4 ms·

Orangutans plan their future route and communicate it to others

31 points by sethbannon 13y ago

tristanj 13y ago
Gosh this article is really sexist. If the authors were writing about people instead, they would never write so objectively about gender. Considering how orangutang's are our close genetic cousins, if the authors replaced each instance of 'orangutang' with 'human', their conclusions would still be largely correct yet there would be much more public backlash.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Animals cannot sue.
- colanderman 13y ago
  Why, are female orangutans known make these calls and elicit gender-reversed responses?
  - tristanj 13y ago
    I'm pointing out that if the authors wrote an article titled "Male humans plan their travel route up to one day in advance and communicate it to other members of their species," the authors would be called out in the comments on how human females are just as capable of doing so and how their paper is incredibly derogatory to women. Comments like that are notably missing from this thread even though humans and orangutans are closely related and would share similar low-level social structures.
    - benjoffe 13y ago
      Do you think it's wrong to report about orangutans in this fashion even if it's true? I don't understand your point. Edit: also, your mention that comments like this are "notably missing from this thread" makes little sense when there's currently only one other root comment against the post.
    - andrewcooke 13y ago
      you don't think the difference could be that in the hypothetical case it would be common knowledge that women and men are equally capable of this, but in the paper they are reporting on observations that, so far, only show the behaviour for males? in other words, feminists aren't robots that detect syntactic patterns and automatically complain about them. rather, there's actual reasoning and experience behind the objections.
    - btilly 13y ago
      Comments like that are notably missing from this thread even though humans and orangutans are closely related and would share similar low-level social structures. If this is true, then it involves truths that I am quite sure you would not want to hear about. Our closest living relative is the chimpanzee. The average adult male chimp has sex an average of once per hour. The only difference between a mating display and a threat display is the erection. Females object an average of 1% of the time in which case it becomes clear that the similarity between mating displays and threat displays goes further than a superficial visual similarity. (Do keep in mind that any healthy adult chimp - of either gender - is stronger than any human weightlifter.) Rape in chimpanzees is neither uncommon nor frowned upon. This behavior starts young. In fact while males are not grown enough to be unable to subdue adult females on their own, their mothers will assist them in subduing low ranking females of their choice. Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like. There may indeed be low level social similarities between chimps and humans. But if so, they are not similarities that we would feel comfortable admitting to. If the topic interests you, for further reading I would suggest Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan. Among other things it is the source of the facts that I just quoted for you. And as a final thought, one of strongest cross-primate similarities is a connection between sex and dominance. The phrase, "Fuck you!" has echoes far and wide among our relatives.
    - mjbrownie 13y ago
      There is a significant degree of sexual dimorphism within the orangutan species (130 kilo+ adult males compared to around 35 kilo females)- far greater than humans. That any comparison to human behavior cannot be implied. Just take it as it is. If it makes you feel better, wild female orangutan mothers are capable of teaching their children over 180 food sources during a nurturing period lasting over 10 years. Impressive stuff.
- reginaldjcooper 13y ago
  You're literally calling people sexist for writing their observations of animal mating behaviors. False, and wow. If they observed human males yelling in the direction of their travel, their voices amplified by massive cheeks that females lacked, why would they not make the same conclusions? It's not sexist to reject the absurd premise that behavior is unaltered by testosterone and estrogen. It is sexist to exclude people because of their gender or shame people because their behavior doesn't fit their gender role. It's nowhere near sexist to write observations about animal's mating behaviors.
- btilly 13y ago
  We are talking about another species, with much clearer defined sexual roles than our own. Discussing their mating behavior in non-gender specific ways would be intellectually dishonest. Next you'll be objecting to nature documentaries that focus on male rams fighting while the females wait patiently to mate with the winner.
contingencies 13y ago
TLDR; Many animals are smarter than we give them credit for. In particular: primates and most mammals, but even insects! It's easy to fall in to the trap of worshipping the hyper-specificity of the western scientific rationalist tradition. However, just because something doesn't exist as a documented and 'peer-reviewed' (despite the recent revelations on how many scientific publications actually lack any significant integrity) piece of categorized research doesn't mean it isn't there, and in many cases important philosophical perspectives from alternative traditions of inquiry have been impressively validated by modern science. Nature is pretty amazing, and experience is richer than we can ever render it with our petty scribbles. (Something along these lines is perhaps what lies at the heart of many of the world's other, arguably more experientially grounded philosophies and religions, particularly various naturalistic traditions disparagingly grouped as 'Animism', Daoism, Islam and many of the philosophies of India - Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, etc.)
- ninjin 13y ago
  > "...just because something doesn't exist as a documented and 'peer-reviewed' ... piece of categorized research doesn't mean it isn't there, and in many cases important philosophical perspectives from alternative traditions of inquiry have been impressively validated by modern science." There is nothing controversial in what you are saying and most scientists are likely to agree that, at times, modern science does verify what has already been stated based on non-scientific grounds. But at least to me (and I think plenty of others) this is not a problem in the first place. Science is an approximation of the truth, our best current understanding of the world and we know that there are things that we simply don't know (heck, the world would be quite boring otherwise). Science is instead about making small gradual improvements to that approximation and this is where my view on things clashes (I think) with yours. The idea that some philosophies/religions sometimes get close to our scientific understanding reminds me of a person that claimed to have dreams depicting future events. This person would make a crude drawing of what he saw, then march down to the local bank that had a clock with year, date and time and take a photo in-front of that clock. Later on, after for example 9/11, he would go back to these dreams and perhaps find something similar to this event. But this is the lure of post-hoc reasoning, what he initially had was a crude drawing and the meaning and connection to New York, Al-Qaeda, etc. came after the fact. To me, the connection that you describe works in a similar fashion. There is a lot of strange things that you get with your package of beliefs but I do think that any claim to being more in-line with modern science is mostly due to cherry-picking and cheer luck and that we are better of picking our philosophies/religion based on some fuzzy idea of "morals" rather than their relation to our current scientific understanding.
Strilanc 13y ago
They could also be facing "way that looks promising right now" both when calling and when traveling, without planning. I don't envy these researchers, having to eliminate all the "stupid" ways to achieve something in order to figure out how much high-level planning animals do.

