I've thought that a few times. Its a nice sobering idea. Maybe were alot more primative in our understanding of life and communication than these animals but we just happen to have a gift at making tools. like the rain man of the animal kingdom. seems that way....

Dogs definitely communicate with each other via movements, barks and growls

just today, 2 of my normally very well adjusted dogs - together since birth 4 years ago - got into a fight over status: who goes through the door first. The second born tried to sneak inside early, past the first born and ... BAM ... almost lost some skin separating them. Then, after they calmed down, the third one comes over to them and starts licking their ears ... never seen him done that!

more like the ability to think abstractly. my dog knows what "potty" means.

I think animals understand us as well as we understand them, which is generally not very clearly. We see proof of our "superior" imaginations because we know what we're looking for. We drive cars, talk on cell phones, and build gigantic structures thanks to our ability to turn concepts into reality. But I think we miss out on the same kind of complexity happening in animal life because we don't understand their ambitions, which is largely because we're wired with a different combination of senses, hence we're stimulated and fulfilled by different things. Plus, there aren't that many people who really try to see life through the eyes of animals. Their agenda may be so different from ours that from their perspective we're the simpletons. Like, "Sure, you humans can launch a rocket into outer space, but you can't even taste half of what's happening in that pizza slice, let alone decode the ridiculously funny message that pit bull down the block blasted onto that tree with her piss a couple days ago."

I remember reading somewhere that there are people trying to decode elephant talk right now, and they're discovering that in some ways the subtleties expressed in their vocabulary rivals the complexity of our own communication. I can't wait for the day we can fully understand their language and come up with some sort of translator that allows us to speak to them fluently. They say an elephant never forgets, and I'm sure those big-eared bastards have heard all kinds of things, and I wanna hear the kinds of stories they could tell us.

Slightly off topic, but I also believe that there's no reason we can't extend communication abilities to several other forms of life(plants, rocks, individual cells, particles, planets, stars, etc.) Experience has completely convinced me that conscious life exists at every level of the universe.

Here is an interesting guide on how to communicate with animals...

Spirit Science:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQgxFOYrJ_4

My parents who live near woods once saw a deer pick up an apple and place it on hill and watch the apple roll down. He'd follow it, pick it up and carry it to the top of the hill and watch it roll down again. I think he was a scientist.

I think the main thing that differentiates us from the animals is that it's general human nature to be dissatisfied all the time no matter what we achieve. That's why you see humans push things to extremes. The crow was happy with the snowboard he found. A human having ridden a few times would have started modifying the snowboard to make it look nicer, slide faster, and be more easy to control. It's so natural an urge to be dissatisfied you don't even notice it most of the time.

We're intelligent and have dextrous hands, but we're not the only intelligent animals or the only ones that could fashion tools. We're just the only ones with cities and rockets and miles and miles of pavement because we were the only ones that weren't happy with the way things were.

I don't think the difference lies specifically with language however it is in language that we see the manifestation of the difference between humans and animals.

I think the main difference is the ability or lack of to be "self-reflective". Animals use many forms of language yet I think its easily seen where the motivation lies in their communication; that being survival. They operate from instinct and all concepts of a personal separate self, if you can say that about animals, focuses on survival, one upping the other guy and getting a bigger nut.

With humans, we also possess this instinct for survival. But at some point we grew a bigger brain, one capable of complex thought. We developed a concept device called mind. From this the anomaly of thought eventually manifested a daring question. If their is thinking going on who is doing it. The mind answered "I am". We are via the mind capable of self-reflection, looking at ourselves and judging our actions. Animals don't, as far as I know reflect on whether or not a particular action is ethical, right, etc. Instinct simply says yes to a particular concept if it propogates the survival of the animal.

Humans on the other hand are able to resist the impulses of instinct and commit to actions based on self-reflection that have nothing whatsoever to do with survival.

So I think we see in language a barrier between us and the animal kingdom but its only because we don't understand their language or perceive it to be of a lesser order. To understand the differences between us and them we have to dig deeper into the subject of consciousness. And for that I'd look to Shankara's Advaita Vedanta philosophy to tackle such investigations.

We are about to destroy this planet. What makes you think that complex thought, abstract problem soving and its practical applications (ethics, progress...) aren't just that:

An elaborate survival strategy for beings with no physical strength and only each other as predators?

EDIT: the answer the OP's question, the only thing that sets us apart from animals is that we do not believe we are animals.

Our language consists mostly of non verbal language, so you tell me more by your facial expressions, gestures etc. than by the words you say. I think there is even more communiating than that. I can see how old you are, if you are female or male, healthy or unhelathy, tired etc.

Once I was in the forrest I realized that these kind of things maybe more important in the communication in the plant and animal world. A flower does communicate by colour or smell, that it has something to offer. A tree can tell you if it was ill etc. All these are information. I think communication is transferring information from one beeing to another. So it's mainly a question how you define language.

love this thread!

Boy oh boy is this going to be an unpopular response, but here I go anyway,

I do not agree that language sets us apart. I believe all animals have the ability to communicate on a complex level.

Other animals donthave the complex brain and mind that we humans have. So they dont share complex ideas humans do.

For example Ethics.

What sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is our ability to intervene in the natural selection process.

We have done this in so many ways.

All the other animals survive in a world where it IS survival of the fittest. The closer you get to humans the more this concept degrades. When it comes to humans there really is no such thing any more.

When you go out into the wild, the animal and plant kingdome is constantly adapting and evolving to survive. Only the strong survive. Only those creatures with the strongest survival traits are able to or are allowed to live a full life and breed. When you look at animals in the wild you see life sooo much more in balance because of natural selection. Only when humans encroach on the wild do you see this balance disappear or struggle.

