DWA- Yes, there are so many examples, so much research, and so much evidence to the contrary, that it really is rather hard in this day and age to suggest that humans are unique in being able to plan for future events. The idea that this is so is pretty outdated, even within the scientific community.

Even within the chimpanzees mentioned here, planning ahead is pretty well documented. I’d argue that observations are not “exceptionally scarce,” as many people studying chimps in the wild could no doubt tell you. They hold grudges, plan wars, pull off coups using allies, use tools, come up with resourceful solutions for problems, and demonstrate cultural transference. This has been observed in the wild for years.

I don’t think this one study really was the defining moment where we said “Hey everybody, chimpanzees can plan ahead!” I think the importance of this study was really just that it was under controlled conditions on a specific phenomenon that was able to be written into a paper for peer review using measurable data and sound methods. It just helps to prove what many scientists suspected all along anyway, but it is the way in which the data was gathered that is important here. In this way, it is going to be very hard for anyone to argue that apes don’t plan ahead when hard data like this is available.

I think this study had value in this respect.

But modern physics is quickly showing us that this flow of time is subjective! That the arrow of time is a construct of our psyche as we move from one eternal moment of the Universe (or one Universe in the infinitude of the Multiverse) to the next, just as when we see still images passing by quickly before our eyes creates the illusion of movement. But these eternal moments do not cease to exist.

So maybe animals perceive time in a different manner. Who’s to say our perception is the best?

Too deep a thought for a Wednesday afternoon? Maybe you’re right. I’m gonna get me a cup of coffee, my head hurts

“How would this translate to bigger purported apes such as the Sasquatch and Yeti?”

Um, quite (although as we see, we don’t have to go to purported apes to find examples. Birds will do fine, as will practically any mammal one can think of).

Observations indicate the distinct possibility that sasquatch are not only very good solo hunters but very good team hunters as well. A report from OH leaves one with the strong impression that two sasquatch indicated to each other by wood knocks that they were in position; then one roared, flushing the animals in the direction of the other one. Several dead deer were found the next day in the immediate vicinity of the animal in whose apparent direction the deer ran when flushed. And yes, they’d been fed on - in a way totally atypical of any known animal but making big-time sense to an omnivore (with hands) making its way through a cold winter, which this was.

Yeti tracks are almost exclusively found at altitudes at which any biologist could make a good case yetis don’t live. One possibility? They’re caching food in snow for later use.

Oh. Never mind. Wolves and wolverines and bears and cougars and bobcats and coyotes do it too.

1. (the direct one) “Planning for a future, rather than a current, mental state is a cognitive process generally viewed as uniquely human.”

This despite what I, personally, would consider tons of evidence to the contrary. Lions and wolves (and chimpanzees) setting up a team ambush are acting totally in the present moment? Pikas storing hay have no future concept? Really? But we view it that way, which takes us to

2. (the oblique one) “Here, however, I shall report on a decade of observations of spontaneous planning by a male chimpanzee in a zoo.”

ONE DECADE - TEN YEARS - OF OBSERVATIONS. For ‘today’s news.’

One of many points made against science in its study of the biosphere is that scientists simply don’t observe the entire range of animal behaviors. They just aren’t in the field near enough to do so. You know who is? Aboriginal hunters and gatherers, who have been telling us things about animals that we have pooh-poohed as quaint native beliefs for, well, centuries.

Until - one by one - they’re proven.

Nobody ever satisfactorily explained ‘instinct’ to me. And oh, they tried. I had to conclude that ‘instinct’ meant: we don’t know, we don’t want to bother to find out; so we’ll just posit something and be done with it. After all, who can gainsay us? We’re SCIENTISTS.

Suddenly their whole attitude about cryptids becomes much easier to comprehend, eh?

Knowing how well my dogs think and plan ahead, and knowing how the animals I have witnessed in nature have planned and acted, I am endlessly fascinated by how stupid people are…

It’s like buying yourself a stress toy in anticipation of the oncoming financial depression.

To me this suggests he’s not just being territorial, he really wants to nail one of those gawkers. Good for him! I think it’s a crime what they did to him…

We have this idea that what makes animals animals is they are in some sort of shifting cause and effect state, merely taking action as it occurs to them. But if a chimp can bridge these gaps through reflection, it could study its past behavior, resolve how to handle a situation in the future–before it actually happens.

We all know how a human would react to being imprisoned, lorded over and gawked at. As we learn more and more about chimps, when do we enter the gray area where we cannot prove the motivations of its behavior are not parallel to human? I think we already have.

So he is being ‘territorial.’ I would collect rocks to toss at my captors as well. Who is to say my innate rage at being captive doesn’t stem from a territorial instinct? Who is to say our hunger for ‘freedom’ isn’t just territorialism?

Bottom line: Primates do not belong in zoos.

but would animals planning ahead for themselves, technically, make them sentient ( im pretty sure that would mean that they are aware of themselves) beings?

Hi crapple,

Well, I think all would agree with me when I say that your question is one of the most difficult to answer to this day!

However, recent studies in Animal Behavior that have debunked many of our most esteemed beliefs about ourselves—e.g. that only men are capable of using tools and weapons, for example—would lead me to suspect that sentience and cognition are not terms that can only accept binary states—i.e. that a being is only either sentient or non-sentient— but that there are many different degrees of sentience, and that some creatures that share the planet with us are closer to our level of sentience than others.

And of course, that there might also be beings above our level of sentience somewhere else in the Universe

Humans are one of natures most retarded species (we are killing ourselves & the world we live in).

I don’t understand how they thought that animals couldn’t figure out how to plan ahead. Did they think EVERYTHING was instinct?

I am not surprised.

I also agree with you, Red Pill Junkie.

but would animals planning ahead for themselves, technically, make them sentient (I’m pretty sure that would mean that they are aware of themselves) beings?

That they realize that they can feed themselves, protect themselves, get attention, ect. and plan on how that they can get that ect. in the future?

I really have no idea. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.