31 points by sethbannon 13y ago

Gosh this article is really sexist. If the authors were writing about people instead, they would never write so objectively about gender. Considering how orangutang's are our close genetic cousins, if the authors replaced each instance of 'orangutang' with 'human', their conclusions would still be largely correct yet there would be much more public backlash.

pjmlp 13y ago
Animals cannot sue.
colanderman 13y ago
Why, are female orangutans known make these calls and elicit gender-reversed responses?
- tristanj 13y ago
  I'm pointing out that if the authors wrote an article titled "Male humans plan their travel route up to one day in advance and communicate it to other members of their species," the authors would be called out in the comments on how human females are just as capable of doing so and how their paper is incredibly derogatory to women. Comments like that are notably missing from this thread even though humans and orangutans are closely related and would share similar low-level social structures.
  - benjoffe 13y ago
    Do you think it's wrong to report about orangutans in this fashion even if it's true? I don't understand your point. Edit: also, your mention that comments like this are "notably missing from this thread" makes little sense when there's currently only one other root comment against the post.
  - andrewcooke 13y ago
    you don't think the difference could be that in the hypothetical case it would be common knowledge that women and men are equally capable of this, but in the paper they are reporting on observations that, so far, only show the behaviour for males? in other words, feminists aren't robots that detect syntactic patterns and automatically complain about them. rather, there's actual reasoning and experience behind the objections.
  - btilly 13y ago
    Comments like that are notably missing from this thread even though humans and orangutans are closely related and would share similar low-level social structures. If this is true, then it involves truths that I am quite sure you would not want to hear about. Our closest living relative is the chimpanzee. The average adult male chimp has sex an average of once per hour. The only difference between a mating display and a threat display is the erection. Females object an average of 1% of the time in which case it becomes clear that the similarity between mating displays and threat displays goes further than a superficial visual similarity. (Do keep in mind that any healthy adult chimp - of either gender - is stronger than any human weightlifter.) Rape in chimpanzees is neither uncommon nor frowned upon. This behavior starts young. In fact while males are not grown enough to be unable to subdue adult females on their own, their mothers will assist them in subduing low ranking females of their choice. Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like. There may indeed be low level social similarities between chimps and humans. But if so, they are not similarities that we would feel comfortable admitting to. If the topic interests you, for further reading I would suggest Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan. Among other things it is the source of the facts that I just quoted for you. And as a final thought, one of strongest cross-primate similarities is a connection between sex and dominance. The phrase, "Fuck you!" has echoes far and wide among our relatives.
  - mjbrownie 13y ago
    There is a significant degree of sexual dimorphism within the orangutan species (130 kilo+ adult males compared to around 35 kilo females)- far greater than humans. That any comparison to human behavior cannot be implied. Just take it as it is. If it makes you feel better, wild female orangutan mothers are capable of teaching their children over 180 food sources during a nurturing period lasting over 10 years. Impressive stuff.
reginaldjcooper 13y ago
You're literally calling people sexist for writing their observations of animal mating behaviors. False, and wow. If they observed human males yelling in the direction of their travel, their voices amplified by massive cheeks that females lacked, why would they not make the same conclusions? It's not sexist to reject the absurd premise that behavior is unaltered by testosterone and estrogen. It is sexist to exclude people because of their gender or shame people because their behavior doesn't fit their gender role. It's nowhere near sexist to write observations about animal's mating behaviors.
btilly 13y ago
We are talking about another species, with much clearer defined sexual roles than our own. Discussing their mating behavior in non-gender specific ways would be intellectually dishonest. Next you'll be objecting to nature documentaries that focus on male rams fighting while the females wait patiently to mate with the winner.

