More proof of Primate intelligence

[Catherine]

They are still testing primates like Orangutans, Chimps and Bonobos to understand their intelligence.
Increasingly they are finding that they think more like us than was previously thought.

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&ur...BQ_tFVCVqA


The findings are significant. If they really think like we do then they are closer to us than we are acknowledging. If they think like humans then we are going to need to rethink how we treat the great apes. There is some possibility of the great apes having non human personhood status. I wonder if that is enough. These animals think like we do and are clearly "family". At very least we need to stop killing them and destroying their habitat. At best we need to admit that they are our cousins and treat them as such.
I hope we do the right thing before we cause them to be extinct.

[Tobi]

I do hope that these findings start to wake us up to the awareness and consciousness of many animals, including the Primates.

[Catherine]

The more they study primates the more amazed they are. For too long we have taken human speech as a sign of intelligence.
The more I hear the presidential debates in the USA the more I suspect it is not speaking that is the sign of intelligence.

Seriously though, we are just starting to measure intelligence in other creatures. We barely know how to understand it in animals like chimps that are so like us. Some day we will have to admit that we have made some terrible mistakes in the way we treat our great ape cousins. We owe them a lot of apologies and anything else that will help fix what we have done.

[LPC]

Good find, Catherine. I have bookmarked it for careful reading and follow-up later.

Humans in the past were incredibly arrogant about the fact that only they were truly "intelligent" and that they were free to use animals as they wished, as they were "just animals". Many people still think like that.

It is time such people woke up. The evidence is piling up every day.

[Catherine]

Every study they do makes it increasingly clear that primates have intelligence, just like we do. We just had to learn how to measure it. Now that we have open minded people doing the testing we are getting results.

There are still people who think animals have no intelligence, no feelings and basically run on instincts. It would be interesting to test those people for intelligence. They have not learned to think and they are unable to observe. Most primates are smarter than that.

[Tobi]

(10-12-2016, 02:11 PM)Catherine Wrote: There are still people who think animals have no intelligence, no feelings and basically run on instincts. It would be interesting to test those people for intelligence. They have not learned to think and they are unable to observe. Most primates are smarter than that.

Yes, it would help people who are trapped in that kind of thinking, to learn to think for themselves, not what they might have heard in the past from other closed-minded people or 'scientific reports' etc, and to observe, finding their own conclusions from quiet open minded observation. That's how I learned. If we let our conditioned thoughts go, and be quiet, animals will show us quite interesting things.
It's amazing how many people who consider themselves rational or sceptical, or 'not sentimental', haven't yet learned to think for themselves.

[Catherine]

Quote:It's amazing how many people who consider themselves rational or sceptical, or 'not sentimental', haven't yet learned to think for themselves.

It is  amazing how many people have not learned to think. Because they don't think they are not able to recognize thinking in others(animal or human).

I also think some people are threatened by the idea of animal intelligence. They are not secure enough in themselves to be comfortable with an intelligent animal. Maybe they are scared that the animals will out think them. In many cases that is what would happen.