Cuz Animals Are People Too, Ya Know?

Publius Forum ^ | 12/23/09 | Warner Todd Huston

[anglian]

Oh. Cass Sunstein! “Cass Sunstein has the bizarre belief that animals should have the right to sue humans.”

[Mobile Vulgus]

It should be simple to point out anyone here who is seeking such. Can you produce the links to such FR posts? WHO was talking about this? Just YOU as far as I can see. Are you an idiot? My initial post was a response to the linked piece, not ANYTHING written here. Dude, seriously. Get a clue, huh?

[anglian]

ok. I guess NPR’s Doofus ‘Holy Baboon! Robert Krulwich - and Publius Forum’s ‘animals to get courts rights!’ Warner Huston, BOTH over-reacted. Then again perhaps I did also. No offend to you intended MV.

[Mobile Vulgus]

Not to worry. It’s just a discussion. Merry Christmas.

[Hot Tabasco]

Of course we don’t know why the animals stopped and remained so quiet

Its obvious the baboons realised they were being observed so they decided to communicate telepathically.....

[SunkenCiv]

Holy Baboon! A 'Mystical' Moment In Africa
by Robert Krulwich
December 22, 2009

Barbara Smuts... was following a small group of Gombe baboons on the eastern edge of Kenya. She'd been with them seven days a week for weeks and weeks, joining them before dawn, spending 10 hours a day just following, watching and taking notes. One day, she says, the whole noisy group was ambling back to its "sleeping trees" (baboons sleep off the ground, up on the limbs of trees or cliffs to keep away from predators) along the shore of a stream. "I followed them walking along this stream many, many times before and many times after," she says, "but this time was different." All of a sudden, Smuts says, "without any signal perceptible to me," every one of the baboons, the adults, the little ones, all of them, stopped walking and sat down on the edge of a pool of water. They not only stopped walking; they stopped talking. "Even the little kids, and you know kids are always making noises, but even they got quiet." The quiet was total. "I really wondered what was going on," says Smuts. The baboons didn't focus on any one thing. They all, or most of them, gazed down into the little pool right below them and hardly moved. There was no fidgeting, no touching or grooming, no discernible activity, just a communal "almost sacramental" contemplation. Smuts calls it a "sacred" quiet. Then, after a short period of time, "again with no perceptible signal," the troop came alive and resumed its noisy walk down the stream. Barbara Smuts is the only scientist ever to have described behavior like this among baboons.

[SunkenCiv]

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	Gods Graves Glyphs	I was one click away from posting the NPR story as a topic, and did a last-second search. The Scars of Evolution: What Our Bodies Tell Us About Human Origins by Elaine Morgan "The most remarkable aspect of Todaro's discovery emerged when he examined Homo Sapiens for the 'baboon marker'. It was not there... Todaro drew one firm conclusion. 'The ancestors of man did not develop in a geographical area where they would have been in contact with the baboon. I would argue that the data we are presenting imply a non-African origin of man millions of years ago.'" To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
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[P.O.E.]

Or would you like to swing on a star?

[Monkey Face]

Jeeze Louise. What next? I really want to barf when I hear narrators assign human emotions to animals, as if the humans could read the minds of the animals in question.

Granted, some animals are fiercely loyal, and often show playful or contemplative emotions.

But the way I look at it is this: animals don’t think in words. They think in pictures. And if they are predators, they are more guided by instinct than, “Gee. I’m hungry. I’m gonna go find an elk herd and have lunch. Wanna join me?”

Yes, they recognize “words” and associate certain actions with the words. Most likely, it is the tone of voice you use in the beginning that gets the animal’s attention. After a while, they begin to associate that string of sounds with actions, like the filling of a food bowl.

</rant

[BIGLOOK]

"I really wondered what was going on," says Smuts.

[SunkenCiv]

Yeah, I had the same thought. That or a hippo.

[colorado tanker]

The quiet was total. “I really wondered what was going on,” says Smuts. The baboons didn’t focus on any one thing. They all, or most of them, gazed down into the little pool right below them and hardly moved. There was no fidgeting, no touching or grooming, no discernible activity, just a communal “almost sacramental” contemplation. Smuts calls it a “sacred” quiet.

They were thinking, geez when will that stupid human quit following us around watching everything we do??!!