Oh, big whoop. Puppies are brighter than human babies at nine months, for crying out loud.
CHIMPANZEES have long been known for their ability to mimic humans. Now scientists have found that baby chimps’ mental development can even be more advanced than children of the same age.
At nine months, the animals are just as curious and capable of recognising carers and familiar objects as the average baby. When compared with infants kept in isolated conditions in orphanages, the animals are even more advanced.
For one thing, you can house train a puppy in weeks.
Try that with a baby.
There is, I think, a pretty good analogy to hardware and software here. Human beings are born with a great deal of ability to be programmed. Other animals are born with far less. Hard-wired devices work right away; programmable devices require the software to be written. It takes years for the "software" for a human to be written. The fact that humans are far more "programmable" than any other creature explains both why we are born far more helpless than any other creature and why we can blog, compose Don Giovanni, paint Nighthawks, explain the orbits of the planets, etc. On the other hand, it explains why we can write op-ed pieces in the New York Times, so it's not entirely good.
remember status of development and potential for development are arguments used by both the abortionists and the right to life sides.
we need not open this debate across species.
The biological distinction is known as altricial vs precocial. Altricial mammals spend longer in the womb and are born at a higher level of development then precocial infants. Ir is believe to be an evolutionary characteristic determined by the species need for the progeny to be able to hit the ground running or not. There is an evolutionary trade-off between risk to infant-laden females vs susceptibility to loss of newborns. Human infants are precocial and as a result require more attendant care longer postpartum in order for development to complete to self-sufficiency, whereas other species, like chimps and puppies, hit the ground running a little sooner than we do.
precocial-vrs presocial
Im looking for an explanation for 40 years olds living at home with their parents- aka - my inlaws.
oh he cant afford to leave home, right now he is just down at the store looking at a 52 inch TV on his Harley,
"oh he cant afford to leave home, right now he is just down at the store looking at a 52 inch TV on his Harley"
I take your point, cal, but i think you've answered your own question. Let's not forget our priorities...
Stevie - yes they call him that- could make one change ones mind on alot of things.including my first comment.
my own horrid spawn have averaged out a leaving time of about 19 -20 years.
Tortoise and the hare developmentally-speaking - and we all know who wins in the long-run.
" they are extremely social animals like human being were hundreds of thousands of years ago",but they do not live in cities by the millions or pay taxes to support ridiculous statements like that. Quite possibly recognized their care(e)rs at an early age as well.
Young people are very capable of learning but they are kept in hothouses in the majority of households. My little brother could play cribbage when he was four years old because his older siblings would not play with him unless he could play a real game. George Washington was the captain of a navel ship when he was 12, my great uncles had a job herding bulls when they were 8 and 9 years old; they lived in a tent, cooked their own meals and took turns sleeping, they had a collie dog to help them and a rifle to protect them. Kids can do and learn lots of things but they won't if they are allowed to remain babies - like your brother-in-law Cal 2.
I yet again refer to the Onion - they have the bases covered on anything - and Clinton is prescient referring to Pelosi's plan in the last sentence!
http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~arobic/funny/babies.html
For sure . . . a BFO
Blinding Flash of the Obvious.
Puppies don't need diapers either.
Now kittens (when they are alive and not being eaten by you know who) come house trained at birth. Just point their nose at the litter box and they just know what to do.
Skip, I think you typed your terms in reverse order :)
I haven't read the article yet, but obviously the writer forgot something most kids know: a dog ages 7 'human' years for every year of it's life. Or, as previous commenters said, altricial versus precocial.
Yeah, well, I'm more interested in what human beings can do when they grow up ... compared to chimpanzees when they grow up.
My daughters take me out to dinner and a movie or buy me a bottle of rum and present it with coke, lime, and tasteful glass tumblers -- all ready to go. I don't know any chimps or dogs, for that matter, that can do that!
I don't mind changing babies' diapers!!
As for the research that shows that "The more intimate [the chimps'] contact with their carers, the faster their brains develop ... [and] that the cognitive performance at nine months of those [chimps] which had received ... extra care was significantly better than the ... group [that didn't]":
This is what I have been observing over the years in children's ability to learn in the classroom. Children who have been neglected -- and they seem to be legion these days, mostly "benign neglect" -- seem most at risk when it comes to to cognitive development and processing skills.
