
Why whales sing: it’s a question of culture - tintinnabula
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-whales-sing-it-s-a-question-of-culture
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WhompingWindows
"Animals are more human than we’d like to admit"

I take issue with this subtitle of the article. Humans are animals. This false
dichotomy between Homo Sapiens and "animals" has been foisted upon us by
religious and homo-centric ideology. We need to embrace Darwinian evolution
and our biological roots, we are a branch on the tree of organisms. We should
be surprised that "other" animals may have aspects of culture;of course they
do, as do macaques, wolves, chimpanzees, crows, eusocial insects, singing
birds, anything that lives in colonies, etc.

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insertUsername2
I don't think the intent of the article is to indicate that we are not animals
but to point out that we should apply more of the way on how we treat other
humans to how we treat animal because the difference we thought were between
animals and humans are really much smaller than we thought and in many cases
we are much closer than many of us want to belive.

~~~
insertUsername2
The subtitle even says: "Animals are more human than we’d like to admit"

So all humans are animals but not all animals are humans which is correct. You
could also say "human" in this context is used as in "human behavior". Not
sure.

However, I as well would have greatly have prefered: "Humans are more animals
than we’d like to admit"

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insertUsername2
On every turn we discover that animals have more cognitive ability's and are
closer to the specific primate branch that is us than we previously imagined.
But a mix of convenience, prejudges and ""culture"" will make sure nothing
about the way we handle animals will change for a long time.

Sometimes I feel like on staying in the middle of Rome looking around at all
the slaves and thinking why the f### does nobody care?

~~~
idclip
Ignorance, fear ... and nature ... i understand needing to hunt for food, when
food is scarce. But we dont stop and continue because of habbit, ritual, and
culture.

Basically cargo-culting until it risks our own skin.

I am filled with a deep sense of apology to everything we touch ... very few
things we touch are truly better. Its a shame, and a gloomy, powerless
conclusion.

I hope .. that we change, and transcend, soon.

~~~
chongli
Read about some microbiology. Bacteria and fungi are all about drastically
changing their environments to suit themselves while at the same time making
the area toxic to their competitors.

Penicillium is a famous example of a fungus that makes toxins to destroy
bacteria. On the other hand, the bacterial cultures in sourdough produce
lactic acids which make the environment hostile to other, slower-growing
things.

Then on a macro scale, look at beavers. They undertake massive ecological
engineering for their own sake. They can wipe out countless other small
animals and ground-nesting birds with the floods they cause.

It’s another kind of human exceptionalism to think we’re unique in altering
the environment to suit ourselves at the expense of other species. We’re not.
Perhaps the more distinguishing feature is that some of us actually care about
it.

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lioeters
I think that makes the difference, the fact that we are (becoming) aware of
the consequences of our actions. It gives it the ethical/moral responsibility
that we don't expect from fungi, trees, or beavers.

On the other hand, I like your comparison to other species. At an essential
level, human culture has lot in common with ancestral life forms, like a
culture of slime mould. There's collective behavior over generations, of which
individuals are largely unaware.

"Exceptionalism" is an apt word, because not only do we treat other species as
_our_ resources, we do it to our own. Humanity eats its children. The fact
that we're doing this knowingly, is why we carry shame, a guilty conscience in
our collective psyche. We expect better of ourselves, because we should know
better.

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dec0dedab0de
While this is always an interesting topic, this article is barely more than an
advertisement for a book. I think the advertisement would have been more
effective if it picked one example, such as whale song, and stuck with it a
bit. Then ended with 'learn more about this and other interesting animal
behavior in the new book.'

