OK, back to work folks...
Posted on 06/25/2007 10:00:55 AM PDT by GraniteStateConservative
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Now Felix Warneken and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have found that 12 out of 18 semi-wild chimpanzees went out of their way to help an unfamiliar human who was struggling to reach a stick.
The primates did this even when they were inconvenienced – such as when they first had to climb into a 2.5-metre-high ropeway – and for no reward. Equivalent experiments with human toddlers gave similar results.
...
"This is the first evidence of chimpanzees helping somebody they don't know," Warneken says, though he accepts that the chimps may have helped because they generally associate humans with rewards. "But we also found they helped other chimps."
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(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Buncha socialists. Ain’t these chimps ever read any Ayn Rand?
fyi ping to some names from the thread from last year.
Wait, if they prove that people are inherently good and caring without the government forcing them to be, doesn’t that kind of bury socialism and prove the fundamental belief in liberty?
The other 6 ran for public office.
Now, whether that means people are inherently good is a question I don't think can be answered from this article....
“..found that 12 out of 18 semi-wild chimpanzees went out of their way to help an unfamiliar human who was struggling to reach a stick.”
This proves that chimps are more altruistic than humans. Hmm, let me think about it. I wonder what would happen if the chimps knew that the human would beat them with the stick. If they continued to hand the human the stick, after having been beaten by him, I would say that they are just as intelligent as humans.
Contrary to popular belief, “social Darwinism” is not an absolute in the animal kingdom. In fact, it’s possibly not even the norm. Many species cooperate, work together and interact for the good of the group (pride, herd, troop, etc.).
But let’s not spoil a good myth, shall we?
Well, an FR hero was convinced of it:
"I know in my heart that Man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph, and there is purpose and worth to each and every life." - Ronald Wilson Reagan (inscription on his tomb)
Chimps hunt and “murder” other chimps too.
So a little reflection of it all there.
Evolution is about the survival of the fittest species, not the most selfish individual. Social Darwinism is an evil thing.
Maybe the chimps recognized the opportunity to do an experiment. Let’s see what those humans do with a stick for which they didn’t have to work very hard to obtain.
“I know in my heart that Man is good..”
He hasn’t seen what is roaming around in Congress these days, considering that many of them want to sell the country to the lowest bidder.
“Evolution is about the survival of the fittest species, not the most selfish individual.”
Correct. But it seems that libs often confuse the two— species versus individual. Individuals behave very differently than the species as a whole. And this concept of social Darwinism is an artificial one, that sounds official only because of the name cachet.
BWAAAHAHAHA! - Snorksnorksnork!.... good one.
Good example. Pet’s can be trained for some of the most amazing stuff... witness seeing eye dogs for example. Nothing is new or worthy of public funding in these studies.
OK, it was a special phone with huge buttons, each one was programmed for 9/11-it was still an impressive feat.
And here's another altruistic animal I read about; unlike the bear who's prenet, I read about this one online so it may be googlable:
An octopus lived in a public aquarium. Every day, a human would dive into his enclosure and go through removing any debris , such as dead fish, etc. The octopus would follow the human around, watching what he picked up. The human would get creeped out by this...until one day (about 2 weeks later) when he dived in and discovered that all the kinds of debris he had to search out for removal had been gathered by the octopus into one pile .
From then on, the job of cleaning the octopus' pen took 2-3 minutes instead of 20-30, because the octopus always had the debris collected and waiting for the diver.
Octopi are considered one of the most intelligent of sea creatures, and him learning from watching the diver is pretty good proof IMO. Whether the octopus was trying to help is debatable, but the diver was still grateful.
And the other six went out of their way to beat the crap out of an unfamilar human....
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