I figure with all the doom and gloom, maybe I should bring you a story that elevates your opinion of humans a little bit.
In 2016, a dog somehow managed to get into one of the feedways for a reservoir in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The dog was probably doomed since the water was very high. But a man jumped down the slope and ran to the dog, then ungracefully hauled it to the side of the feedway, then discovered that neither of them could get up.
Onlookers instinctively saw the danger and, though they were strangers, formed a human chain and extended a hand to the man, who retrieved himself and the dog. This was a perfect example of a great victory against dangerous odds. Everyone did great and the outcome was also good.
One thing I find particularly interesting about these sorts of stories is that they indicate the basic intelligence of dogs (or sheep or goats or whatever it is) In these kinds of situations, animals you’d expect would be pretty dangerous to handle, will generally allow the ape-people do use their thumbs and brains and stuff, effectively. There are many many such incidents. Another favorite of mine is an elephant rescuing a deer-oid from mud. The elephant’s strength and surety is such that it kind of launches the deer-oid out of trouble, but nobody complains. There’s a lot going on in there that we don’t tend to confront: for one thing, it’s obvious evidence that animals that are “less advanced” than humans are able to build predictive models of situations, that take into account physics, causality, and time. Is this intelligence? Because AIs can do that, too… Anyhow. [Elephant rescues drowning antelope, youtube] I particularly love the elephant’s body language – you can hear it mentally yelling at the stupid antelope.
Anyhow, the rescue has been commemmorated with a statue.
See? Humans can celebrate the stuff that makes the world a bit better. We don’t have to celebrate the political divisions created among us.
There, that’s the upbeat message. Next up: Conspiracy Theory.
Wait, what? There are other images that appear to be the same thing except it’s clearly a different dog. This is a golden retriever-oid and the other dog is a black lab-oid.
Even the poses are the same. Did some shitbird decide to throw a golden retriever in a sluice in order to re-enact them being good guys? Is this a CIA op?
2nd dog looks more like a golden lab-oid than a g-retriever-oid. And just what other position would work?
that elephant/ungulate(?) one looks like it’s in a zoo/park/human-made enclosure. Sot, that’s a failure on the human designers, to have a water feature that can “trap” the residents. But glad there was a benevolent pachyderm to step in.
I feel like the old biology thing about “not anthropomorphizing study subjects” has maybe backfired a bit – i understand the reasoning behind it, as humans tend to anthropomorphize everything, from tools, weather, and even rocks… But, I think almost anyone who has interacted with animals more than a few times, has been able to recognize they have emotions, thought-processes, personalities, etc.
for what it’s worth, I’ve seen similar vids of people forming human chains into a ditch to retrieve a soccer ball, so I think it’s just an easily hit-upon idea for retrieving an object out of reach when you don’t have many tools items – just use other helpful people to extend your reach. And again, seems like maybe a design flaw if the sides are to steep to climb up, there should be regular aids to escape – ramps, ladders, etc. I have noticed that on some sections of California’s aqueducts, there are periodic ladder-rungs on the slope, but using them requires knowledge of their placement, and possibly thumbs, so not much help to most of the quadrupeds that might end up trapped in them…
thanks for posting the link to the elephant vid, that was amusing. They are smart, social, and capable of manipulating objects – too bad they don’t seem to really have much need to make/use tools, as I’d like to think of them becoming a technological society if they survive humanity’s collapse…
Amsterdam Is Building Tiny Staircases To Help Stray Cats Exit Its Iconic Canals
The California Aqueduct flows swiftly so you still need to be able to hold on once you discover where the rungs are. I don’t remember any animals having difficulty with the slope itself. Mostly it’s birds and bugs that fly in for a drink.
Regarding the basic intelligence of dogs and other animals, I guess a big thing these days are dog buttons, which provide dogs a panel of buttons that each means something. This is rather like what they did with chimps and gorillas a while ago. It seems a bit like people seeing what they want to see, but there are a lot of videos (and some science) remarking about it and showing it off. Here are some youtube videos:
Can Dogs Talk? (PBF/Nova)
Is Bunny the “talking” dog legit? Here’s what science says (Fig.1 by University of California)
You can find others.
Reginald Selkirk@#3:
Amsterdam Is Building Tiny Staircases To Help Stray Cats Exit Its Iconic Canals
I think Amsterdam should deputize a posse of elephants, with cool official hats, to wander about fishing cats and drunk humans out of the canals. This would give those glorious creatures something fun to do, and a title and a job, and a hat. The would need scoop nets, clipped to a waist-belt, in case.
ahcuah@#5:
Regarding the basic intelligence of dogs and other animals, I guess a big thing these days are dog buttons, which provide dogs a panel of buttons that each means something.
Oh, that’s cool. It seems to me that some dogs are embarrassed to vocalize. They get told “hush” when they bark and then they don’t know what to do. My dogs solved the problem by “cheebling” at me: making a kind of “murbleurblyipgrnt” noise. They were slightly different but I didn’t understand them. But when a dog charged up, sat down, and started cheebling I immediately knew something was wrong but not threatening enough for a proper barking.
Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat