A big problem (little pun)

[Squidflakes]

Fun fact:

The enzymes that break down lactose and gluten also release a peptide that interfears with neurochemical release in the brain.

There is a supposition going around that we're right in the middle of a macroevolutionary change that will end up limiting the release of this peptide due to the increased lactose and gluten intolerance in the younger populations.

However, this is just a supposition.

[Chiropteran]

I'm not going to deal with Honor's obvious narcissism or her textbook reaction to having it pointed out.

However, I will correct a very incorrect statement:

the fact is, eating more meat than, say, our nearest relative, Pan troglodytes is considered, scientifically, to be one of the biggest reasons we got the bigger, hotter brains.

No; that was once the belief but it hasn't been for some time. Not since Man the Hunter has that theory been particularly supported by the evidence. Read Sally Slocum's Woman the Gather, and read the Lee piece that I mentioned earlier (The Lee was what turned that particular theory on its ear).

The reason hunting was made much of for a long time is that anthropology, though far ahead of most other academic fields in regards to recognizing that gender is a load of culturally constructed hooey, early on still was dominated by men and so they looked at what men were doing, which, in most places, included a lot of hunting. In actuality, the hunting was not particularly important to subsistence in the overwhelming majority of cases (including the ones we have in the places where humans are believed to have first evolved--i.e. Southern and Eastern Africa), thus not a very good candidate for prime evolutionary mover at all.

I am an anthropology student, I am even currently taking a human evolution course right now and no, having a high IQ does not make you more of an expert than someone who has the IQ and has read extensively on this subject (and even has a lot of that fresh in her mind).

The reason that evolution was attributed to hunting (and we now think that, for instance, the hominids at Olduvai Gorge were scavengers and NOT hunters at all) basically leads one to believe that men did all the evolving (including competing for women) while the passive women stayed back at the base camp and cared for the children. Prefeminist evolutionary theory leads one to believe that there were no selection pressures on women whatsoever. Again, I'll refer you to Slocum for an insightful revisiting of that question.

One theorist even postulated monogamy (without a shred of evidence to support it) as a contract between males, who provided all the useful labor (this bit is now completely discredited, since most of the food nearly anywhere but tundra, is provided by women if you're a foraging community) in exchange for exclusive sexual access (of which there is not a shred of evidence, and which is not the pattern among primates, or among all that many cultures).

Now, if you want to talk about our difference from chimps, you are talking about the divergence of hominids from other primates and the brain did not come first. In fact, the Piltdown hoax was believed for so long because of the assumption that the brains evolved first. They didn't; bipedalism did, so let's deal wit that first:

The reason that we became bipedal was most likely related to the fact that the grasslands expanded into the primates' native forests and it's of great use to be bipedal in grasslands for a couple of reasons:

-Bipedal walking uses a lot less energy than quadrapedal motion, which is faster. This allows hominids to cover great distances. Since most of the vegetable matter in grassland, unlike the forest where primates evolved, is grass, which is not very digestible by primates, the vegetable resources we could use are widely dispersed.

-Bipedal walking lets you carry stuff, useful for food-sharing, which primates do, and for, once you find food, taking it to somewhere safe to eat it.

-Bipedal walking is useful to scavengers too (yep, we did scavenge meat, but that's not particularly the main reson we're smart, or the only thng bipedalism helps; it just isn't that big a part of our "natural" diet ), since you have to carry your meat off from a kill-site, and a long way at that, and because you can see further. You can see the carnivore kill first, you can see any carnivores that decide to go back for seconds. In the grasslands, even those few feet of elevation of your eyes convey a tremendous advantage.

-Especially for not being eaten, which probably had more to do with the brains than anything else. We were brachiators who suddenly found ourselves with nowhere to hide in an environment full of very large predators; we weren't big, not even as big as we are now, and we had to be smart, because the ones that weren't smart are all dead (e.g. Paranthropus, which had a different survival strategy, one that addressed getting food pretty well---those guys could eat any tuber, grass, whatever, with those teeth of theirs---google P. aethiopicus sometime---but they're dead).

