A few weeks ago I watched the documentary film Project Nim about a chimp raised as a human child and taught sign language. The film raised lots of interesting issues and most of them were about the characters of the people involved in the study and the nature of what passes for a scientific study of animal behaviour. As well as the obvious questions of ethics and the definition of intelligence.
Last night after returning from Lancaster on the coldest night of the year, empty and aching and not knowing why, then reaching Liverpool to be given Newcastle Brown ale and chicken soup, I went to bed early and watched a programme on BBC called Super Smart Animals ,about animal intelligence.
It was all very slick and had a glamorous presenter who was suitably over enthusiastic and the bulldog who had taught himself to skateboard was horribly fascinating but it was all very... wooly - he said sheepishly. I was reminded of Nim and all the claims made by his trainers and the chaos and rivalry that went on behind the scenes. Defining and measuring intelligence has always been controversial and I think I have already suggested a long while back that perhaps some kind of stupidity quotient might be just as useful as IQ. What was the programme really about? Certainly the abilities of some of the animals seemed truly surprising at first, but were they really intelligent?
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Driving back to Newcastle-u-Lyme in freezing fog. Despite warnings hardly any of the traffic seemed to have slowed down. I was in PUF so was travelling at my usual fifty-five mph. I have noticed before that lots of people seem to drive at the same speed in almost all weather conditions except those so severe that they are forced to slow down. I am much more erratic and slow down, perhaps unnecessarily, when I think the roads look bad but go much too fast when they look good. Or perhaps modern cars just give a much more comfortable feeling of safety whereas my usual old cars start rattling and shuddering and bits fall off at much more than a hundred miles and hour, so I'm more conscious of speed. I think I once read a suggestion of a built in rattle that started at high speed would act as a deterrent.
I was glad to get back to my tiny house, and type this while I wait for it to warm up.
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Intelligent animals again. Somehow though learning a single skill is amazing it seems to lack something, at least to me, as a sign of intelligence. I feel that there is a social aspect to intelligence that individual tests miss out, that it is really a more all round sort of thing. It is not enough to solve a problem on its own, the solution needs to be shared and developed to demonstrate a higher form of intelligence. Ug may carve and stick wheels on a piece of flat wood and pull it around but without the interest and involvement of other cavemen it will never catch on and evolve into the Nissan Thundershark we drive today. Cavegirl Ug has to enthuse and convince and set a process in motion. Otherwise the other cave people will just stand and jeer when her wheels get stuck in the mud and then carry on dragging mammoths around by their trunks the way they always have. So far as I know no animal has ever gone, Hey, look what I can do! I'll show you and we can all do it together! The cliche is on the shoulders of giants but I suspect the truth is really on the shoulders of a million midgets. Certainly the skateboarding bulldog showed no signs of want to to show off or share his achievement with his canine chums.