Yeah, just animals.
“The story is about a troop of 30 baboons in Kenya that was being observed by professor Barbara Smuts who was studying them for several months.”
I will have to pass on comments here because they are sure to lead me into some sort of sixth grader’s stream of jokes...
Yeah, just animals.
Well, I’ve always felt animals are people... really tasty people that go good with mashed potatoes, at least in the case of Bovine-Americans and Porcine-Americans. :-)
****They all, or most of them, gazed down into the little pool right below them and hardly moved.****
Let me finish the essay:
They cautiously watched their own reflections in the water..and like most animals, were perplexed. Not sure if these reflections were hostile or submissive, they sipped the water cautiously - and as they did - the liquid baboons seemed to disappear.
You’ve got plenty of people right here on FR that think a cat or dog is as valuable, or more so, than a human life.
Stories here are posted about animal abuse and these people go off the deep end advocating everything from live torching to castration to beheading. Sure, animal abuse ought to be prevented through the threat of punishment, but I really don’t think it is worthy of prolonged torture and capital punishment for a cat.
I think it is some kind of mental illness and reflects a self-hatred and hatred of their fellow human beings. It is one of those mental illnesses that some part of society looks on with appreciation but really does no good for those suffering from it.
Not a particularly good point.
Charla is the lady who got so thoroughly chewed up by a chimp a while back.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of humans (using the term somewhat loosely) out there who would take great pleasure in doing the same damage or worse to another human being than the chimp did to Charla.
To love and respect all of God’s creatures is to be blessed.
I, for one, cannot accept that somehow torturing an animal is somehow not as barbaric as torturing a human being.
The evil required to do one, or both is equal.
Its obvious the baboons realised they were being observed so they decided to communicate telepathically.....
Holy Baboon! A 'Mystical' Moment In AfricaBarbara 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.
by Robert Krulwich
December 22, 2009
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I was one click away from posting the NPR story as a topic, and did a last-second search.To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.The Scars of Evolution:"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.'" |
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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
They were thinking, geez when will that stupid human quit following us around watching everything we do??!!