Humans Have the Intelligence; Animals Have the Smarts: Part Two

There’s no question that of all species on Planet Earth, modern humans, Homo sapiens, are top of the pops when it comes to intelligence (IQ). All other species, however close they might be in evolutionary terms to modern humans, pale in comparison. BUT, and there’s always a BUT, animals are way smarter, which raises questions about our actual relationship to them. Here I give numerous examples where animals are top of the pops when it comes to pure smarts.

Humans have the highest IQ; but animals have vastly more commonsense. How so? Let’s consider various settings, starting with one we all share – time and space.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

PHYSICAL ACTIONS

Good vs. Evil: Animals are neither good nor evil – those are human inventions or concepts. There are no animal equivalents of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There’s no point in saying “good doggie” or “bad pussy cat” since they have no concept of “good” or “bad”. They may have learned what is and is not acceptable behaviour (what does and does not piss you off) but they do not understand why. While not every human transforms from good to evil and back again, and again, every human, unlike an animal, is theoretically capable of having a dual good/evil personality. Individuals’ aside, when looking at any large sample of humans, the dual nature becomes obvious.

Revenge & Justice: No animal deliberately plots and executes revengeful actions or has hidden agendas. What you see is what you get. Animals don’t fly planes into skyscrapers. Animals couldn’t even conceive of such a scenario in their wildest dreams. Humans on the other hand – need I say more?

Law & Order: All animal societies have some sort of internal regulation system which almost seems to be ingrained or hardwired. Such regulation usually doesn’t go much beyond the parents keeping the cubs in line and ensuring they don’t put themselves in harms way. Humans on the other hand have formalized their regulation of themselves to such an extreme degree that comparing the regulation of human society to say self-regulation of massive ant, termite or bee colony societies (which does just fine without cops and lawyers), is comparing not so much apples and oranges as the simplicity of a single electron with the complexity of the global weather system. How is it that an animal society can regulate itself without the need for a massive judicial infrastructure and requirement for highly specialized legal eagles and law enforcers?

Killing #1: Animals kill only as necessary for their own survival, both in defence as well as obtaining food for themselves and perhaps offspring. Humans kill out of sheer sadistic pleasure, for so-called ‘sport’, often just because they can. My cats, if they wanted to, kill garden snails – the weight of one paw would do it. However, snails are not food and pose no threat to them, so it’s live and let live. That’s unlike many humans who if they see a snail, a snail doing no harm to them or anything else, just delight in stomping on them – an 80 kg human vs. an 8 gm snail is no contest. Now that’s if the snail is lucky. All too often the sadistic human will just step on the animal lightly enough to crack the shell, leaving the snail helpless to either dry out in the sun or be at the mercy of the ants. It’s a very sad state of affairs that such examples can be expanded on by many orders of magnitude over a very wide range of species. 

Killing #2: If an animal wants to kill a human it has to get up close and personal. The reverse isn’t of necessity true. I wonder how brave our so-called ‘sportsmen’ hunters would be if the animals they hunted could shoot back. The concept of ‘sport’ is about equal contests and the same rules for all. Hunting animals therefore is not sport and it is high time the glorification of sport was divorced from hunting, which is anything but a glorious activity. The exception might be if the hunter is putting food on the table, but again, that’s not a ‘sport’.

Creativity & Technology #1: Some animals can be creative and ‘manufacture’ and use ‘technology’ like animals that pull off twigs and fashion them to stick into termite mounds in order to pull out a termite snack, or making use of materials to build a nest. But that ‘technology’ never backfires and bites them on the bum. Humans invent cars, but we have a road toll. We have electricity and accidents happen. We construct nuclear plants then have to worry about terrorism. We have created computers, and thus evolved the inevitable computer hacker and the computer virus. We manufacture all sorts of synthetic chemicals then wonder what to do with the toxic waste (actually we don’t wonder at all what to do with it – we dump it in the sea or the air since the solution to pollution is dilution).  

Creativity & Technology #2: Animals get along quite nicely thank you very much without Facebook, Twitter, iPads, email, mobile phones, Internet message boards, text-messaging, etc. Any human being, especially under the age of 40, and really, really especially under the age of 20, deprived of such technology becomes a basket case in nanoseconds! Attention to all those who feel the need to SMS 24/7: freedom is not being tied to your mobile phone; in contact with the rest of the world 24/7! Once upon a time, not all that long ago, human civilization (including teenagers therein) survived and thrived via communications that depended on smoke signals, semaphore flags and the pony express. If you really needed fast, there was the overland telegraph! It’s gotten to the point, maybe way beyond it already, that technology controls us; we are slaves to our own creations.

Domination: Humans Rule, OK? Left to itself, Mother Nature finds its own non-static, ever changing balance, in good times and bad times. Animals clearly affect that balance and in turn are affected by it. However, no animal species seeks to call the shots and exert ultimate control over that balance – no species except one of course, and no prizes for guessing what that species is. Humans decide, via some sort of divine right the fate and makeup of Earth’s ecosystems; what lives, what dies, in what ratios, what the landscape will be like, ever manipulating to find that balance that best suits us, which is going to be as far removed from a natural balance as it is possible to get. Take any human dominated environmental landscape. Remove the human element. Will that environmental landscape or ecosystem remain as is, as humans made it, or undergo a radical shift back to Mother Nature’s balance? Look no further than the typical backyard ecosystem/garden. It wouldn’t take long before natural change would render it unrecognizable if neglected by the garden’s occupants. If humans went poof, Earth would soon (in relatively minor geological time frames) become equally as unrecognizable as that household garden, or rather as recognizable as it was before humans came along with delusions of grandeur.