[Wilmo]

so.. many walls-o-text...


and squiddy... yes, it is.

[Chiropteran]

And I need to correct a deliberate misquote

a vegetarian diet is not, in fact, overwhelmingly stunting and damaging to children...

I never said the cost was huge... Only that it is, logically, extant.

I said "inherently" not "overwhelmingly" That's a pretty cheap tactic.

Yes, you have a grudge. I posted something saying basically, neither anorexia nor obesity is a good thing, and that both sides of the political spectrum in America have rationalizations for obesity that seem to miss the point, and incidentally, it's neither wholly nature nor wholly nurture. You immediately jump all over it.

Do you even believe yourself when you deny that you were acting vindictively?

[Honor]

And I need to correct a deliberate misquote

a vegetarian diet is not, in fact, overwhelmingly stunting and damaging to children...

I never said the cost was huge... Only that it is, logically, extant.

I said "inherently" not "overwhelmingly" That's a pretty cheap tactic.

Yes, you have a grudge. I posted something saying basically, neither anorexia nor obesity is a good thing, and that both sides of the political spectrum in America have rationalizations for obesity that seem to miss the point, and incidentally, it's neither wholly nature nor wholly nurture. You immediately jump all over it.

Do you even believe yourself when you deny that you were acting vindictively?

Speaking of deliberate misquotes... Let's look at that one in context, shall we?

A no-meat diet is unnatural for humans. An all meat (or extremely meat-heavy) diet is unnatural for humans. Both carry inherant costs in developmental ideals, however slight.

Not all primates even eat meat and a vegetarian diet is not, in fact, inherently stunting and damaging to children.

We're not talking about all primates, we're talking about H.Sapiens, and the fact is, eating more meat than, say, our nearest relative, Pan troglodytes is considered, scientifically, to be one of the biggest reasons we got the bigger, hotter brains. It would be more correct to say: (emphasis (obviously) added)

...a vegetarian diet is not, in fact, overwhelmingly stunting and damaging to children...

I never said the cost was huge... Only that it is, logically, extant.

Yet more evidence that you do not read what you're arguing with before you set out to argue.

I'm not holding a grudge. Get over it. I've had disagreements with just about every person on this board over the past few years, and in every case except yours, we've gotten over it.

Yes, it's annoying that you decided in another thread that I wasn't intelligent enough to do with I was doing, even though you had no idea what I was, in fact, doing.

Yes, it's annoying that you keep resorting to an argument of essentially "You're crazy, so nothing you say counts." even though several psychologists have had cause to evaluate me in the course of various security clearances and job evaluations in the military and civilian life, and none of them agree with your diagnosis.

Yes, it's annoying that you keep jumping to unfounded conclusions, taking things in the most personal way possible, and ignoring what I'm actually saying in order to argue against stuff you think I might have said.

None of that is worth holding a grudge... Although that last one comes awfully close.

I posted something saying basically, neither anorexia nor obesity is a good thing, and that both sides of the political spectrum in America have rationalizations for obesity that seem to miss the point, and incidentally, it's neither wholly nature nor wholly nurture. You immediately jump all over it.

No. I didn't. I fully agree with that statement, as it stands.

• You misrepresented the dangers of liposuction, and I "jumped on" that.
• I asked after a reference I didn't get.
• I reacted to a "joke" I evidently didn't get, which looked to me like you were holding up a non-authority as an inarguable authority
• You misrepresented the characterization I made of vegetarianism by ignoring fully half of it, and I "jumped on" that.
• and you misrepresented a point of fiction, in jest, and I jokingly (yes, jokingly... I even prefaced my answer with a *heh*) "jumped on" that.

See a theme? You say something incorrect, I point it out. Read around in the forum a bit... You'll find I do the exact same thing with everyone else, too. It's not me on some personal quest to get you... It's not about you. It's about accuracy of fact.

