Interacting in any way with the North Sentinel folks is forbidden.
Human-Orca contact, on the other hand, is relatively common.
Not really. And again, the person was referring to Sentinelese the language and not the people and thus was referring to orcas' languages.
The wolf didn't even look up, much less reply.
Joking aside, between this and Neuralink, how close are we to cybernetic uplifting?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOXZYvDg1ck
Just makes me want to hang out with them so much more .. look at Dusty wearing that thing, what a player!
"Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" - https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_IV:_The_Voyag...
"...In the Bounty's lab, Spock discovers that it is in fact a whale song, specifically that of the humpback whale. McCoy at first wonders who would send a probe across the galaxy to speak to whales, but Kirk and Spock recognize that whales were on Earth ten million years before Humans. Humpback whales, Spock points out, have been extinct since the 21st century, and so it is possible an alien intelligence sent the probe to establish why they lost contact..."
The orcas doing this are tuna eaters, and we are depleting the tuna population. Specifically, they eat blue fin tuna migrating through the Strait of Gibraltar in the spring and summer. They're hungry and don't appreciate the overfishing. This has been escalating for a few years now. Reports of boat attacks were happening several years ago.
> It's all very human.
They have their own intelligence and culture and behavior, and it need not relate to human culture.
Although, I do suspect their raw intelligence to be approximately equal to humans.
And ‘wealth’ predates capitalism and mercantilism.
Capitalism was termed and grouped together in response to Marxist philosophy because it was a threat to the aristocracy. Capitalism proposed anyone and everyone can get rich if they slave away hard enough. Yet the “capitalists” still owned much of the capital resources.
It is important to note that the normal person did not have too much opportunity in the mid 1800s. If you seen the movie the “English Game” this is evident in there. The concept of working hard and getting rich was introduced in the early 20th century. This is also about the time when schooling had become compulsory throughout the United States.
I’m using the word to describe an economic system where the means of production are controlled by private capital (ie: capitalists). In such a system, capitalists are able to deploy capital to exploit the labor value of the working classes. This is what Marxism emerged in response to, and as I understand it, is what Marx attempts to describe in Capital.
It seems you’re using the term the way American/NATO Cold War propagandists used it, to describe a free economy where anyone can succeed with enough hard work and determination (in contrast to the Soviet system of planned economies).
The confusion is understandable. The word “capitalism” covers both meanings in everyday use.
Orcas, other than humans, are the most widespread animal. They're in practically every ocean and continental coast and eat a variety of food. Orcas who concentrate on a single or a few species, like salmon, tuna, or rays, do so as a strategy. They are huge animals with huge caloric needs, so it makes sense to diversify so as to not over compete, and thus this makes it possible for different pods to live in the same areas.
Humans the world over are starving and yet there is an over abundance of food. The U.S. alone wastes 120 billion pounds of food every year. Humans have to monitor how much fish we eat because we have filled fish with toxins like mercury and microplastics. So orcas are the "dumb" ones because some eat fish?
Famines are generally caused by bad governance, not by lack of food. We should reduce food waste where practical but that won't really help to feed the starving. For example, the 1980's Ethiopian famine which triggered major international relief efforts was primarily caused by a civil war. The opposing sides used hunger as a weapon and stole food from civilians. I can eat less tuna but that won't solve such problems.
That was primarily my point of calling that out, as it points to the lower emotional intelligence of humans.
https://www.seaspiracy.org/facts
"HIGHEST VALUE OF BLUEFIN TUNA: $3,100,000, CONSERVATION STATUS: ENDANGERED"
"TODAY ONLY 3% OF PACIFIC BLUEFIN TUNA REMAIN"
"OVERFISHING PUTS $42 BILLION TUNA INDUSTRY AT RISK OF COLLAPSE"
"A MITSUBISHI SUBSIDIARY CONTROLS 40% OF THE WORLDS BLUE FIN TUNA"
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/revealed-t...
"A corporation within the £170bn Mitsubishi empire is importing thousands of tonnes of the fish from Europe into Tokyo's premium fish markets, despite stocks plummeting towards extinction in the Mediterranean.
