Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Rats are great pets if you do things right.  They're social creatures so it's best to get a pair at least.  Just make sure they have a lot of food so they don't fight and that they're the same sex so you don't end up with a dozen.  You can have individual rats but in my experience they tend to become a little less friendly if they don't have a room mate.

It's also easy to come up with treats for them since pretty much anything humans can eat, they can eat as well.

They're really low maintenance pets.  They clean themselves, don't stink, naturally eat human food so you can feed them cereal if you forget to buy rat food or something.  They don't take up too much space and you can give them a walk just by letting them run around a room for a while.  If they're tame enough you can get them to ride around on your shoulder while you do laundry or something.  You can also train them.

Also, while mice may be more popular thanks to all sorts of stupid children's cartoons and stories, rats are much better pets because they're smarter, less smelly, big enough to actually stroke and thus harder to lose.  Come to think of it, being a pet seems like the next logical step in rat evolution.  They already live in our houses and eat our food without doing anything of tangible value besides being small, soft, warm, fuzzy, and cute.  All they lack is an invitation.

[Eugenitor]

The piggy I had never bit, not once. The rat on the other hand... don't stick anything between the cage bars that's not food!

Rats *learn* in a way that cavies just kind of don't. It's been too long so it's hard to explain. Cavies are like miniature cows. And yes, mice are absolute bastards. Two males and one female was a very bad idea. The boys would fight like crazy over the girl like a pissed-off pair of tiny white ninjas.

I don't think we want to go back to the original topic, but if tigers were the ones with opposable thumbs and the neocortex, would they really have a PETA? Or would they just have a campaign to preserve endangered species so future generations would get a share of that delicious monkey meat?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Sapient Tiger society would be very strange compared to ours. Tigers have a natural bladed weapon in their claws, and don't have as much endurance as humans. Tigers are also carnivores, while we are omnivores, so for them PETA would be impossible.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

I eat animal rights activists.

[Eagleon]

Intelligence (of any variety) exists in steps; you need a floating point integer (0.24, 24.98, 7.021, 90.1), not a boolean (1, 0), to begin quantifying these steps. We already have identified many signs that may suggest what relative numbers we could assign to each individual of each species.
 One of those signs mentioned here was the individuals reaction to a mirror (...), and whether or not they understand they perceive themselves and not another of their species. Humans tend to ~score high in this test; parakeets fail it almost every time.
 Another sign of intelligence is the [MEMORY_LOST] test, where you are offered a choice of 3 doors (or cups) and told (truthfully) that behind one of them is a prize, behind the others, nothing. When you make a decision, the teller opens one of the other doors (picks up one of the cups) and asks you if you want to stick with your decision or switch to the other remaining door (cup). Humans tend to fail this test about 70% time, while pigeons tend to succeed about 60%. (I found this puzzle on the xkcd forums, found the research on it afterwards.)
 In the above, what answer would you pick?

 It is true I'm totally skipping the "morals" part of this discussion because those things are usually insane and a pain to quantify.

I take issue with quantifying it at all. It's an extremely complex and derivative thing, I think a bit like defining what a 'planet' is, or trying to say which predator is best (lol Animal Face Off). Emotional and motive response is much easier to ascertain - barring the argument that it's impossible to verify scientifically whether animals have feelings, it's pretty likely they do considering they share almost everything we do and we evolved from them. From motive and sensory feedback you get behavior and learning, and from behavior and learning you get intelligence. Setting an arbitrary point of complexity for behavior that is intelligent 'enough' to be of value is just that - arbitrary. What use do most animals have for identifying themselves in reflections? What use do we have for identifying the scent of a rabbit in the grass?

The morality of it to me? I won't argue that our type of intelligence is incredibly adaptive and useful (in fact I believe it's developed to the point where it's become a new type of evolution), but so what? If usefulness, or even conversational ability were a valid criteria for life and death choices we'd have no issue with slaughtering old people and the terminally ill.

I don't think we want to go back to the original topic, but if tigers were the ones with opposable thumbs and the neocortex, would they really have a PETA? Or would they just have a campaign to preserve endangered species so future generations would get a share of that delicious monkey meat?

Hey, we want to preserve tigers because they're pretty to us (honestly, that's the biggest thing going for AR efforts), so maybe they'd have sampler trays at their meetings instead of artfully-composed dramatic photographs. Would probably be more effective for us, too, but it'll never happen.

[ed boy]

If usefulness, or even conversational ability were a valid criteria for life and death choices we'd have no issue with slaughtering old people and the terminally ill.

Not quite right. The above would only be true if humans act in a logical and rational manner, which we certainly do not.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

The piggy I had never bit, not once. The rat on the other hand... don't stick anything between the cage bars that's not food!

Rats *learn* in a way that cavies just kind of don't. It's been too long so it's hard to explain. Cavies are like miniature cows. And yes, mice are absolute bastards. Two males and one female was a very bad idea. The boys would fight like crazy over the girl like a pissed-off pair of tiny white ninjas.

