Richard Dawkins- discuss

[Sam Thompson]

Yes, elephants also visit the burial sites of their ancestors,

 

Rubbish.

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

Rubbish.

 

no its true, not directly but on the way to sites they acknowledge their dead

[Sam Thompson]

How do they acknowledge them?

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

Yes, elephants also visit the burial sites of their ancestors, but these are all forms of non-verbal communication or behaviour, which are interpreted by us in an anthropomorphistic or human centered way, not of verbal communication of the kind we humans use to communicate with, along with the five forms of non-verbal communication or behaviour, such as intonation and volume of speech or sound, body language or posture and facial expression including eye contact and fixation (only humans have white of the eye), display or ornamentation of the body, personal space (the space bubble) and territoriality.

 

language is a VERY small portion of our communication though, much more is barely registered by the concious mind.

[Fungus]

whales especialy orkas, blue and sperm have an inteligence that is on par if not exceeding our own.

 

Depending on your human definition of intelligence, cognition and sophisticated communicative skills, this is true or false.

And maybe because of lacking certain skills other mammals have, we have invented artefacts and instruments to compensate for our "inadequacies" and to be able to research, assess, document and exploit the capacities and qualities other life forms possess.

[Fungus]

language is a VERY small portion of our communication though, much more is barely registered by the concious mind.

 

Agreed, as I confirmed before with my remark on the other five forms of non-verbal (meta)communication or behavior, which by the way is the same thing, but would you be able to educate yourself or others and to visit and communicate through this forum, if no written language was available and to communicate with me if I would demand of you to write your posts in Dutch instead of English ?

[Marko]

Who buries the elephants? Second only to picking sprouts that must be a really crap job.

[Fungus]

Who buries the elephants?

 

Marko & Thompson,

Tony and I should have used "...". You're taking this much to literally. I meant that elephants have specific places called "church yards" or "burial sites" they go to to lay down and die and that these places are visited by their relatives when they pass on their travelling journeys and shown to their new born while manipulating their remains (skull, tusks and bones).

[Sam Thompson]

I meant that elephants have specific places called "church yards" or "burial sites" they go to to lay down and die and that these places are visited by their relatives when they pass on their travelling journeys and shown to their new born while manipulating their remains (skull, tusks and bones).

 

I thought you would mean that. As lovely a notion as "the elephant's graveyard" is, sadly it is balderdash with a little piffle thrown in for good measure.

 

Its reason. Imagine you are the first white man. You and your pith helmet spend all your time wandering round looking (and shooting) at heffalumps. But where are the skeletons? Hum. You couldn't miss an elephant skeleton surely? So. It makes perfect sense that they must wander off into the vast sandbox and keel over. People (Enrico Bruhl for one) literally died looking for a great mountain of naturally harvested ivory hidden somewhere in the desert. Sadly, it was, and is, a con.

 

Most elephants die of two reasons.

 

1) Their teeth wear out. So they die from lack of food. They keel over, anywhere. Its amazing the amount of things that eat bone and ivory, let alone flesh and hide, in the bushvelt. The elephant disappears.

 

2) The old jumbo gets bogged down in areas they have crossed for many years, they sink, get eaten, and fertilise. The elephant disappears.

 

 

 

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

I thought you would mean that. As lovely a notion as "the elephant's graveyard" is, sadly it is balderdash with a little piffle thrown in for good measure.

 

Its reason. Imagine you are the first white man. You and your pith helmet spend all your time wandering round looking (and shooting) at heffalumps. But where are the skeletons? Hum. You couldn't miss an elephant skeleton surely? So. It makes perfect sense that they must wander off into the vast sandbox and keel over. People (Enrico Bruhl for one) literally died looking for a great mountain of naturally harvested ivory hidden somewhere in the desert. Sadly, it was, and is, a con.

 

Most elephants die of two reasons.

 

1) Their teeth wear out. So they die from lack of food. They keel over, anywhere. Its amazing the amount of things that eat bone and ivory, let alone flesh and hide, in the bushvelt. The elephant disappears.

 

2) The old jumbo gets bogged down in areas they have crossed for many years, they sink, get eaten, and fertilise. The elephant disappears.

 

 

 

 

Then you NEED to look into this for YOURSELF, and I promise you that you will see "mourning" in elephants when coming across remains of their dead kin, often all that is left is a skull, to big and heavy even for the 400lbs per square inch bite of the hyeenas and wild dogs to break