What Have Elephants, Dolphins, Humans & Great Apes Got In Common?

THE ANSWER to that question is actually self awareness, according to recent research published on the subject. More specifically, recent testing has confirmed that some Elephants can recognise themselves in a mirror, leading researchers to the conclusion that they are self aware.

When it comes to Elephants, Dolphins, Humans and Great Apes there are other commonalities too. All of these animals also lead socially complex lives and display empathy—concern and understanding of another’s feelings – although to see how humanity behaves towards itself or the rest of the animal kingdom would make you wonder sometimes.

This latest research involved the placement of a durable, 8-by-8-foot (2.5-by-2.5-meter) mirror inside the elephants’ yard at the Bronx Zoo in New York. All three Asian elephants were then put through a series of self-recognition tests to assess their capacity for self awareness.

In the mark test the researchers marked each elephant with a white X on one cheek and drew an invisible X on the other. The only way for the elephants to see the marks was by looking in the mirror. “If it cared about feeling [the mark], it would have touched either one. When Happy went to the mirror, she repeatedly touched the visible mark and never touched the invisible, sham mark,” a researcher said.

While the other two elephants failed the mark test, the researchers note that less than half of chimpanzees tested have passed the mark test so this result is actually quite encouraging.

I’m quite delighted by this research – speaking as someone who believes in the principles and evidence of evolution – and would recommend to anyone that if you ever get the chance to get up close and personal with any of these amazing animals, do so. I’ve had the great fortune to spend some time with Asian Elephants and they are gentle giants and very loving creatures around their kind. Dolphins too are amazing to watch but it’s hard to get very close to them. As for Great Apes I’ve not yet had the opportunity to get anywhere near them, but I’ve seen plenty of documentary shows on them and it’s not really such a stretch to see the family resemblence now is it?

Putting The “Fun” Back Into Christian Fundamentalism

DO YOU HAVE WHAT it takes to put the “fun” back into fundamentalism? If you think you can meet the criteria then read on… but before we begin I feel the need to do a quick recap on the situation. It’s halloween for those of you that don’t know it – and that presents a particular issue for most Christian Fundamentalists, but more on that later.

The origins of Halloween and “Trick or Treat” are born in pagan rituals and celtic mythology, and these days it’s more about the goodies than anything else (Last year the house was under siege from what seemed like millions of the little buggers). It’s that time of the year again.

Tomorrow the whole spectacle will kick off officially, but I suspect from tonight the cacophony of chaos will commence in earnest and SusiQ and I will have a tough job keeping all the dogs from going nuts. Not only do we have our usual two cocker spaniels; this time we also are minding two cairns as well – so it’s a bit of a zoo, and it will be a noisy one once the fireworks and bangers start kicking off.

To offset my impending gloomy mood at the prospect of being overwhelmed by the minions of darkness (or ‘kids’ as they are sometimes referred to) I dug up some light hearted commentary on religion in general, but on Christian Fundamentalism specifically. It’s well known that most Christian Fundamentalists would be opposed to the pagentry and festival aspects of Halloween because of its pagan beginnings, so in honour of such killjoys I decided to do a post dedicated to the armies of the christian right and the soldiers of whathisname. Enjoy

So – how do you know if you are actually a Christian Fundamentalist or not in the first place? Well – I guess you better check this list and see for yourself. Read more

A Different Perspective

THE GREAT THING about a bank holiday weekend is the (obviously) extra day off work it facilitates. The less obvious benefit is some additional time to step back, slow down and hopefully get some perspective on things. The last three months and in particular the last week have been insane from a work perspective; exhaustion and stress are not healthy combinations and sometimes it’s easy to get lost in the depths of detail and the chaos of firefighting specifics that we miss the bigger picture.

I know I did, especially this past week.

So, this extra day off will give me the time for reflection and hopefully a fresh perspective on old problems by the time I get back to work on Tuesday, because it’s going to be needed badly given the workload ahead. In honour of such high ideals I present to you a collection of images I like to call ‘A Different Perspective’. Enjoy.

 

Descending Into Oblivion, Back Later

WORK GOT a little crazy there these last few days (and nights), plus my recent installation of Firefox 2.0 somehow managed to screw up stuff so I ended up having to resort to alternative measures. The end result being a lack of posts here for a couple of days.

Still – I’m gradually coming back from that insanity and will catch up over the weekend. Right now though I’m just trying to work through a beautiful hangover from session last night, and having just shoveled some good ol’ fashioned Irish Fry’up into me I can feel my systems beginning to shut down into ‘recovery’ more.

I see that a new verion of Wordpress (V2.05) is out and available for download so I guess I’ve got some site work to do over the weekend as well. Still – that can wait for a bit.

Roll on oblivion; normal service shall be resumed tomorrow when I can focus again

Firefox 2 Upgrade

SORRY FOLKS, there won’t be any proper posts this evening; I’ll be too busy downloading and playing (hopefully) with the latest verison of the excellent Mozilla Firefox browser (2.0).

If you are interested you can download Firefox2 here and see for yourself why it’s such an improvement over the usual Internet Explorer shite.

Anyway – at the very least it’s not likely to be bug ridden, flawed or contain seriously bad security holes and exploits like a certain other browser I could mention.

Normal service will resume tomorrow unless this upgrade completely buggers things up… here’s hoping

Humanity Will Need A New Planet By 2050

I’VE BEEN READING a fascinating article over at the BBC News website entitled “The Living Planet – Facts and Figures” which suggests that if current trends continue two planets would be needed by 2050 to meet humanity’s demands. It’s a startling prediction backed up by some mad statistics.

For example on average each person needs 2.2 global hectares to support the demands they place on the environment, but the planet is only able to meet consumption levels of 1.8 global hectares per person. There are some really excellent charts and graphs which articulate the decline of planet in respect of human consumption of resources and our impact – worth a look if you have a few minutes to spare.

This research is based a WWF biannual “Living Planet Report” and a key statement from the latest version same claims that the natural world was being degraded “at a rate unprecedented in human history“. This biodiversity loss is a result of humanity consuming resources faster than the planet can replenish them.

Scary prospect isn’t it? Even if it’s wildly conservative and in fact we don’t use up the resource until a few decades later than 2050, it’s still possible that within our lifetime, or that of our children, we will have finally screwed up Mother Nature beyond repair.

Some legacy isn’t it.

More Stumbling Goodness

IT’S OFFICIAL – THIS FIREFOX extension rocks! I know I did a post a while ago about this excellent Firefox browser extension (called StumbleUpon) but I just can’t help myself, it’s time for another one. There just seems to be so much random entertainment out there which this little extension manages to find.

First up is a completely simple yet hypnotic audio and visual experience called WhitneyChromatic which you just have to see to understand. No amount of words here can do it justice, go check it out and give it a couple of minutes. I’ll be amazed if you don’t get drawn in. I sat watching and listening to this for ages before it completed a full cycle. Seriously inventive stuff.

Then there is a very enjoyable twist on an old game called Dots; it’s basically a take on the old connect-4 game, except in this case joining the dots forces squares to be completed, and it gets pretty strategic pretty quickly.

Wait until you try Planarity; this will get you scratching your noggin’ bigtime. It looks easy enough, and the first level is fairly simple to figure out, but jaysus I was scratching my head for a while on the second level. More mad mouse skills required and some fairly serious 3D perception skills.

I’m getting great fun out of this StumbleUpon thingy so hopefully you will too. Enjoy