Bluefin tuna frozen at -60C now could be sold in several years' time for astronomical sums if Atlantic bluefin becomes commercially extinct as forecast, a result of the near free-for-all enjoyed by the tuna fleet."
that's a pretty twisted and incorrect reading of what i said, they don't have human level of intelligence because they all don't do anything else singificant their whole entire lives but hunt fish, not because they eat fish.
I answered that unlike what you are trying to accuse me of, I think there is nothing wrong with eating fish, the problem is inability to do anything else of significance but eat fish, talking about the dietary preferences is a diversion, so can we put that to rest already?
> What about what you said makes them unintelligent?
Can you please point me to cultural, scientific, technological, architectural, philosophical achievements of orcas that are typically associated with human-level intellect?
All moot if we are in The Matrix already? If not, The Matrix is the end game, anyway? I wouldn't mind much as long as chicken tastes better than fish.
Also i wasn't aware how much culture and collaboration orcas apparently have, thank you for sharing all that!
Edit: also, curious if you are aware of the work of marija gimbutas and heide göttner-abendroth on neolithic pre-patriarchal Europe (which seems to have been peaceful for thousands of years)?
* Deep Thinkers: Inside the Minds of Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises by Janet Mann
* The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins by Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell
Whales in general are very fascinating in their social and emotional intelligences. Orcas just take their raw intelligence to a new level.
Also, I am not aware of that work. So thank you! I have been meaning to read Against the Grain by James C. Scott. He mentions that early agrian societies had less leisure time and were less healthy than their hunter gatherer counterparts.
This is also described in high detail in "The Dawn of Everything" by another anarchist David Graeber. Highly recommend.
Evolution doesn't generally add features that aren't needed. Orcas don't have arms, don't build skyscrapers or fly to the moon. There's no need to be that bright.
But if you want to believe that they could, if they just had had arms, well why not (although I dissent).
> Humans are also some of the most if not the most violent species to ever exist. Which is more intelligent?
Those are two different dimensions. Being intelligent doesn't mean you're kind hearted or less violent. Although it can indeed be simpler to understand others (which you can use in evil ways).
I don't really see how you can claim that. What don't you see?
But, you also sort of prove my point as well. An 8 year old is as intelligent as an adult human. It isn't as knowledgeable or socially developed but the brain is basically 95% complete in its growth by 8 years old or so.
Part of the mistake is confusing knowledge or societal integration with intelligence.
> Evolution doesn't generally add features that aren't needed. Orcas don't have arms, don't build skyscrapers or fly to the moon. There's no need to be that bright.
But orcas do require intelligence. Their prey are dolphins, tuna, blue whales, humpback whales, beluga whales, seals, rays, salmon, herring, sharks, etc. Their prey are fast and strong and several of them (i.e., the mammals) have excellent hearing, sight, and intelligence of their own. They need their intelligence to cooperate in their hunting and to teach the learned techniques. And again, there are several indications and observations that their social and emotional intelligence is greater than humans. Orcas are currently considered a single species and thus that single species and brain provides for a huge variance in prey and living environments.
Ancient human brains and intelligence are identical to modern human brains and intelligence, and they had no need or capability for skyscrapers or going to the moon. Because again, technological development doesn't necessarily relate to intelligence. Technological development of humans is a bit of evolutionary runaway process because of our dexterity and brain combination. But just because we have a lot of technology doesn't mean we are the most intelligent. It is quite clear that our technogical development exceeds our social and emotional intelligence's ability to keep up.
> Those are two different dimensions. Being intelligent doesn't mean you're kind hearted or less violent.
It does indeed relate to social and emotional intelligence. Not everything is about bits and atoms.
> > I still see nothing in what you wrote that indicates they'd be brighter that say 5 to 7 years old kid
You then:
> sort of prove my point as well. An 8 year old is as intelligent as an adult
But I said not more than 5-7. (Could be 3-5 what do I know.)
which is not the same as 8.
And kids are kids, at 8 your brain is far from finished. (Maybe volume wise 95% but not IQ wise. I found 90% at age 5, volume/weight wise in a quick websearch). IQ wise: Not until a bit past 20 years.
