cultural reasons than deciding not to eat something because it’s an intelligent, thinking creature.
I don't know how that turned into the conversation we have now. There is a clear difference between culturally choosing not to eat cute animals and being a conscientious objector. Whether you think it's harmful to take that stance publically or not is where we ended up.
For all we know, in the future we may look back on modern animal agriculture/ factory farming in the same way as we look back on slavery now.
If I can reduce harm in the world to sentient beings at the cost of something tasting slightly different then I will do my best to go down that path personally.
And if you stop elevating human sentience over everyone else for (??) reasons, it does become pretty black and white. Some people are still in the "recognizing it's an attrocity but still participating" stage, others are in the "actively (poorly) rationalizing the attrocity" stage, and many are in the "not yet realizing it's an attrocity" stage. Really only the people in the last one should get a pass, morally speaking.
Now you can eat what you want without having to resort to hypocritical cladistics that don't match reality.
There's a popular belief that cannibalism can cause prion disease. However, this seems not to be the case with famous outbreaks such as Kuru being the result of many members of the community eating or being exposed to the brain tissue of already infected individuals [2]. Concern of transmission via eating meat of animals with a prion disease was the reason for European bans on British Beef in the 90s and 2000s [3].
If you're concerned about exposure to prion disease then good news! They are rare diseases and research suggests that most (87%) of the few cases that do occur are due to protein misfolding in the individual (spontaneous CJD) rather than genetics (familial CJD) or prion exposure (iatrogenic and variant CJD) [4].
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170704234755/https://www.ninds... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)#Transmission [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopat... [4] https://doi.org/10.1002%2Fana.410430611
But boy, all those short YouTube docs about smart octos just came flooding back at the first bite.
Felt a lot like eating someone's dog, and I've steered clear since.
You don't have to be eaten alive. There are predators who will kill their prey before eating it. Cats are known for that.
- Forced (artificial) insemination - Calf separation (within 24hrs of birth, causes distress to mother too) - Male calf fate (typically sold into veal or beef production, often under low-welfare conditions) - Repeated pregnancy and high milking demands (3–4 pregnancies over ~4 years and are milked 2–3 times daily) - Health problems (mastitis, lameness, metabolic disorders etc) - Physical mutilations (dehorning/disbudding, tail docking and branding are routine) - Early culling (Productive lifespan is ~5 years, yet natural lifespan ~20 years) - Confinement and barren housing - Transportation and slaughter
Sentience is a lower bar, and even most trees pass it. [0] Sentience, when boiled down, "just about" means capable of responding to pain. Nothing more. Sapience comes with the less easy to define intelligence of an individual.
[0] One of many, many papers in this debated topic: https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1578
javascript free clickers,
can replace "www" with "old"
post is unarchivedDr Dolittle’s Parrot explaining how to learn “animal language”. Voyages of Dr. Dolittle , chapter 8
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59808603-the-mountain-in...
luotuoshangdui•19h ago