She's studying. He's Playing

[Brazilian dude]

"This data have made a lot of people step back and realize that a lot of what they had thought about cnidarians was all wrong."

Behold the first specimen of uncount-count nouns of the English language!

Brazilian dude

[tcward]

It seems to me that you turned out great, BD!

You should see me when I wake up in the morning.

Brazilian dude

Well, if you don't turn out great, then, it at least sounds like you turn in great, BD!

-Tim

[Brazilian dude]

I hope the teacher gives me an extension.

Brazilian dude

[M. Henri Day]

do you believe the study of other species in order to shed light on our own simplistic not only when the behaviour is the object of study, but also when it is the body (morphology, genetics, etc)

There's some word missing here, isn't there? I really don't get it. ...

Admittedly, the style is lapidary, but there's no word missing BD - perhaps a comma. Try it this way :

do you believe the study of other species in order to shed light on our own simplistic, not only when the behaviour is the object of study, but also when it is the body (morphology, genetics, etc)

Easier to understand ? Otherwise, one could always insert a «to be» or an «is» before «simplistic», but that would be giving the game away....

Henri

[anders]

Benefits of Active Fathering

As they grow, children who have highly involved fathers often do better in some areas of development than children who have less involved fathers. They tend to become better at solving problems and handling frustrations, more socially skilled, more understanding of other’s feelings, and better at dealing with a variety of people. Active fathering also contributes to a child’s sense of humor, attention span, and eagerness to explore and learn.

I can only offer anecdotical evidence, but anyway. My father was a merchant navy captain. The way they worked in those days, I didn't see him too many days per year. We partly made up for that by writing letters.

The first part of that quote surprises me. The stereotype would be, I think, that mothers would be the prime movers in having their children appreciate feelings. OK, I used to be rather shy, and found it difficult to approach other people. But I always had friends - not many, but close and real stayers.

Take for example my first fiancée (ca. 1963-1967). If there's a week when we don't exchange e-mails, we call one another to find out if there's something wrong. And I just got home from helping my ex-wife (married 1970-1975) buy a copying machine. Howzat for understanding feelings and dealing with people? I'd say no worse than most ppl.

Regarding the second part,
My attention span is and has been hard to judge. Sometimes, it's second to none; sometimes, I find myself switching to another subject after few minutes. Trying to cram 100 2-glyph Chinese words for a test, I ever so often get interested in a glyph (or even a part of it), and follow that path through umpteen links and lots of dictionaries. "What - me worry?", I'm having a great time.

Regarding sense of humor and eagerness to explore and learn, those are qualities that have defined me from a very tender age on.

[M. Henri Day]

Aber, Anders, ein mal ist kein mal !...

Henri

[anders]

Anders gesehen, once is good enough for me.

[M. Henri Day]

... once is good enough for me.

A true philosophe !...

Henri

[Apoclima]

Henri:

do you believe the study of other species in order to shed light on our own (to be) simplistic not only when the behaviour is the object of study, but also when it is the body (morphology, genetics, etc) ?

No, I think the studies of anatomy, neurons, muscle, etc. may well be interesting and revealing, but I think that again it may be an oversimplification to use these findings in a way that does not treat individual species, subspecies, and, even, individuals organisms with the uniqueness they deserve, and can lead to many false assumptions and dangerous conclusions.

Doctors & Lawyers for Responsible Medicine

Animal-based research cannot be extrapolated to humans because of species differences and is therefore misleading and counterproductive. Testing a drug or chemical on an animal provides no evidence that it is safe for humans: animals do not react in the same way to drugs and other substances as we do, due to differences in their absorption, distribution, metabolism, response to and elimination of drugs. Diseases which are induced artificially in the laboratory in order to evaluate drugs can never be compared to those arising spontaneously in humans.

The problem I see with comparing the behavior of animals and humans, esp. as you have intimated, Henri, with an eye to finding our "true biological" nature and the "ideal" structure of human society is very misguided.

Henri:

But the insights gained.....can help us to create testable hypotheses concerning the consequences of the experiments on social order that we constantly perform on ourselves.

I just don't see how! I realize that from your materialist vantage point there isn't really any difference between brain biology and behavior, but Human Beings are moral agents with freedom of choice; Chimps and other Apes do not have this responsiblity. At some level we make choices against our instincts, whether that be an excess of passion or a stoic restraint.