(Where are you getting your ideas from?)
> Ancient human brains and intelligence are identical to modern human brains and intelligence
No.
You might have a link to some book that says otherwise, if so I would look at the authors as slightly dumb related to that.
> They need their intelligence to cooperate in their hunting
Dogs and hyenas do too.
I'm unlikely to reply any further. Btw, just one thing: when I was a teenager I had completely wildly crazy ideas about animals and their abilities, ... And, maybe in a way, I know where you're coming from. Have a nice day
> No.
> You might have a link to some book that says otherwise, if so I would look at the authors as slightly dumb related to that.
When I said ancient himans I meant early homo sapiens. I have looked into this before and while the brain has evolved over the time of homo sapiens, it is very much the same core brain. And from what I can tell from my research, the homo sapiens brain has been relatively unchanged since about 100,000 - 200,000 years ago, well before any writing or technological developments. Again, knowledge and technology are not requirements for intelligence.
For your kid argument, you would have to argue that the last 5-10% of brain development accounts for the majority of human intelligence. I think that's a tough hill to climb.
> I'm unlikely to reply any further. Btw, just one thing: when I was a teenager I had completely wildly crazy ideas about animals and their abilities, ... And, maybe in a way, I know where you're coming from. Have a nice day
That's fine, but it's also a rather immature and childish way to have a discussion.
I've never hard of this before! Can you explain more?
Granted nobody particularly cares about the absolute scale but if you’re complaining about significance it’s obviously just personal bias.
You have a very weak argument.
But the article is about them organizing a posse to sink a sea-worthy boat!!!
Can you and your friends do that? Without the aid of tools?
That balancing tuna on your nose doesn’t display human like intelligence.
bmitc's inability to understand the argument in a meaningful way is itself evidence that human intelligence is closer to the orcas
nobody suggested that they were intelligent because they eat and wear fish.
actual scientific research shows signs of culture, intelligence, and social learning, all of which point to approximately human-equal intelligence.
And no, fisherman is not a "species" or a pre-defined destiny. Hemingway was a fisherman and a writer. Humans have the ability to do other things, even in the same lifespan. Sounds like arguing for 2+2=4.
... it seems pretty reasonable that a death could trigger a lifelong vendetta.
If humans were casually killed by other animals at the rate we casually kill even the most intelligent non-human species, we'd exterminate that other species. Oh wait, we have.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/the-or...
https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/50-years-ago-seven-...
https://us.whales.org/our-4-goals/end-captivity/the-penn-cov...
One of them still lives and has been in a single, tiny tank in Florida for five decades, alone for three decades. Completely sickening.
Do they need to be exploiting each other to be smart or something?
I think it's interesting that orcas and other intelligent animals possess an ability to be contented. Humans are decidedly discontented and crave.
Have you considered that human violence exceeds playing with food by many, many orders of magnitude?
Most people do less, they don't even kill the meat that they eat.
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 1979
Opposable thumbs is also a bit of an advantage
Sometimes you need to know when to stop.
Barbate is very close to my hometown. Tuna was captured in the area since Roman times:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baelo_Claudia
My father's family used to work in Sancti Petri, a village created around the almadraba, then closed half a century ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almadraba
Why did it close? Competence from japanese factory boats. Tuna was captured in deep sea before they coasted north. I believe Barbate still has one.
Another explanation in local news is that orcas get mad with the sound of motors and propellers. The nearby straight bears very heavy traffic.
I'm imagining the whales were discussing what to do about the humans overfishing all the tuna, and one of them said that human intelligence and culture are very whale-like, when this [1] pedantic seal passing by interjected a similar comment.
They seems to target only sailboats' rudders, which are arguably the most innoffensive of boats out there, but also the easiest prays. What I heard is that it seems like one orca decided it was fun (who actually knows their intent) and then the fashion spread.
It seems more likely to me that some kids are having a good time messing with sailboats, than some sort of revenge or something.
there's also been speculation that an orca discovered the method after being injured by a boat.
