Posted on 01/29/2003 8:38:42 AM PST by Prolixus
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:09:02 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Domesticated animals look - and act - differently from than their wild counterparts. Why?
The experiment was derived out of a discussion student Brian Hare had with his adviser, Michael Tomasello, an expert in primate behavior at Emory University. They were talking about how bad chimpanzees were at understanding human social cues. Despite being the heavyweights of animal intelligence, chimps were insensitive to what seemed to be obvious hints: They failed to pick up a cup hiding food even when the experimenter stared at it, pointed to it, and even tapped it. Tomasello wanted to talk about what this meant about the limits of nonhuman intelligence. Hare, a pet owner, had a down-to-Earth response: ''My dogs can do this.''
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
This has implications beyond animal breeding, if you take a good look at our inner cities. The "bad boy" gangbangers are fathering more than their share of babies...
Well, yes. But that takes us directly to the concept of eugenics and social darwinism, and raises some disturbing questions about "unalienable rights."
The government has been engaged in a eugenics program for decades. By enabling single women to bear multiple children without any need to secure a husband who will be a stable source of support, and be a stable father for the children, the government has facilitated an experiment to see what happens when violent-but-"exciting" bad-boys become the dominent breeders in an area
Does this mean that people with freckles are more mellow?
If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? (One good question deserves another.)
That in the beginning the "domesticated" animals may have selected themselves by surviving because of human activity, like the wolves surviving on human waste/refuse, and humans didn't start from scratch when they began breeding animals.
That there may be some physical appearances that are linked to passivity, like white/spotted appearance and cowlick positioning.
That humans bred animals for traits they wanted is old news, but the two things above were new thoughts for me.
I'm beginning to think about it this way: it suggests that genetic engineering for this trait may have unintended consequences for some other trait. If personality traits have physical implications, then the converse is probably true as well.
It makes me think that the general idea of genetic engineering on humans is probably a very bad idea.
And the results of this program basically validate the morals and traditions that were disposed of by the libertine revolution of the '60s.
Traditions come about, and survive, for the simple reason that they reflect true knowledge, gained through experience, over the course of generations. They are not to be rejected lightly, even if we don't understand how they came about in the first place.
Minkeys are businessmen. They pay no taxes. They control the zoo union.
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Note: this topic is dated 1/28/2003. |
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