Certainly there may be analogous developmental stages across species. Animal studies may be interesting, but they are so because we see ourselves, parts of ourselves in animal behavior.

In birdsong, CAS biologist hears more than male voices

In her lab, Ayako Yamaguchi has found that female cardinals learn to sing about three times faster than males, but that males ultimately acquire a wider repertoire of songs.

….a cardinal’s song is more than a pleasant assurance of spring: it’s a biological puzzle that may shed light on how birds and whales and humans learn to vocalize.

Sponging dolphins learn from mum

Female bottlenose dolphins are taught by their mothers to use marine sponges to look for food, according to a study.

Young female chimps outlearn their brothers

Protein source

Lonsdorf adds that there are just two main sources of animal protein for chimps - the termites or colobus monkeys.

The role of a protein source was never mentioned in the article you posted, Henri!

Are Girls Smarter?

But young male chimps may hunt and throw sooner than females. Sound familiar? Yep, human girls frequently learn to write and draw first, but boys often run and toss balls earlier than girls. Guess you'd call that "going ape"!

And, Henri, I was not asking a rhetorical question! I would like to know what we are supposed to have learned about humans from this study!

I will admit that it is cute.

Apo

[KatyBr]

quote]
No, I think the studies of anatomy, neurons, muscle, etc. may well be interesting and revealing, but I think that again it may be an oversimplification to use these findings in a way that does not treat individual species, subspecies, and, even, individuals organisms with the uniqueness they deserve, and can lead to many false assumptions and dangerous conclusions.
.

[rant]
it also leads to pop psychology. Non-experts, who think they are inperts, never fail to give advice and to label your children in their presence causing scarring in young impressionable minds.[/rant]

Katy

[M. Henri Day]

...

No, I think the studies of anatomy, neurons, muscle, etc. may well be interesting and revealing, but I think that again it may be an oversimplification to use these findings in a way that does not treat individual species, subspecies, and, even, individuals organisms with the uniqueness they deserve, and can lead to many false assumptions and dangerous conclusions. ...

There we quite agree, Apo ! But these oversimplifications are rarely, in my experience, found in the scientific articles describing the research in question. Drawing parallels between attributes of one species and those of another is certainly legitimate (that is, I understand, precisely how we learn, by drawing parallels between what we know and what we don't know, incorporating the latter into the general structure of our epistomologies), but becomes problematic when the uncertainties involved are not discussed. Unfortunately, popular articles are generally written in such a way that the reader is encouraged to believe that the hard work is done and over when the parallels have been drawn. Rather, it is just beginning, for then comes the arduous process of attempting to test the validity of the relationship hypothesised to obtain between the observed phenomena. Popular articles rarely deal with this phase, presumably because the writers - or the editors - even if they understand it themselves, which many not always be the case, assume that the matter is too difficult for their readers. And perhaps they are right - not everything is always as obvious and simple as we should like it to be, and not all of us are interested in pursuing difficult matters to the bottom (or as close to it as we can come with our brains, which are big for our bodies but woefully inadequate to the task of understanding the immense universe of which we constitute a part)....

So to the non-rhetorical question - what do we learn about humans from this study of gender differences in certain learning processes in P troglodytes ? My answer (which may be very different from that which the author of the article and/or the researchers interviewed would give to the same query) would be that we don't learn anything at all about these processes in H sap sap from the observations made on chimps - here what is needed are observations on humans (fortunately we possess a myriad such observations, not all of equally good quality, but that is another story). What the chimp observations do give us is a background against which to attempt to understand the observations made on our own species. These comparisons might lead us to testable hypotheses concerning, say, the effect of differential brain lateralisation during fetal life on gender differences in learning behaviour during the maturation process as opposed to, for example, the effect of different types of social organisation on these differences. If one wants to know what monkeys (great apes) do, one must observe monkeys (great apes) ; if one wants to know what humans do, one must observe humans. But by observing both and testing hypotheses derived from these observations, we may be able to elevate natural history to science, and in the process learn a great deal about ourselves and the other passengers flying willy-nilly on the spaceship we call Earth....

Henri

[KatyBr]

Actually,Henri It is Apo and I who do not believe there is any wily-nilly-ness involved in the creation and ongoing maintianance of this planet.

Katy

[M. Henri Day]

Well, Katy, if you've never felt that you're along on a ride you never bargained for, then you are (perhaps) to be congratulated !...

Henri