Researchers aren’t sure why the orcas are going after the watercraft. There are two hypotheses, according to López. One is that the killer whales have invented a new fad, something that subpopulations of these members of the dolphin family are known to do. Much as in humans, orca fads are often spearheaded by juveniles, López says. Alternatively, the attacks may be a response to a bad past experience involving a boat.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-has-a-group-o...
On the other hand, power boats have very shallow draft, basically no keel, and much larger and exposed propellers. And yet, it's sailboats that are attacked.
Hence to me it's quite obvious that the orcas are taking on the sailboats because sailboats are easy, slow and vulnerable targets. It's more likely that a bunch of young orcas are being jerks, like teenage humans are to vulnerable people. Also I don't buy that somehow orcas would be this pure, unable to do evil, species that is merely induced to be angry as a whole group because of the big bad humans. If they have a social structure, they have members of society that are jerks.
One way or another it's a problem if they target vulnerable boats.
Not sure if you're familiar with the kea[0], but it's a rather intelligent alpine parrot, and very social, and, like orca, when one learns something new, the knowledge is transferred to its peers quickly.
When I was living in a village in the mountains, groups of young male kea would come down to the village to have fun and incidentally cause trouble.
E.g., one group would hang out by the public toilets, and when people would pull in to use it, the kea gang would deflate a car tyre, sometimes two, it felt like a way of showing how tough they were, because one kea would remove the valve cap, then the other kea (plural) would take turns depressing the valve to make that "pfsssh" noise for as long as they could handle it, then to a chorus of cackles from its peers.
When we learn the language of Killer Whales that can be an option. However, there currently isn't a way to communicate with them in the same manner humans communicate with other humans.
Maybe. Or maybe marine biologist Dr. Renaud de Stephanis is right and they are playing.
> “From what I’m seeing, it’s mainly two of those guys [the Gladises] in particular that are just going crazy. They just play, play and play. . . . It just seems to be something they really like and that’s it.”
> “I’ve seen them hunting,” the biologist added. “When they hunt, you don’t hear or see them. They are stealthy, they sneak up on their prey. I’ve seen them attacking sperm whales - that’s aggressive....but these guys, they are playing."
https://people.com/traumatized-orca-may-have-taught-whales-t...
Taking your dead salmon on the nose anecdote: that is fascinating but is it "culture" or a potential survival trait. I suspect that copied behaviour is in anticipation of a reward that will enhance survival. However it might be a form of embellishment, which would imply culture, as we know it.
Orcas are mammals, like us, that live in the sea (unlike us). They breathe air, which is rather scant in their environment - that means they are tied to the air/sea interface and they have to fall upwards to survive some problems they might encounter. I'll bet their at rest buoyancy is slightly less than seawater and their body shape favours turning them upright and putting their blowhole slightly out of the water.
They live in a very unforgiving environment and are also apex predators living off other creatures. They are bigger than most sharks which are at least able to always live submerged. They often end up in the Arctic and that means ice too to worry about to obscure the air/sea boundary.
No wonder they have invented some cunning behaviour.
For me the salmon thing was an epic fail, survival-wise but could be considered a form of "cargo cult". I think an example of a win is getting the pod to make a wave that washes a seal off an ice flow, so that they can pick it off.
That needs a lot more research. If nothing else we need a formal description of what "culture" actually means when we generalise across the entirety of life.
[1] https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-cultu...
One of my favorite examples is that, in the 1980s, an orca started wearing a dead salmon on her nose. Others soon followed. They copied the pioneer until everyone was doing it. They then subsequently got bored, abandoned the trend & forgot about it.
Alder or A99 rediscovered the trend in 2019 and it became cool to balance salmon on your nose again, https://www.instagram.com/p/CZkhP0fvhXn/
In this case, it's very likely that someone hurt one of them and they're now trying to make the world safer for themselves. They've figured out a way to deal with the entity they see as a threat and they've spread that knowledge.
It's all very human.
I suspect that it might actually be possible to try diplomacy in this case. I may be wrong, but I suspect that they could be reasoned with. This moment in time could lead to a breakthrough in inter-species communication.