Thursday, March 24, 2005

I made it a little more interesting



Animal psycology has sparked my interest recently. I brought my dog up, and my family's labrador quickly established itself as the Alpha male. All it took was one feroucious bite at one of the toy's my dog was playing with and it was all over.

My puppy needs to gain about five to ten pounds before it will be considered perfect in health. He doesn't eat very much in Clemson, even though he has his food out all the time. He eats right up to about where he needs to then he stops. I think it is because he's too excited and wants to go onto the next thing, much like me. Either that or he's nervous about eating, worried for whatever reason, like a puppy eating disorder. In any event, he came up here, and the labrador eats everything in site. So the added variable of my dog competing with the alpha dog was thrown into the picture. Suddenly my puppy scarfs down all of his food. Outside, he even goes to the bathroom at the same time as the Alpha, I suppose to prove a point, or maybe not to be left behind.

I went to the Zoo today. There were apes and various other monkeys there. They obviouslly preceived us, as there's only a 2% difference between humans and apes. The ape was doing exactly what I would be doing if I were in the public's captive eye: sitting almost cross legged near the back, waiting for the next thing to happen. This brought up an interesting point that Marc -- who the rest of this information is credited to -- brought up. Basiclly, an Ape is an intelligent being. Such to the point that an Ape can tell the difference between right and wrong. In a mock trial example, an Ape was to be used as a witness in a crime. In order for the Ape to be used as a witness, they would have to prove that it can tell the difference between right and wrong. Interestingly enough, through sign language, they have been proven to have the capacity to detail if an act is considered morally right, or morally wrong. While trying to prove this, they found an interesting side note. Amy, the name of the "famous" ape, who was trained by Jane Forgotthelastname, started to develop cuss words in sign language, when she became frustrated. (When I say famous, I mean I recognized Amy the Ape, and the trainer Jane, but don't remember any more details than that. If they are so well known that a non-ape buff like myself can remember their names, they must have a big impact).

By this I mean, she would signal "poop" then signal "Jane", showing her discontent for the current situation Jane had put her in. She was assumably able to "swear" at other people she felt frustrated with. I find this to be incredible. It is one thing to be able to express and relate sign language, and do basic communication through signs. Heck, my dog does that: a paw on my arm plus a bark means he wants me to rub him; sitting at attnetion and giving me the paw shows he wants to go outside. It's a huge step, however, to develop new words in a language, and to corrolate something like "poop", who's slang in all languages is a curse word, and action applying it to a specific person. This Ape clearly displayed intelligence on a high level, for being able to create a cuss word. When other animals get upset, they simply bite or bark or something of that nature. But this particular animal actually came up with something it wasn't taught, and that most defintily did not come naturally to it. This wasn't an act on instinct.

Crazy.

From now on, if someone makes me made, I'm doing sign language for "poop" and singlanguage for "you".


In other news. Now that I've said something decently interesting, I'll say what I said in a previous post that was not insightful at all:


It's almost summer time. This means several things. Most importantly, the human body will quickly release most of the fat that it geared up for the cold winter. This combined with just a little bit of walking or jogging, and we'll all experience the quickest weight loss in history. I'll be one step closer to graduating. I'm going to try to do summer classes at Tech. Here's the great news: Stewie will shed about two pounds of fur, and he'll get more tired quicker, and this means that one trip to the botanical gardens will last him a good week. w00t x 2
But hey everyone listen up. I think everyone needs a good confidence boost. So next thursday, friday or saturday, we should get a big group together to go downtown, just go to coffeeships, clubs, whatevers all night. Start living again. I know at least I have gotten into a rut, and I need to start living again, so I can feel alive when I go back to school. And I know a few other people need to get out and start enjoying themselves again. So drop me a comment if you're interested :)

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