Mans best friend

[treequip]

Do you remember the story about a taxi driver who called police and told them a dog was killing an old man the police shot the dog, then they found out the dog and owner worshiped each other and the old man had had a heart attack and the dog was trying to revive him. humans seem to make a habit of jumping in without thinking. and as for dirty dogs try bathing them and cleaning teeth then you can give them a big snog:001_smile:

 

Sounds like a modern take on Gellert

[Albedo]

I love my cat and my cat loves me. Your statement that animals do not feel emotion (Dagmar) surely is subjective and not accepted scientific fact (wheres your references), bit DOGmatic aye. Is fear an emotion or auto response? animals feel that don't they.

 

Mr Ed how are you? your dog is the most highly trained, secret, under cover butty snatcher I have ever had the priviledge to meet. Although otherwise highly trained as you say, and he was a bit of a puppy at the time.

 

My 1st post and nothing to do with trees, except that my cat is an ace climber.

[MasterBlaster]

I had a doberman miss my throat and shred my ear instead. The plastic surgeon told me that if the bite was from a human I would have had to go on an antibiotic cocktail, but since it was a dog the normal script would do. He said there were more bacteria in a human's mouth than a dog.

[Dagmar]

Your statement that animals do not feel emotion (Dagmar) surely is subjective and not accepted scientific fact (wheres your references), bit DOGmatic aye. Is fear an emotion or auto response? animals feel that don't they.

 

QUOTE]

 

Here is a bit of science for you from............

 

Marian Stamp Dawkins

 

Anthropomorphism is not wrong. The problem is that, if unchecked, it leads to a complete absence of scientific rigour in the way we look at animals. Using anecdotes as data only makes matters worse, because this allows anyone to speculate on what a given animal is experiencing, without any standard for what counts as evidence. We are asked to believe, for example, that a female squirrel, inadvertently locked out of her nest by humans, conceived a plan to persuade those humans to let her back to her babies by standing on her hind legs and demonstrating that she had full teats and was therefore lactating. This implies not just a high degree of cognitive ability on the part of the squirrel, but also the attribution of a "theory of mind" - she knew that humans could be influenced - as well as her belief in our altruism. It ignores the simpler hypothesis that the natural anti-predator behaviour of squirrels includes chattering and standing on their hind legs.

 

Recent studies on animals have shown how simple local rules can lead to complex behaviour that mimics what we humans would achieve by more cognitive means. We might plan ahead if we were deciding where to move house. Bees do it by simple recruitment rules of following the most vigorously signalling bees around them. Dogs and horses have famously fooled large numbers of people into thinking they could count when all they were doing was reading the body language of a human who was really doing the counting. Likewise, the female squirrel could use her innate anti-predator behaviour to achieve an end that we might achieve in a completely different way using our big brains and the extraordinary capacity that language gives us to plan ahead.

 

I do believe that animals have emotions, but anthropomorphism is not the best way to study them, not least because it is unclear whether animals experience emotional states consciously as we do. We should be very careful in concluding that animals are conscious just because they behave like us. For a start, many human activities take place without our being consciously aware of what we are doing. What's more, our emotional states can be shifted by stimuli flashed so briefly that we are not consciously aware of having seen them (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol 31, p 111). It seems that emotions do not have to be conscious, even in ourselves. Then there are the many activities we can do either consciously or unconsciously. Breathing, for example, can either be an automatic, unconscious process or can be brought under conscious control. So just because other species breathe "like us" does not necessarily mean that like us they are conscious of their breathing. They could be using the route that, in us, is unconscious.

 

If we really want to understand the worlds of non-human animals, we need a more rigorous, evidence-based approach to what it is like to be a horse, a dog or a squirrel. If we genuinely want to improve their lot from their point of view - as opposed to just making ourselves feel better - we should move away from seeing them as just like us, only with fur or feathers or scales, and look at their own particular needs. A little anthropomorphism may help. Too much is disastrously unscientific.

 

Marian Stamp Dawkins is professor of animal behaviour in the department of zoology, University of Oxford. Her new book, Observing Animal Behaviour: Design and analysis of quantitative data, will be published soon by Oxford University Press

[David oakman]

Well there you go dirty dogs how dare they,the only thing they do is poo in the garden and we clear it up,humans poo in the toilet and mr sewage worker clears it up whats the difference.

[Albedo]

Thanks for the prompt response Dagmar.

 

Your researcher, though stating that too much anthropomorphism doesn't help with a scientific approach (guilty), seems to agree with me, saying that there isn't any proof one way or another - in stating outright that animals don't have feelings/emotion.

 

I was gonna say 'who rattled your cage' but that was me wasn't it.

[Mr Ed]

Wotcha Paul, long time no see. Not in Spain?

[Jason James Gairn]

I agree, that this is not really the place to start this, but for the record…..

 

 

 

For various reasons, I have done a lot of reading recently into Quantum Physics, Consciousness Research, Philosophy, Religion and Spirituality, and believe me we are living in interesting times.

 

The scientific community is aligning itself with religion and spirituality, with the idea that consciousness exists and flows through everything in a similar way to energy….

 

To say that animals feel emotions is a natural and reasonable normality that can be, and is, rationally argued by an increasing number of academics.

 

I will not even attempt to cover it here, and will do no more than say….. keep an open mind to the evolution in human understanding…..

 

We will soon be asked to adopt completely revolutionary ideas that the human populations has not been expected to contemplate since it was discovered that the world was round and then that the moon and sun did not rotate around the earth…….

 

 

Something to be discussed over a pint or two.....

 

:beer:

 

 

 

 

...........

 

Hello Andrew. It is simply not true that the scientific community is aligning itself with religion. Quite the opposite is true.

I'm on my second read of `The god Delusion' (sic) at the moment and have just tread the chapter concerning religion and scientists. The research shows that there is an inverse correlation between religious belief and intelligence. Quantum scientists are just that , scientists. Science and religion are opposites. there are a few who have been able to mix the two but not to any great degree and certainly not in a convincing way.

2012 is old hat Andrew. I spent some time in the Yucatan studying the 2012 Mayan cult. I have a cosmic butterfly in my mind too. If its Jose Aguilles or Carlos Castaneda you look to then come September 2012 we should have a party. (Personaly it's Carl Sagan and Douglas Adams) Esoteric science is still science. It's just horrendously difficult to understand. A shrug of the shoulders and saying oh that must be religious will not do. Either way, dogs do not love. I love; and I ill not have it's beauty, grace, gravity or depth sullied with such superstitious anthropomorphic ignorance.

This has all got pretty heavy hasn't it? I kind of like it that way. Someone tell a joke or dare I say it a shaggy dog story. heh heh

[Mr Ed]

This has all got pretty heavy hasn't it? I kind of like it that way. Someone tell a joke or dare I say it a shaggy dog story. heh heh

 

Here you go -

[ame]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pJz-yZUOgtM[/ame]

[Jason James Gairn]

QUOTE]

 

Here is a bit of science for you from............

 

Marian Stamp Dawkins

 

[/b]

 

My good friend Ruth is one of her assistants. Coincidence or divine egyptian pagan mythology time travel?