Cognition

[smokingboot]

I have no problems believing in animal cognition. It's human cognition I begin to doubt.

The article below (Psychiatric News, March 1, 1996) is about tool creation/application as evidence of cognitive ability in crows, and a defining feature of humans. I'm not sure I could pass a test like that! Let's see if I can turn it into a link:


http://www.jcrows.com/crow.html

Comments

[thalinoviel.livejournal.com]

Hmm, as I've been suspecting for a long time, we're not a master race at all... I heard a few years back that a party of oceanographers had observed an octopus knapping flints to use as cutting blades: I must see if I can find the report (and, indeed, whether it was genuine.)

[thalinoviel.livejournal.com]

Can't find it. I found playful octopi (though I must warn you about the author's regrettable misuse of punctuation) and a more general discussion with some interesting references.

Extraordinary stuff

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I haven't had much time for Octopi/pods/pusses, since I learned that their anuses are often mistaken for their mouths, but this info is fascinating, and I promise myself to like them more and eat them less/not at all.

I do worry about the implications of a world full of cognition in one form or other, birds and beasts and sea-dwellers. On the one hand, it sings to the Narnian in my soul and I really want it to be true. On the other hand if it is true, what mankind is doing to the other intelligences of earth is inconceivably barbaric.