And you're calling me narcissistic? jesus.

One. Last. Time...

I don't have anything against you personally. I like intelligent people, and you're obviously very intelligent. I like arguement, especially when it leads to my favorite thing in all of this world... Me learning something new.

I'm sorry if the way I say things has offended you in the past... I've had that problem with others here, as well... I know it's something of a fault or weakness that I have, and I try to work on it... The only thing I can suggest is that if you go back and read what I actually wrote... Consider it fully, and in context, and take every word at it's precise denotative meaning, you'll find that it is almost never my intention* to insult anyone. It's not how I debate, and it's not how I try to live.

*On the rare occasion when I do find it necesary to insult someone, I make every effort leave absolutely no doubt as to my intent.

[Honor]

However, I will correct a very incorrect statement:

the fact is, eating more meat than, say, our nearest relative, Pan troglodytes is considered, scientifically, to be one of the biggest reasons we got the bigger, hotter brains.

No; that was once the belief but it hasn't been for some time. Not since Man the Hunter has that theory been particularly supported by the evidence.

I agree that the idea of pre-human ancestors as great hunters has been dead quite a while now, but the idea of the importance of increasing consumption of animal tissue (I hesitate to say 'meat', since fat was of such high importance*) in our evolution is still an active theory, even if not a universally accepted one. It's still directly referenced when studying how and why p.trog hunts and eats ants and smaller monkeys.

I agree with everything else in your post, except for the personal attacks and snide comments. I've never claimed doctoral level original thought or IQ based inborn knowledge in any of this... Of course you read books, and given your course of study, I'd guess almost certainly both more, and more recently than I have... I'm just a generalist in most things. But where do you think I get my information on the subject...? Divine inspiration? Show me a topic where all the texts, experts, and studies agree, and I'll show you a topic nobody's debating or studying much anymore.



* I mention this seemingly non-sequetorial point, in case anyone wonders, because it's still overly fresh on my mind from the conversations Squiddy and I had on the subject... I realized / agreed that "meat" is just part of it, and in many ways a smaller part.

[Swordsman3003]

HOLY SHIT!! I was just able to divide by zero, shoot lasers out of my eyes, and prove the string theory!!

THE WORLD IS ENDING!!

[Squidflakes]

the fact is, eating more meat than, say, our nearest relative, Pan troglodytes is considered, scientifically, to be one of the biggest reasons we got the bigger, hotter brains.

No; that was once the belief but it hasn't been for some time. Not since Man the Hunter has that theory been particularly supported by the evidence. Read Sally Slocum's Woman the Gather, and read the Lee piece that I mentioned earlier (The Lee was what turned that particular theory on its ear).

Honor: This was the point I was trying to get across to you in IM. Brain development IS NOT exclusive to hunters, nor is it always driven by access to meat.
I kept pointing out that fat was the primary nutritional driver here, but I neglected to mention that startch also plays a huge part, making gatherers the primary food calorie providers in early societies.

The reason hunting was made much of for a long time is that anthropology, though far ahead of most other academic fields in regards to recognizing that gender is a load of culturally constructed hooey, early on still was dominated by men and so they looked at what men were doing, which, in most places, included a lot of hunting.

This is why Desmond Morris' "The Naked Ape" was such a damaging book. It claimed that all facets of human sexuality were evolved to please males. Large breasts, wide hips, long hair, the missionary mating position, ect. It also placed hunting at the very top of the provision pyramid, which we know from evidence is completely false. Early hunters, when compared with the apex predators of the time, were excedingly poor at providing energy for their groups. But, at the time it was written, women were second class citizens, so male researchers assumed that was "natural" and had always been that way.

-Especially for not being eaten, which probably had more to do with the brains than anything else. We were brachiators who suddenly found ourselves with nowhere to hide in an environment full of very large predators; we weren't big, not even as big as we are now, and we had to be smart, because the ones that weren't smart are all dead

There have been a few theories that have us coming out of the trees, in to the grasslands, and moving to the coasts. I think this was called the Aquatic Ape theory, but I'm not sure if it has been depricated or not.