Children who have had an "intimate" caregiver, one-on-one, when they were infants and in the first few years of life, are being verbally stimulated and receive instant and constant feedback. Their vocabularies are stretched and their interest in the world around them is constantly reinforced, thus forming more complicated synapses in the brain, which can be utilized when they enter school and begin their formal academic training.
By contrast, children who are put in a communal caregiving setting from a very early age are deprived of this enriched, one-on-one give-and-take with some pretty dramatic consequences when they enter school. We are seeing increasing numbers of highly at risk children entering kindergarten and grade one, one reason being, IMO, that too many children are lacking the kind of intimate care that encourages maximum brain development.
Glasnost, you are correct. Brain fart - its been a couple of decades since I dragged those terms out.
Fred....you are right.Our 9 week old kitten(Burmese Munchkin)didn't even need training.Just followed mom to the litter box.Some animals are way smarter then the so called homo "sapien".
What a surprise. An animal that has a life expectancy only a little more than half that of a human also develops quicker. Who knew?
Where do liberals rank on this study, I would think toilet training a liberal would be much the same as a cat since, liberals domesticated cats, and some keep them around for company and substinance. I think I will ask the liberals new leader that Bourque had a ten page odessey about this morning. Rocco, or Ross the intern, I'm not sure, is here to save the liberals, what a job, could get him on Dirty Jobs though.
Toilet training a Liberal . . . utterly hopeless.
Like trying to break Liberals from eating cats.
Wonder how Iggy likes his kittens cooked ? Does he share recipes with Kantsellit ?
"remember status of development and potential for development are arguments used by both the abortionists and the right to life sides.
we need not open this debate across species."
Actually cal2 in I think Steinbach MB they found a puppy mill and took I think 200 dogs in. but they would not fix the female dogs in case any of them were pregnant for lone menstrual cycle because it might kill the masses of cells also called puppies. Dogs get the right to life, it's people who do not.
As long as we care about slutty wenches who would rather kill their children to save them from a fate worse than death like adoption and who cannot control their body, well we are in socialist times...
Yes it is true chimps and dogs are smarter at birth than kids although I have never seen a dog build a road. Likewise I have never seen a chimp invent a micro processor. Then again some kids never learn, they stay NDP'ers for life.
I lost my dog today. I can confirm that she was far smarter than my children at an equivalently young age in the zero to two year old range.
Even in death she was the most loyal companion, sparing us the most cruel decision we would ever have to make. She died in our arms before getting to the vet.
Condolences Jan :-(
Thank you, Erik.
The study says that "When compared with infants kept in isolated conditions in orphanages, the animals are even more advanced." Infants who are isolated suffer considerable impairment, and it's only the impaired infants that the baby chimps compare favourably to.
"Puppies are brighter than human babies at nine months, for crying out loud."
Yeh, but at nine months most human babies are significantly more morally developed than Lucy Warman.
Dogs generally live about 15 years - chimps live to be 60. Considering that they are the closest living relatives of our species, it's interesting to note that we apparently may have regressed as far as early childhood development goes while simultaneously evolving more complex cranial functions. It could be very useful to figure out what lead to that regression.
Of course, using toilet-training as a sign of intelligence is just silly, especially since there's a physical component to it. We have much better metrics which we can use.
oh i dunno....i was breast fed by my Ma till i was about 16 years old....i don't think it adversely affected my development....in fact i think it actually improved my musical skills(i play the tuba)...
and when i see pitchers of them Trobriand islanders nursing piglets i just say to mesself.."oh, that's nice...perhaps one day i'll see a tuba playing pig on TV'....
Let's list off a monkey's accomplishments.....uh, um, ummmmmmm, ummmmmmmmmm.......I've got nothing.
remember the monkeys , apes and pigs have more noble prizes than the arabs according to arabs own designations.
where is "new" and "ted" when we need some inane banter ?
"I've got nothing"
I have a feeling that this would be your response on a great variety of subjects. What have you got on the decay rate of heavy charged leptons?
is that a spin-1/2 european lepton or a spin-1/2 african lepton?
Q: What did the lion do to the particle physicist?
A: It lepton him!
nobody freaks out when you put the puppy out the back door for whining and being a nuisance,
Try that with junior.
Honey, I'm taking junior for a ride, I'll be right back.
Jan, I'm sorry for your loss.