Xref: utzoo sci.skeptic:6905 sci.bio:4158 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!samsung!munnari.oz.au!metro!cluster!mango!raf From: raf@mango.cs.su.OZ.AU (A Stainless Steel Rat) Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,sci.bio Subject: Re: Non-human planning and communication Message-ID: <1640@cluster.cs.su.oz.au> Date: 13 Dec 90 16:29:07 GMT References: <1505@cluster.cs.su.oz.au> <1990Nov26.061137.27991@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> <1990Dec4.081503.1959@desire.wright.edu> Sender: news@cluster.cs.su.oz.au Reply-To: raf@basser.cs.su.OZ.AU (A Stainless Steel Rat) Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Australia Lines: 38 In article mcdaniel@adi.com (Tim McDaniel) writes: >Please note the cross-posting. Subject line was "Re: we are alien". >I recently read "Through a Window", by Jane Goodall. I loaned it out, >so I can't check details or give precise references. She describes a >band of chimps hunting a colobus monkey with an infant. The colobus >climbed a tree. Each chimp climbed one of the adjacent trees, one >chimp leaped into the tree with the colobus, the colobus mother leaped >to another tree, and the chimp there easily caught the infant and >killed it. Sounds like good planning and teamwork to me. In a book by Carl "Billions and Billions (tm)" Sagan called "The Evolution and Development of the Human Brain" he mentions two chimps that were working together in order to hassle a chicken. I don't remember the details but it was definitely a case of planning ahead and working together, basically to play a prank on the chicken (they were probably bored at the time and needed some comic relief :-). [...] >I've heard that dolphins will leap a barrier to be with orcas, as long >as the orcas aren't hungry (David Brin? Larry Niven?). Is this true? >Is there a correlation with intelligence, then? And why don't baboons >(dolphins) gang up against the vastly-outnumbered chimps (orcas) and >wipe them out, to end all such predation? Probably because they're not interested in such genocide when the vastly-outnumbered species is just trying to survive like everyone else. Not all creatures are that much like us, you know :-) raf -- Robert A Fabian | My opinions of employers are, no, raf@basser.cs.su.oz.au | the opinions employed by my, no no, Basser Department of Computer Science | the opinions of unemployed miners University of Sydney | are, no no no ...