One other thing that Honor and I were talking about that I think deserves mention is the perception that all heard prey animals are dumb. This couldn't be further from the truth. Many of us get this assumption from our singular interactions with domesticated prey animals, mainly cows. Yes, domestic cows are dumb. Dumb as posts. Dumb as rocks. You would be too if you'd been a cultivated creature for thousands of years.
What people fail to realize is that, in the wild, a heard isn't just a bunch of dumb animals who get together for protection, its a complete society with rules, heiarchy, leaders, and limited goals. It takes just as much brain power to live within this society as a predator spends tracking and catching prey.
Something that has trapped a lot of researchers in the past has been the Personification Pit. When watching animal behavior, it is very easy to attribute motives, emotion, and thought that simply doesn't exist for animals. Animals rely on instinct to guide their actions. Predators and prey alike aren't necessarily thinking about their next action as much as they are reacting to stimulus. Hunting and hearding are just different reactions to stiumli.

[Squidflakes]

so.. many walls-o-text...


and squiddy... yes, it is.

it is what?

[Honor]

the fact is, eating more meat than, say, our nearest relative, Pan troglodytes is considered, scientifically, to be one of the biggest reasons we got the bigger, hotter brains.

No; that was once the belief but it hasn't been for some time. Not since Man the Hunter has that theory.... ... .. .... ...... ...

Honor: This was the point I was trying to get across to you in IM. Brain development IS NOT exclusive to hunters, nor is it always driven by access to meat.
I kept pointing out that fat was the primary nutritional driver here, but I neglected to mention that startch also plays a huge part, making gatherers the primary food calorie providers in early societies.

And that's why I was willing to concede for lack of time to seek out significant supporting evidence... But I'm not buying it wholesale. What you're saying looks great on the screen, but it goes way outside the lines of what I'm saying, and it assumes a lot that's not proved or proveable. Take this sentence for instance:

"Brain development IS NOT exclusive to hunters, nor is it always driven by access to meat."

First, nobody said anything about "exclusive to hunters" or "always" anything. What's been said is that strong evidence points toward this one very specific creature benefitting heavily from adding a very small amount of scavenged & stolen meat to it's diet over a long (millions of years) period of time. Nobody's talking about proto-humans being "apex predators" or eating meat with every meal. I've said, again and again and again... a little bit, a little bit... just a little bit more than the other monkeys.

Or, this one:

I kept pointing out that fat was the primary nutritional driver here, but I neglected to mention that startch also plays a huge part, making gatherers the primary food calorie providers in early societies.

Again... (and again, and again) I am -not- talking about massive (or even large) quantities of meat. Tiny little quantities of meat. Some small percent none of us can even pretend to be able to guess at, but certainly a "rare treat". And, unless when you say "societies" you mean troupes of creatures that barely walk upright and can't talk, I'm talking -way- before "societies".

One other thing that Honor and I were talking about that I think deserves mention is the perception that all heard prey animals are dumb. This couldn't be further from the truth. Many of us get this assumption from our singular interactions with domesticated prey animals, mainly cows.

*thus begins the long, drawn out tangent on "the diet of evolutionary intelligence"... Which, incidently is neither a conversation about the initial topic of the medical and social aspects of weight issues, nor even the hijacked topic of humans and the cultural fad of vegetarianism. (yes, fad. When you're talking about evolution over tens or hundreds of millions of years, anything anyone's only been doing for hundreds or thousands of years is a fad.)*

>.> You could have pointed out, to be polite, that I didn't and don't share that perception that "all herd prey animals are dumb". And, since I'm a nit-picky bitch about those kinds of things, it absolutely could be farther from the truth. It's not like gazelles are the smartest kids in class. "Not entirely true" and "furthest thing from the truth" are not semantically equal.

