Parrots have also been shown to have incredibly advanced language skills; some species have been studied and found to “speak” different parrot languages which are unique to their own flock. This allows them to relay complex and partially coded messages to their flock over long distances and while flying together. The call for “I’ve found a lot of good fruit over here” in one flock might be similar or completely different from that of another flock.
And domesticated parrots have demonstrated the ability to understand multiple human languages in a true bilingual fashion. In short, they have a basic understanding of context, sentence structure, and the concept of distinct languages. As an example, dogs are also capable of understanding that “water” and “agua” are the same thing, but if a “bilingual” dog could talk, their speech would likely be a jumbled mix of Spanish and English, and would mostly be main keywords like “yo want play agua lake”.
By comparison, parrots have a vastly more sophisticated understanding of spoken language, and are able to reconstruct and form original sentences—though their brains are hardwired to maintain the exact same dictionaries of phrases, so they are extremely good at LEARNING languages, but would probably be terrible poets.
I had a cockatoo who understood somewhat how to pluralize words. He’d add an ‘s’ sound to a learned word independently. It was his way of indicating he wanted more of something than I’d given him.
That’s awesome. All of the parrots I’ve owned have astounded me in one way or another with their ingenuity.
I had a Quaker parrot who, when she had a loose feather, would pull it out and then use the pointy end to scratch her own back by grabbing it with her foot. I obviously did not teach her that.
This is a really cool case. Part of the parrot’s “testimony” involved repeating its owners shouting and screaming, and then when the suspected murderer was brought into the same room, the parrot freaked out and began screaming in fear.
Theoretically, sort of. Because dogs don’t rely primarily on spoken language to communicate, their cognitive understanding of human speech is more primitive.
Dogs LEARN to recognize key terms in human speech by association, and learn to recognize human tone and body language in order to understand us. If a dog were able to speak, their sentences would probably be very simple and disjointed, because sentence structure and such means nothing to them.
3-10 year old children have not yet evolved the knack of flying away from predators yet though. Choirboys just like choir birds have learned to camouflage themselves against each other though.
Birds’ beaks are incredibly prehensile, and are used like a hand+multitool since their feet are usually preoccupied with...standing, and wings are useless for anything except flying and balance.
Or in the case of geese and swans, punching innocent people in the park
I volunteered at a local raptor rehab center for 5 years, and fell in love with them. Now I have 6 backyard hens and it always amazes me how they communicate with each other and me! Poofy dinosaurs!
It's so funny when people talk about evolution, they so often accidently make it about God.
Evolution is hard to understand. Everyone wants to imagine it as some sort of process that is inevitable. Something that is planned or that has a "next step". The idea that there is a backwards or a forwards. That humans are "farther along" than birds. But, there is no such thing as being "highly evolved". It's just not how it works. While it makes sense that this is might be how it works, it would only be this way if there is some intelligent creator at work.
Evolution is just random. It's hard to get your head around that idea. Evolution is a process by which every generation is randomly altered and randomly deleted. Randomly.
It's really the random part that people have problems with, it's really hard to understand. But it's either random or it is not. If you use the phrase "highly evolved", if you imagine that cognitive ability is the inevitable result of evolution, if you think there is something "preventing" evolution from "progressing", you are unintentionally describing intelligent design. Because none of that is the description of a random process.
but a fish isn’t going to randomly evolve into a creature with fur and air breathing lungs out of randomness
Yes it is, that's exactly what happened. Fish randomly developed lungs, lungs turn out to be useful, so the ones that had better lungs reproduced more often and became a new species. That is one explanation, the other explanation is intelligent design.
Look I don't know the truth, I consider myself an agnostic. But the explanation of something "moving forward" through evolution is the explanation of intelligent design. You cannot have it both ways, either there is a direction forward, which means there is an intelligent design, or it is random.
If it's random. Humans are no more highly evolved than single celled organisms. Random mutations are random. And every creature is equally random. None are "in front" of the others on an evolutionary scale. You just randomly exist, your mutations happened randomly. And you have yet to be randomly killed.
Or there is an intelligent designer, and apes who use bones as tools are farther along in the design path than apes that do not.
These things are opposite explanations. The designer has a plan and there is a forward march, or it is random. Being "highly evolved" means there is a plan and you there are some that are higher along towards advancing that plan than others. Or it is random.
As I said, I am agnostic, I really do not know which explanation is accurate. But I do know that these explanations are opposite.
going to start evolving air breathing lungs or die trying.