In the human world we intervene in the natural selection process. We play god. We decide who is going to live and who isn't
There is a hierarchy in our species. Elitism. We are all allowed to live and we are kept alive and we are allowed to breed and pass on the weak links and traits.

The closer you get to humans in the animal kingdom the closer you get to sickness and disease. Take a look at all the animals that we domesticate. I'll just use dogs for an example, how many wild dogs in the animal kingdome are suffering from hip displasia? Not many to none. Why is that? Because if you cant run in the wild you die.

You dont see cancers as prevalent in the rest of the animal kingdome until you get close to humans. In domesticated animals it is more and more common.

In a struggle to do the right thing, in order to be human and ethical, we have ensured the demise of our species.

I would like to put out a disclaimer here, I am not aginst taking care of our sick and weak. I am human. I believe I have very compatible moral and ethical values to most.

I am talking about science here.

What would the human race look like if we humans accepted natural selection as the living law? What if it were survival of the fittest in the human race? That wouldnt be right, it wouldnt be okay.

Take a look at what is happening to the human race. I wont even say it, you can see what is happening. Human intervention is the cause.

Now take what I have written above and inject two very human traits, Greed and Envy.

Greed and envy probably do exist in the rest of the animal kingdom but they dont have a huge impact because the rest of the animal kingdom doesnt have the ability to intervene in natural selection like humans do.


Sorry about taking this thread in another direction. I would have never started my own thread with this topic.
lol

thoughts, ideas, feelings?

i don't think it's ensured the demise. more we will overshoot the carrying capacity of the earth and then crash way way way down to a few groups and then grow again.

"All the other animals survive in a world where it IS survival of the fittest. The closer you get to humans the more this concept degrades. When it comes to humans there really is no such thing any more."

Well, I think this still does apply very much to humans still..but it is on a different and more complex level. Being the "fittest" might mean a larger bank account or it might mean being born into the right family etc..the quality of life that the upper class enjoys at the expense of the lower and hard working middle class is a good example of this.

Health is another great example. We can see this every day when people who dont take care of their health tend to either wither away slowly living half a life or just die early and people who live healthier lives tend to live fuller lives and much longer lives. This is where the complexity of having a wide variety of choices comes into play..squirrels will eat squirrel food from the forest..like all other squirrels. Humans have the choice of any number of foods, some great some not so great. Still one can argue that the "fittest" humans are the ones with the ability to choose the best foods..whether that means their bank account affords them that or they just make the choice to somehow compensate does not matter..what matters is that nature tends to deem those people "fitter" and the benifits they gain are well documented.

Our society is much more complex than say, a squirrel society. I think that every level of complexity will always present itself in a way that is somehow analagous to lower levels just more complex. We really are just animals and maybe more complex, but we tend to face the same issues as all other animals just presented with more complexity.

"What would the human race look like if we humans accepted natural selection as the living law? What if it were survival of the fittest in the human race? That wouldnt be right, it wouldnt be okay."

I agree with you that for the most part humans do not consciousily accept natural selection as something that governs our society etc..but it is what governs us nonetheless. It really is survival of the fittest in my opinion but in a broader sense.

jamie natural selection doesn't care how long you live, just if you can pass on your genes. you don't need to have a long or good life to do that.

healthier mothers have healthier children.

there are lots of unhealthy people that mate and make kids. there aren't as many healthy people that mate and have children. it's a numbers game. the lower breeding phenotype is bred out of the population. it's not about good or healthy of any of that, it's about what breeds the most. That's what is passed down to the next generation. That isn't healthy people nowadays.



look at it this way say you have a population of 1000.

lets say that the "unhealthy" part of that population is 998, and that the healthy part is 2.

What if the two healthy people are both the same sex? What if they just don't find one another attractive? What if they never meet?

It's all in the numbers.

people are living longer than they ever have and every year we humans are living longer. Unfortunately in America living longer does not mean living better or healthier. Thanks to modern medicine we are able to intervene in the natural selection process and people who would have died young in the 20th century will now live longer in the 21st century. Thats a great thing, right? I agree. What that also means is that genetic predisposition for certain health issues is being passed on and things like Obesity, diabetes, high blood preassure and certain cancers are becoming more and more prevalent. What that also means is we are all gonna foot the bill for that. Health care isnt cheap and the system we have in place now revolves more around maintaining sick people and not curing them.

jamie I understand what you mean about fittest changing and becoming more complex but I dont fully agree. As the gap between rich and poor increases along with educated and illiterate so does healthy and unhealthy. The poor and uneducated cant afford or understand what healthy choices are.

I dont completely understand whats going on, I do see it happening, I see the results, its not good.

survival of the fittest definitely still applies but lately with all the info we have these days we're realizing its more like survival of the most cooperative, in a lot of ways.. all across the biosphere. I mean even 3/4ths of the trees on earth are said to have a symbiotic relationship with some sort of fungi? Those organisms that can cooperate best with those around them are the ones developing mutually beneficial relationships and thriving. This sort of thing is literally everywhere we just don't see it as our gaze tends to only focus on the surface of things

Do you think survival of the fittest applies to humans?

What do we do with the unfit in America?

We take care of them. More and more people are getting that and are choosing to be taken care of instead of being fit and surviving. Is this system sustainable?

Uhh, well yeah I agree with you there.

I think the most alarming thing is where the species as a whole is going. We are walking a fine line and if we dont use our resources etc more wisely what can that mean for the human race as a whole?