I'm gonna need some better evidence before I sign off on this one, entirely... I -might- roll over like a good little girl if cows were the only animals I'd had any interaction with, but they're not. Not even close. It's going to take more than a touchy-feely modern "all kinds of intelligence are equally important and equally valid." speech to get me to sign off on the idea that, say, gazelles are as smart as lions... or mountain goats are as smart as wolves.

Part of the problem is that we're still very new at this "sentience" thing... We don't really understand the nature of intelligence very well. And pretty much universally, across the board, humans have been under-estimating the intelligence of all animals for a long, long time...

Last night, you kept saying that it didn't take any more intelligence to be a successful hunter than it did to be a successful herd animal. I still say that's bullshit. Yes, zebras have a rudimentary social structure... far more advanced than we once thought, but it's not like they're writing books and holding elections. The lions that hunt them have a social structure too... Still, no books or elections, per se, but a lot more developed and active than the zebras. The zebra's social structure activity during the hunt amounts to "run away, with the herd, try to keep some member of the herd between me and the lion. It they get too close, and you're trapped, try to fight." Meanwhile, the lions are actively communicating... Planning... Co-operating.

Comparing instinct to instinct doesn't really get us anywhere... Instincts are amazing. It's incredibly fascinating to me that information that complex can be passed in genetic material... I'm almost literally waiting with bated breath for more research and information on how that shit works... But it's not intelligence.

Even outside that, a far better measure of "intelligence" (I'd say "I think", but "I agree with my chosen experts" would be more accurate) can be found in a) problem solving capabilities, and b) play behaviour... And predators and omnivores routinely do better (more impressive) stuff, on average, in both areas...

Some, what we might call "apex herbivores" do pretty well, too... Enough so to trick some of us into thinking both lifestyles are equally valid paths to evolutionary intelligence.

Domesticated horses have been interacting with humans for hundreds of generations, getting a better diet than in the wild, and being selected for intelligence... So they're probably not a great example for the first part of this question, but they do show, and very well, that a great deal of intelligence is available to animals with a carefully structured vegetarian diet.

Domesticated dogs and cats are bad examples from the other side... For much the same reasons. But, while domesticated horses and elephants are demonstrably "smarter" than wild ones, the extensive interaction of dogs and cats with humans could be argued to reduce their functional intelligence... The ability to be trained to do tricks is not the best meter of intelligence... The ability to figure out how to open your stall, or get the catfood out of the top cupboard is. Not saying which way I'd vote w/o mor research, but it -could- be argued.

Elephants and Whales... Both have a very high evidence of cognition beyond what we can comfortably ascribe to pure and simple instinct... But they're also, by and large, above predation, and have been for a long time... Far from the stagnating effect some behaviorists claim that would have, it gives them time to socialize and play and explore...

It's not lack of predation that makes domesticated cows and sheep dumb. It's that we humans are almost completely in control of their "unnatural selection" process, and the ones that are too clever for their own good, or the ones who are "smart enough" to escape get bred less. You could say we breed them for three d's... Dumb, Docile, and Delicious.

But, on average... Wolves, Lions, Rats, Pigs, Seals, Dolphins, Orcas, Monkeys... Jesus. It hardly even bears discussion, dude... Cephalopods, as yet another example, are -scary- intelligent... you know that. You think they get that from salad? They get it from a) having to outsmart, hunt down, and kill their food - that's the fire - and b) the building blocks they get from their food -that's the fuel.

I neither have, nor have time to find (if it exists, which I doubt) complete data to back this up, but here's my thought... If you could take omnivores, herbivores, and carnivores from this planet... Those are the columns. Individual animals, starting with the "smartest"... "IQ scores" if you will, those are the rows... so you're adding up, say, the average "IQs" of the 10 (or 20 or 100) smartest kinds of a) herbivores b) carnivores, and c) omnivores... I'm very comfortably willing to bet that Omnivores will come out ahead with carnivores close behind and herbivores in back... Say, maybe, weighted total scores of 100, 85, and 75. Unless the sample size gets too big... Lack of too many really good omnivores might bring Carnivores out in front.

