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Orangutan from Borneo photographed using a spear tool to fish (2008)
- JPLeRouzic 7y agoIt 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.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoThe stick is stolen from humans. (Also, while this is headlined as "spear fishing", the orangutan isn't able to catch any fish with it.)
- lifeisstillgood 7y agoHe later catches fish with it that had been trapped by fisherman's lines - and as someone who has tried spear fishing even catching one that's trapped is pretty darn good. Yeah, he used a human stick and needs practise. All those people who can build their own cars and drive without lessons may know throw stones Me, I'm gonna wait till the second generation of Orangutan's start copying their parents. If they can use this new way of supplementing their diet, we have a real winner.
- gxx 7y agoA human may not be able to catch fish either on the first try. Even for humans it takes practise...
- thaumasiotes 7y agoIt's been 11 years.
- dpeck 7y ago“that’s why they call it fishing and not catching” is a popular, if smartass, response to that.
- crispinb 7y ago> It seems that what defines humanity has to be a bit refined Since the discovery of Darwinian evolution, we've understood humanity to be just one more outflow of natural processes (albeit one having its day in the sun). The search for a specific marker of human uniqueness continued for a good century after that, but is fizzling out as we understand more about the nonhuman world, and as the intellectual influence of monotheistic religions wanes. We're a species. We emerged. We'll go away. No essential uniqueness, no destiny.
- perl4ever 7y agoI think humans are obviously unique in the same way as the first social insect, or whatever bacterium caused the Oxygen Catastrophe, or early lignin-producing plants. In fact, you could look at human history as kind of an echo of the evolution of lignin, since (I read somewhere) lignin is basically why we have fossil fuels.
- crispinb 7y agoArguably yes - it's too early to tell as it's such a young species. It's just as likely it will prove to be short (if ecologically consequential) branch of the evolutionary tree that will prove unviable and come to a dead end. But as humans are complex systems that are themselves outcomes of a wider complex system, there's not going to be a marker or essence (or 'definition' as the parent put it) of that uniqueness. Rather there's a one or more characteristically human emergent properties and capacities. No new version of 'tool-using' or 'bipedal' or related substitutes for the discarded Christian soul will win out. No soul, no essence, no destiny. Just one amongst millions of evolutionary branches whose unplanned evolutionary future will play itself out.
- ChrisGranger 7y ago(2008)
- dang 7y agoAdded. Thanks.
- hklrrrrrrrr 7y agodeepfake
- burlesona 7y agoIf 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.
- HenryBemis 7y agoIt would be interesting if other Orangutans follow suite and either monitor humans or each other trying this "new method" and eventually add this (use of spear) in other aspects of their life.
- toasterlovin 7y agoMost humans can’t really successfully master complex skills without instruction, though. It would be interesting to see if orangutans can learn to fish with a little help from a teacher.
- tathougies 7y ago> Most humans can’t really successfully master complex skills without instruction, though. It would be interesting to see if orangutans can learn to fish with a little help from a teacher. I think most humans could learn how to spear a fish without instruction after enough trial and error.
- 29athrowaway 7y agoHuman 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.
- mongol 7y agoHow fast can an average human throw?
- 7y ago
- Xunxi 7y agoReminds 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
- kbos87 7y agoQuick, find another reason why humans are superior to animals!
- chc-sc 7y agoWritten language
- chimen 7y agoPlanning the future
- clum 7y agoWhen we fish, we actually catch the fish ;)
- chousuke 7y agoHumans 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.
- thegabez 7y agoSomeone listens to the Joe Rogan podcast
- buzzerbetrayed 7y agoRead all the comments specifically looking for this one. Thanks for not letting me down.
- WomanCanCode 7y agoOrang 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.
- perl4ever 7y agoFollowing the link, there is some stuff about how new genetic research shows that humans may be closer to orangutans than chimpanzees.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoWhile theoretically possible, that idea starts in a deep hole, since orangutans don't come from Africa.
- WomanCanCode 7y agoOur origin is actually not that simple and straight forward. They now believe we may have bred with non homo sapiens https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06004-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06004-0
- perl4ever 7y agoCloser 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.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoCloser 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.
- segmondy 7y agoThere's a reason for the phrase, "monkey see, monkey do"
- RenRav 7y agoAren'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.
- weddpros 7y agoThey'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.
- nojvek 7y agoI 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.