I don't think we want to go back to the original topic, but if tigers were the ones with opposable thumbs and the neocortex, would they really have a PETA? Or would they just have a campaign to preserve endangered species so future generations would get a share of that delicious monkey meat?

I was thinking it'd be cool to have a pig.  Maybe it could be friends with my cats... or something...  Nah, probably it'd just chase them around the house.

If you don't want rats to bite you through the bars keep them fat and content so they don't get overexcited about food, and don't feed them through the bars too often.  Also, having food on your hands is a sure way to get bit if you haven't trained them to be careful.  The only one of my pet rats that I don't feel comfortable putting my fingers near is the four year old male who I think is going senile.

[DJ]

Setting an arbitrary point of complexity for behavior that is intelligent 'enough' to be of value is just that - arbitrary.

Setting an arbitrary point at which a chair-like object is no longer a chair is just that - arbitrary.

[Earthquake Damage]

Setting an arbitrary point of complexity for behavior that is intelligent 'enough' to be of value is just that - arbitrary.

Setting an arbitrary point at which a chair-like object is no longer a chair is just that - arbitrary.

Is "chairness" a matter of form or of function?  If I sit on a rock, does it not become a chair?

[DJ]

It becomes a seat, but not a chair. A couch is not a chair.

[lordnincompoop]

You see, a lot of this stuff relies on unspoken consensus. It's crazy.

[G-Flex]

If usefulness, or even conversational ability were a valid criteria for life and death choices we'd have no issue with slaughtering old people and the terminally ill.

Not quite right. The above would only be true if humans act in a logical and rational manner, which we certainly do not.

Also: Old people and the terminally ill are useful. Even if someone can't lift bricks or even feed themselves, they can be useful in a social sense. You want to keep your oldest dudes around because they have a very broad range of experiences and you don't want to limit the amount of history within living memory, and being terminally ill is the kind of experience that can cause people to think/say insightful/interesting things.

[Leafsnail]

Plus, you know if you start slaughtering old people, the same will happen to you when it's your time.

[Nivim]

 Ah yes, one must remember rats are omnivorous like us, so they have no problem eating human flesh. Although I guess those sold as pets might have been conditioned not to care about that food source, or are too small and too few to take advantage of it.

I've also never gotten along particularly well with most birds.  All the parrots I've known have been ornery buggers.  I've met a couple non-parrots, and they seemed fairly decent, including a parakeet that would run straight at you and then tuck its head in so it could have its neck scratched.
And if you didn't scratch it properly, or for long enough, or in the right spot, he'd bite you.  Crazy little nutter.

Having experience with birds (barely any with falcons), I should note a few things.
 1. It's odd a bird would consider any given person a flock mate, regardless of three.
 2. They have much higher sensitivity to touch, and they expect you, as a "flock mate", to be able to recognize the difference between feathers about to come out, feathers you should ignore, feathers just finished growing (still covered in chaff), and pin feathers still filled with blood and tissue...by touch.
 3. The pin feathers, those still growing and those emptied of bloody tissue, itch a great deal. The bird requires other birds (or people who can do it right) to preen the tops of their heads; removing old chaff, zipping up the quills and barbs back together, then finally something akin to rubbing.

African Grays are fantastic mimics, but from what I can recall they're not really that bright.  There was Griffon who learned what all the words meant, but otherwise it's just mimicry.

How many more learned African Greys are there? I never heard of Griffon. What did he/she learn?

Another sign of intelligence is the [MEMORY_LOST] test, where you are offered a choice of 3 doors (or cups) and told (truthfully) that behind one of them is a prize, behind the others, nothing. When you make a decision, the teller opens one of the other doors (picks up one of the cups) and asks you if you want to stick with your decision or switch to the other remaining door (cup). Humans tend to fail this test about 70% time, while pigeons tend to succeed about 60%. (I found this puzzle on the xkcd forums, found the research on it afterwards.)
In the above, what answer would you pick?

I take issue with quantifying it at all.

  Psychology will march on without you. The scale will inevitably be changed, likely revised many times, dividing into groups and who knows what else. But you aught to start with some measure, and we do have methods of measure for single individuals of a species. Just like humans, scores will change with time and conditions.
 Or DJ's mockery, whichever you prefer.

You see, a lot of this stuff relies on unspoken consensus. It's crazy.

  Science does not rely on unspoken consensus. We have our technology explosion thanks to this.

 If you're looking for culling people, there are certainly many candidates, but trying to identify them involves using human judgement, that always makes mistakes, is rather foolish. Especially considering the noticeable effects of power corruption, and the fact you wont start perfectly either...you can't even be sure it will start better than slime mold.
 So, how to choose who should choose? How should the chosen choose?

 An arbitrary limit isn't going to work when there are immediate consequences, especially considering people can change when useless young and 80 year olds can stay healthy and productive. So many awesome old people...

[nbonaparte]

This reminds me of something: It's pretty much accepted that dolphins have some sort of language. If we can't even decipher that, how can we possibly hope to understand aliens?