And there goes another hour I should have been working. Luckily, I enjoy these kinds of conversation a lot more. Not so luckily, they don't pay nearly as well.

[CJBurgandy]

as many know I have the attention span of a gnat, so I didn't read all of the ultra long posts. I barely scanned them, but I will put my 2 cents on the overweight issue.

Some overweightness is caused by medical conditions. Not as "Obesity is a sickness" type medical condition, but I mean an actual symptom to bigger problems. I can honestly say that my chubbyness is due to poor diet and PCOS, but the bulk of my personal weight is muscle. truely, I have a pretty face, but my body tells people they wouldn't want to meet me in a dark alley (well, 'cept maybe Honor.) I'm an excercise junky, and recently changed what I was doing to mostly cardio, because I really don't want to bulk up any more, just tone.
Sadly with the mix of wanting to eat greasy pizza and Wendy's all the time and a medical condition that demands a more healthy diet than what I give it, my work-outs don't really make me loose weight, but they do help me not gain it.

Personally, I believe that if a person can't controll themselves and decide to medically fix their problem with plastic surgery or gastrial (sp?) bypass, well that's their choice. I don't think it makes them a less morally sound person. I personally wouldn't do it, but I don't think I should ever force or proclaim that everyone should do what I do or think how I think.

I do believe also, that schools are doing a world of harm to children now a days from adding fast food to school lunches and deleting PE from elementry schools. I'm not sure exactly how many schools have done it, but I know my sophmore year of high school, all the jr. highs and high schools in my district got rid of the "lunch lady" system at school lunchs and replaced it with fast food resturants in the actual schools. (and while I'm not a vegitarian, it mifed me that none of the fast food stands in our school offered vegitarian alternitives. they only served the most popular items from their normal menus) I've heard that some schools in the state also have this system, but not just in the jr. & sr. high schools, but also in the elementry schools. To me, that's way too much fast food for growing bodies. But then that might just be my opinion.

Also, in the glances of looking at the long posts someone mentioned that the arctic cultures barely eat meat. I have to call bull on that. Living in Alaska, in the largest city no less, I know for a fact that 8 months out of the year it is DAMN NEAR IMPOSSIBLE to get fresh fruits and veggies. sure we have fruits and veggies, but they're anything but fresh and normally taste way gross. I like veggies and fruits, but I hardly buy them in the winter just for the fact they're nearly inedible. This is just how it is in the largest of cities up here. top that with flying these nearly rotten fruits and veggies to say, Kotzebue, where a gallon of milk costs over 12 dollars. in the arctic areas here, fruits and veggies in the winter are way expensive. Most villages in the more northern parts of the state eat mostly Fish if they leave near the coast and game meat. Moose is a lot easier to get than a bundle of carrots in Mcgrath and Whale is a lot more excessible to Barrow than a block of tofu.

[Gealachtine]

Again, there is too much to quote...so I'll just do it this way.

Honor, I see where you're getting at and I agree - on most accounts but there are a few exceptions to the meat-eating in varying amounts equals intelligence.

Gorillas. They are almost exclusively plant eaters, actually I don't believe they eat meat at all. I'd have to go back to my college texts or email my friend at the SF Zoo who works with them on a daily basis to make 100% sure. But I'm 99.6% sure they don't.

Koalas. They are very intelligent and not only do they not eat meat - they only eat eucalyptus. The thing is folks, eucalyptus is one of the hardest plantforms to digest - even for koalas. But it's in their blood, the mass of their bone marrow, the fiber of their muscles from having it be their exclusive diet. Again they are highly intelligent, they look slow and dumb to conserve the little energy they do get from their food. I've met a few koalas (they are so soft and sweethearts!), they are by no means dumb.


