
Orangutan from Borneo photographed using a spear tool to fish (2008) - DanBC
https://primatology.net/2008/04/29/orangutan-photographed-using-tool-as-spear-to-fish/
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burlesona
If you read the article it says the Orangutan _attempted_ to fish this way
after watching humans do it, but was unsuccessful.

Still a very cool picture, and amazing to see the orangutan learn by
observation like that.

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29athrowaway
Human shoulder muscles/tendons evolved so they can store more elasticity than
our ancestors making us better at throwing.

Our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, is stronger than a human but can
throw a spear at about 20 mph. A human athlete can throw a spear at 90 mph.

Orangutans can learn how to throw faster but they cannot change their anatomy,
although a spear thrower could help.

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mongol
How fast can an average human throw?

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Xunxi
Reminds me of the Orangutan Sawing on PBS Nature episode. Of course most
animals can be trained to do a variety of things but picking up skills
observationally and then transferring it down couple generations is quite an
interesting domain.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oRq78CwE7c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oRq78CwE7c)

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WomanCanCode
Orang utan is a Malay/Indonesian word translated to 'Jungle human'. Orangutan
are very calm, gentle and human like. It's a mystery how similar they are to
us human in a sense that they are very predictable and very intelligent.
Perhaps, evolution as we understand ..were already known to the people who
were living nearby to the orangutan.

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perl4ever
Following the link, there is some stuff about how new genetic research shows
that humans may be closer to orangutans than chimpanzees.

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thaumasiotes
While theoretically possible, that idea starts in a deep hole, since
orangutans don't come from Africa.

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perl4ever
Closer to orangutans doesn't mean evolved from orangutans.

The idea is that humans evolved from a common ancestor, and retained more of
the DNA that orangutans now have than chimps did.

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thaumasiotes
Closer to orangutans does in fact mean that the most recent common ancestor
with orangutans is more recent than the most recent common ancestor with
chimps. That's how you measure evolutionary distance.

> and [humans] retained more of the DNA that orangutans now have than chimps
> did.

That can't possibly be the actual argument. If humans shared more genetically
with orangutans than with chimps, we would conclude that humans had diverged
from orangutans -- not chimps -- regardless of whether that were true, because
the genetic distance is all we have to address the question with.

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perl4ever
I'm not the expert on the topic, but as far as I can tell, the claim is in
fact that (a) there are more similarities to orangutans, yet (b) the split
from chimps is more recent.

If I understand correctly you are saying "distance" is proportional to time by
definition, and what I was reading seems to say that is not strictly the case.

"Theoretically, orangutans have had more time to accumulate genetic variation
compared to humans and chimpanzees, which split into their own lineages 5
million to 6 million years ago. One would expect at least twice as much
variation in the orangutan genome. However, in the study, a comparison of the
three genomes shows that humans and chimpanzees have lost or gained new genes
at twice the rate of orangutans."

"there are many similarities to the human and orangutan genome, much more
similar than human to chimp, in fact. They suspect that could be because
humans split from a common ancestor with chimps, of which both species had the
same ancestral orangutan DNA. What remains curious is that humans and
chimpanzees have evolved separately for millions of years. In the process,
chimps for mysterious reasons lost some orangutan DNA that humans retained."

Source: [https://primatology.net/2011/01/26/orangutan-genome-
sequence...](https://primatology.net/2011/01/26/orangutan-genome-sequenced/)

~~~
thaumasiotes
The paper referenced from that quote ( [https://sci-
hub.tw/10.1101/gr.114751.110](https://sci-hub.tw/10.1101/gr.114751.110) )
actually says this:

> We therefore conclude that human is closer to orangutan than to chimpanzee
> in 0.8% of the genome, and chimpanzee is closest to orangutan in 0.6% of the
> genome.

That looks like humans are overwhelmingly more similar to chimpanzees, and
chimps to humans, than either is to orangutans, no?

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nojvek
I believe what makes humans powerful is written language. It can survive
generations and can be copied and shared. That power leads to someone figuring
something out halfway, and someone evolving it into a working piece. Then
someone comes and evolves the technique to a blazing efficiency.

Plus writing allows trade to occur because we can keep verifiable accounts.
This leads to specialization and trade where efficient tools propagate really
fast.

Seeing written language and trade in any other species would mean they’d
evolve their technology real fast.

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JPLeRouzic
It seems that what defines humanity has to be a bit refined... I reckons the
article implies the spear was created by the orangutan as it points to Nature
articles about tools creation.

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thaumasiotes
The stick is stolen from humans. (Also, while this is headlined as "spear
fishing", the orangutan isn't able to catch any fish with it.)

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gxx
A human may not be able to catch fish either on the first try. Even for humans
it takes practise...

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thaumasiotes
It's been 11 years.

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RenRav
Aren't orangutans only found on a single tiny island of the world? If they
were everywhere I feel like this kind of stuff wouldn't be news at all, it
would be inevitable. Learning from humans is still very impressive if you
think of it as a cross-species culture acquisition.

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weddpros
They're found on Borneo, the 3rd largest island in the world. The Kaja island
they talk about is an island on a river on Borneo, but not the only place
where orang-utans are found.

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segmondy
There's a reason for the phrase, "monkey see, monkey do"

------
ChrisGranger
(2008)

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dang
Added. Thanks.

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thegabez
Someone listens to the Joe Rogan podcast

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kbos87
Quick, find another reason why humans are superior to animals!

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chousuke
Humans are animals. This distinction is silly and I hope that kind of thinking
will just die out at some point. I think it leads to hubris.

In fact, if you subscribe to the (well-supported) idea that any living being
can be hierarchically categorised by the traits it has, humans are still
monkeys, in the same way that all birds are still dinosaurs. Personally, this
is one of my favourite facts.

I wonder what life would've been like if human-level intelligence had evolved
from dinosaurs instead. As I understand it, birds have several features
superior to what we've inherited.

That said, it would be rather dishonest to claim that humans aren't one of the
most successful species on the planet. I just hope we're clever enough not to
cause our own extinction very soon, but it's not looking good.