To be continued…

Humans Have the Intelligence; Animals Have the Smarts: Part One

There’s no question that of all species on Planet Earth, modern humans, Homo sapiens, are top of the pops when it comes to intelligence (IQ). All other species, however close they might be in evolutionary terms to modern humans, pale in comparison. BUT, and there’s always a BUT, animals are way smarter, which raises questions about our actual relationship to them. Here I give numerous examples where animals are top of the pops when it comes to pure smarts.

Humans have the highest IQ; but animals have vastly more commonsense. How so? Let’s consider various settings, starting with one we all share – time and space.

TIME & SPACE

Wake Up: Animals will wake up when their biological clocks tell them it’s time to wake up. Humans wake up when the alarm clock rings!

Going to Sleep: Animals go to sleep when their biological clocks tell them to go to sleep (including catnaps). Humans go to sleep after their favourite TV program finishes, like the late, late show! Humans push the boundaries and often refuse to rest even when their bodies tell them it’s desirable. An afternoon catnap ultimately increases productivity, but how many workplaces encourage napping (even briefly) on the job?

Time: All animals have a sense of time, a biological clock. However, unlike humans, one cannot suggest that animals are anywhere near as obsessed with time as are humans. Humans, like animals, regulate their activities by the ‘clock’, only with humans it tends to be not a vague time, like with animals – just sometime soon as long as the Sun’s up - but timed to not only the minute, but often the second. The factory whistle; the timing (start and stop) of a sports event; the start of your TV program, are all programmed down to the second. New Years Day isn’t New Years Day until precisely the tiniest split second post midnight. Scientific measurements are down to the nanosecond; that phone call is expected at exactly 9:15 a.m., etc. You’d be hard-pressed to imagine an animal needing to wear a wristwatch or operate a stopwatch! 

Holidays & Anniversaries; Animals attach zero importance to holidays and anniversaries. Humans are obsessed with them, an obsession which often takes a financial, social, physical and mental toll.

Vacations & Weekends: Animals don’t need a break from their daily routine. Humans require (or at least think they do) annual (or more frequent) time off and away from the routine, not to mention the “thank god it’s Friday” syndrome. What does that really say about modern human society?

Territory: Animals will occupy and defend as much territory as is necessary for their survival and the continuation of their species. Humans however will often try to possess and rule over as much territory, property, as possible, sometimes for economic (investment) reasons; often for sheer power for the sake of power. Humans are rarely satisfied with what they control – they always want more and More and MORE. [See also: Domination]

MATTER & ENERGY

Possessions: Animals have no urge to acquire things, other than that required for survival (like building a nest or storing away food for the winter). Humans – well, what’s the expression, “keeping up with the Jones family” or “shop till you drop”!

FILL WHAT’S EMPTY

Eating #1: Wild animals, who don’t know when and where their next meal might come from, will make hay while the sun shines. Humans, even when they know where and when their next meal comes from, will still over indulge, especially on certain festive or special occasions.  [See also: Obesity]

Eating #2: An animal, assuming food is available, will eat when it is hungry – a natural state of affairs. A human will eat according to a schedule, at fixed times, when the dining room is open, when the office clock and the boss says “go to lunch now”, regardless of need – an artificial (phoney) state of affairs.

Eating #3: A wild animal eats natural foods, as Mother Nature (natural selection & evolution) intended it should. Humans tend to eat processed foods, full of preservatives and other artificial chemicals (all to after-the-fact found to be harmful, maybe even carcinogenic), often laden with additional salts, sugars, fats, and other tasty bits that don’t usually give the human any additional nutritional benefits.

Obesity: A few companion animals are allowed to overeat and put on too much weight, because their owners, out of ‘kindness’ overfeed them. However, most cats and dogs, etc. are pretty good at self-regulating their intake and saying “enough” when it’s enough, even if presented with an unlimited food supply. In humans, the obesity epidemic in the developed world, like the USA, Australia and similar countries is totally out of control despite thousands of diet books, articles, DVDs, websites and fitness gyms seemingly on every street corner. Now I have a normal quota of male hormones, but a good third of all females between 15 and 35 don’t rate a first glance, far less a second because they are very unpleasingly plump (and that’s being kind).

EMPTY WHAT’S FULL

Bathroom/Toilet: Animals go potty when the need arises. Humans go after the meeting or during intermissions, whatever. Such restrictions are often unpleasant, but humans impose such restrictions on themselves. Animals have no sympathy for us.

Greenhouse Gases: My cats can certainly pass wind. Cows and methane are a well know duo. Humans are expected to refrain from emitting greenhouses in the presence of others other than exhaled carbon dioxide and water vapour.

SCRATCH WHERE IT ITCHES

Itches & Twitches: If an animal itches, it scratches and doesn’t give a damn if anything or anybody is observing. Humans, in the company of polite society at least, usually refrain from scratching, especially in certain places. They suffer the itchy/twitchy consequences!

To be continued…