Well, I went and forgot my anniversary… I am not even married yet! The wedding is still on — 9th May is getting closer and I can’t wait….
However, it is rather typical that on a day when I allow myself to get sidetracked with busy-ness, that someone points out some truly brilliant and inspiring research showing chimps to have impressive memories..
Well, we are talking about a different kind of memory of course — the photographic kind.
Go and have a read of this article at the BBC detailing research about the photgraphic memory of chimps — and you simply have to watch the amazing video clips. They do indeed put my memory to shame.
I should be taking some of my own advice — My Hypnotic memory Improvement System
Ok, I need to go and think up some plan to get in the good books — advice greatly received!
As a sixteen-year vegetarian and former animal-rights activist, I’ve done a lot of study on ethics and animal behavior, and am continually astonished at how intelligent, emotive, and talented some animals really are. I sometimes wonder if our current attitudes toward animals are really just another offshoot of our oversimplistic reductionist thinking from Colonialist views of “us” versus “them.” In this case, animals are the out-group while humans are the in-group, and so we identify ourselves based on perceived differences (and then reify those through projection and a kind of backward-anthropomorphism).
There’s a parrot here in Tucson at the University of Arizona who has the IQ of a five year old child. He can communicate, knows the difference between right and wrong, and even knows how to lie. Of course, it’s easier for humans to think of animals as dumb beasts, because if we start seeing them as sentient beings it brings a whole new set of complex issues to the table. Kind of like when European colonists had to face the fact that people of other “races” were not base creatures.