contingencies 13y ago

TLDR; Many animals are smarter than we give them credit for. In particular: primates and most mammals, but even insects! It's easy to fall in to the trap of worshipping the hyper-specificity of the western scientific rationalist tradition. However, just because something doesn't exist as a documented and 'peer-reviewed' (despite the recent revelations on how many scientific publications actually lack any significant integrity) piece of categorized research doesn't mean it isn't there, and in many cases important philosophical perspectives from alternative traditions of inquiry have been impressively validated by modern science. Nature is pretty amazing, and experience is richer than we can ever render it with our petty scribbles. (Something along these lines is perhaps what lies at the heart of many of the world's other, arguably more experientially grounded philosophies and religions, particularly various naturalistic traditions disparagingly grouped as 'Animism', Daoism, Islam and many of the philosophies of India - Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, etc.)

ninjin 13y ago
> "...just because something doesn't exist as a documented and 'peer-reviewed' ... piece of categorized research doesn't mean it isn't there, and in many cases important philosophical perspectives from alternative traditions of inquiry have been impressively validated by modern science." There is nothing controversial in what you are saying and most scientists are likely to agree that, at times, modern science does verify what has already been stated based on non-scientific grounds. But at least to me (and I think plenty of others) this is not a problem in the first place. Science is an approximation of the truth, our best current understanding of the world and we know that there are things that we simply don't know (heck, the world would be quite boring otherwise). Science is instead about making small gradual improvements to that approximation and this is where my view on things clashes (I think) with yours. The idea that some philosophies/religions sometimes get close to our scientific understanding reminds me of a person that claimed to have dreams depicting future events. This person would make a crude drawing of what he saw, then march down to the local bank that had a clock with year, date and time and take a photo in-front of that clock. Later on, after for example 9/11, he would go back to these dreams and perhaps find something similar to this event. But this is the lure of post-hoc reasoning, what he initially had was a crude drawing and the meaning and connection to New York, Al-Qaeda, etc. came after the fact. To me, the connection that you describe works in a similar fashion. There is a lot of strange things that you get with your package of beliefs but I do think that any claim to being more in-line with modern science is mostly due to cherry-picking and cheer luck and that we are better of picking our philosophies/religion based on some fuzzy idea of "morals" rather than their relation to our current scientific understanding.

Strilanc 13y ago

They could also be facing "way that looks promising right now" both when calling and when traveling, without planning. I don't envy these researchers, having to eliminate all the "stupid" ways to achieve something in order to figure out how much high-level planning animals do.