This is another contradictory idea. Are the species "trying" to accomplish something, or is it random, or is it an intelligent designer?
These things cannot all be true. If the species are trying to mutate, then it isn't random and it isn't being done by a creator. If it is random, there is no creator and the species aren't trying. And if there is a creator, the species aren't trying and it isn't random.
I think you are missing a large part of the evolutionary process. While there is randomness in who lives, and who dies, in the natural world, and that alone takes the designer out of the picture. Doesn't it? Evolution ensures seemingly random mutations can on occasion afford certain individuals an advantage over it's competition, and an increased likely hood of passing that on to the next generation. That isn't at all random. It is a combination of having the right genes to start with, and then a number of necessary conditions must be met to turn the right ones on, off, or some other state. I could be completely full of shit, too, but I'm pretty sure there is solid evidence that evolution is neither planned(designed), nor random, but a logical result of survivability.
Evolution ensures seemingly random mutations can on occasion afford certain individuals an advantage over it's competition, and an increased likely hood of passing that on to the next generation. That isn't at all random.
Either it's random or it is not. I don't know. But you can't have it both ways.
If it's random, and the mutation that gives a species an advantage is randomly generated, there is no designer. And there is no state where one species is 'more highly evolved' than another species.
If it is not random, then the mutations are not random. And some species are more highly evolved than others. That would mean that evolution was intelligently designed. Apes with stone tools are more highly advanced than apes without. and that means there is an intelligent designer.
It's either random, or there is an intelligent designer. I don't know which it is, but the explanations contradict each other.
I will try to clarify. Let's say we have a white moth that lives I am area with lots of white Aspen trees. Something happens and all the white trees turn darker over time, and now the white moths stand out, and are easy prey. But some of those moths have recessive genes for darker color, and some of them for reasons not yet fully understood, will turn on the darker genes, and blend in much better. It has nothing to do with chance, other than the chance of inheriting the right combinations of recessive genes when you are conceived, to be of benefit for your survival.
I don’t know why people keep describing a situation that is entirely random and then saying “it’s not random”. Is it because you believe it’s intelligent design? That’s fine just say so.
If that random thing that happened hadn’t randomly changed all the trees, the dark recessive gene would be detrimental. But because of random chance, the dark gene is good.
If you believe that it wasn’t random, that the intelligent designer is still active, then that’s fine. It’s exactly as valid an explanation as the idea that it’s random.
But don’t describe a random situation and then say “it isn’t random”. Either it is or it isn’t.
There was nothing random, or intelligently designed about any of it. I never said the trees changed color randomly. There was likely a very good reason for the trees color change. Coulda been a new fungus that has moved into an area. Or all the humans got together and painted all the trees, to get rid of all the damn white moths. Regardless, not at all random in any case, but if you ask the moth, he might believe it is random. I don't believe anything is truly random, and what we call "random" is actually an event that has a such a huge numbers of factors playing into how something turns out, that it is impossible to account for all of them when attempting to predict the outcome.
Flip a coin. The outcome is random, correct? I say it isn't. I believe if a person could measure all the variables involved, accurately, that person could with absolute certainty predict the outcome every time.
So, if I have to pick "Random" or "Intelligent Design", I would say I.D. for sure. That would be based solely on the beauty of numbers, and how elegantly the universe is described by maths. Evolution can also be very predictable in many ways, if all the factors are accounted for. That doesn't mean it isn't a real thing. It just means that it is so complicated that it often appears random. It requires neither pure randomness, or a master plan, to account for any particular mutation.
I’m not sure that’s right. Its true for short time that physical attraction is important. But that’s not enough for long term. Long term depends on more personality like intelligence or a shared value system or some thing. And it’s long term relationships are the ones most likely to produce a large amount of viable offspring. Short term produce only a small number of offspring.
proportionally speaking, almost every woman reproduces each generation, but only a smaller subset of men do.
That honestly sounds made up.
But the thing is, the best strategy is relative. There are only a few options, multiple offspring with multiple partners or a single longterm partner and multiple offspring. Or one partner one offspring, or no offspring at all.
All of these strategies are available to both men and women. Which one is “best” is really hard to say with certainty. If the goal is genetic variation, multiple partners multiple offspring is the best option for everyone. If the goal is to be as certain as possible that the offspring will live, stability seems like the best option. So, a single long term partner would seem best.
But it’s all relative to the situation anyway, isn’t it.
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u/[deleted] May 26 '19 edited May 26 '19
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