"Monsters"

The History Channel has a new show called: Monsters. In the previews they show video of what is obviously a gorilla, (but supposedly a "Bigfoot"/Sasquatch) and announce the premise of the show as: "Monsters; because if they're out there, they need to be found!" Chalk another one up for human paranoia. Personally, I find it difficult to sleep at night knowing that there might be a species of humanoid living peacefully in the woods. We need to find these people immediately, cage them, run tests and experiments, shave and socialize them!! They cannot possibly be happy out there, doing their own thing. Let's make it our mission to democratize them. While we're at it, maybe we should introduce them to money and religion.

In honor of the approaching All Hallowed Eve, we recently borrowed a copy of the old 1931 Lon Chaney film adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Regardless of which version you watch, that movie inspires the viewer to question their own ethics while considering the question: Who is the real monster? The doctor, or the animated corpse? A question I find myself asking in everyday life, about a great many things. We want to believe the world can be judged through absolute values. That there is such a thing as "good" and "evil," "right" and wrong." We pass judgment, and we demonize. Yet there are multiple sides to every story, and until we are able to accept that, we will never know who the real monsters are.

We Are

Human Primacy: Exaggerated

I have long been fascinated by researchers that have taught primates how to communicate using human language. Partly because we humans have a tendency to want to try and separate ourselves from the rest of the animal world, and pretend that we are something different, greater, removed. Through communication with primates, we have the opportunity to advance our own perspectives regarding our place in the order of things, and this is good.

Several years ago, researchers taught a group of chimpanzees to communicate using sign language. The chimps eventually learned 350 different words, but this is not the amazing part. Those same chimps had children, and unbeknown to the researchers, taught the sign language to their children. These children, adaptable and creative, in turn began to explore the language, making up new words and expanding their gesture based language beyond anything that even the researchers themselves could understand.

Further evidence of this can be found in captive apes who have also been taught sign language. Cocoa, perhaps one of the world's most famous captive gorillas, has shown that she is capable of constructing metaphors by combining the words that she already knows, to form expressions that describe or explain things that she does not have words for yet. For example, researchers showed her a ring, knowing full well that she had never been taught the word "ring," and asked her what the object was. Her reply: "finger circle."

Additionally, primates have demonstrated a desire to communicate their emotions using language when possible, and in some cases artwork, rather than the more violent outbursts that are all to commonly showcased on programs like Wild Kingdom. Sure, in certain instances the sentiment might be the same, but there is a huge difference between a creature communicating "angry, bite!" through the use of sign language in an attempt to describe his/her displeasure, than actually delivering an angry bite.

We humans have a tendency to believe that because we have refined ourselves, we are somehow separate from the animal world. What we do not often stop to consider is that given similar opportunity to stop and relax, contemplate and explore; through the gradual removal of stressful elements most large brained animals would likely experience an evolutionary renaissance much like our own. By luck of the cosmic draw, we just happen to be the kids with opposable thumbs, all else is history.

To frame this notion with an all too human perspective, there are apes who have scored in the high 90's on the standardized IQ test. But keep in mind, this is a human test, and these apes are being measured by human standards, on a human scale. By the time the average human being takes their first IQ test, it is quite probable that they have already been subject to eighteen years of human socialization, and at least twelve years of human education which still isn't saying much when we account for the large number of humans who possess an IQ below 100.

Given the opportunity of parallel experience, coupled with an equivalent amount of time to develop, there really isn't much room to doubt the presence of intellectual potential within any of Earth's sentient creatures. We may all process information differently, but this does not mean we do not process it. There is no such thing as a "dumb" animal, unless maybe we are referring to humans. Are the other animal species slowly destroying the environment? Do they wage war on each other? We consider ourselves brilliant because we alone have the capacity to solve these issues, yet ironically, these problems would not exist without us.

Random Insight

One tablespoon of soil contains more organisms within it than there are people in the world.