Carbs are brain food in the right amount, we need protein, iron and all kinds of stuff which can be found in meat - it can also be found in legumes, nuts, dark leafy greens, etc. However, I know when I went vegan for a while - I craved meat after 9 months. To the point I had to buy pork and satisfy the craving. Every single Vegan and vegetarian I've met have cravings for meat, either they find it disgusting and try not to discuss it or they indulge in a fish/lacta/ova diet for a while.

This could mean two things or a mix:
1. We do need meat and meat products (lacta/ova) in someway in our diet.
2. Mass-media marketing is just that good - it even gets into the brains of PETA vegans.

Maybe I should ask my friend the bio-physicist and see what he thinks. That's a really good idea, I bet Enech would know.

[Kingofthemorlocks]

Reading through all this...

Is this really worth arguing about?

Seriously, "and it harmeth none, do as thou wilt." I'll eat what I choose to eat, you eat what you choose to eat, and we don't bitch at each other for it.

[Honor]

CJ - Excellent point... I forgot to even call bullshit on that one. Natives (at least used to - don't know now) live a huge percentage of the year on damned near nothing but fat and fish.

Still... In the terms I was talking about, that's just as "unnatural" a diet... i.e: it's not what h.sapiens was evolved to eat, millions of years ago.

btw, *kissfondlemolest* you never call, you never write...

Gealachtine - Excellent points. I shouldhave listed gorillas with elephants , whales, and horses. It's worth noting that, amoung primates, it's pretty rare for anyone to be as strict vegetarians as they are though. I didn't know Koalas were that bright.

With gorillas, I might assume it's the same as with Elephants... Before humans got too advanced, they really didnt have to worry much about most predators. Gives you time to sit and think. I don't know that much about koalas to know how they got where they are. As I've said/admitted/clarified, killing and eating your fellow animals certainly isn't the only path to intelligence, it's just perhaps the most effecient... And, at least in part, the one that the ancestors of H.Sapiens took.

In talking to Squiddy about all this, I mentioned that of all the many by-choice vegetarians I've ever known, they fell neatly into about four categories... a) brainwashed, b) mythologically challenged, c) trendy/affectational, and d) the victims of a misguided or overdeveloped sense of sentimentality... I can certainly understand vegetarians of that last sort being upset with themselves over craving meat... If I had to kill all my own food, I'd not be nearly as happy a girl. I'd do it, but I don't like it. I don't enjoy killing -anything- (with the possible exception of demonstrably "bad" human beings... and that idea gives me pause because it's so much a matter of point of view.) But I have and absolutely will again, if need be.

KotM's - Yeah... At least to some people. Despite what some people *cough - Chiropteran!* think I might claim, the fact is that I'm "just" a very avid generalist. My IQ, my capacity to learn, my insatiable curiosity, and my penchant for indulging it at every opportunity only afford me that one advantage. I might (or might not) know more than most people about most things... But any decent specialist in almost any field knows more than I do about that field. So discussions like this usually afford me an opportunity to learn something... Like, that koalas are very intelligent creatures.

But I'm wholly with you on the live and let live idea... I have no issue with a mature human being deciding not to eat animals, so long as they don't hassle me and call my hamburger "murder"... Then, I should be able to throw rocks at them.

[Gealachtine]

KotM's - Yeah... At least to some people. Despite what some people *cough - Chiropteran!* think I might claim, the fact is that I'm "just" a very avid generalist. My IQ, my capacity to learn, and my insatiable curiosity only afford me that one advantage. I might (or might not) know more than most people about most things... But any decent specialist in almost any field knows more than I do about that field. So discussions like this usually afford me an opportunity to learn something... Like, that koalas are very intelligent creatures.

I'm much the same way. The whole Jane-of-all-trades, I read a ton, I experience a lot - I expect a whole ton to happen in my life and so make it happen. I love to learn! Love, love LOVE it! So I know a lot about this and that , Ooo and that over there looks cool, what's that about?

Another random fact about koalas - their eyes are slit like a serpent's. The points of the slit are up and down, not side to side like a cat's.

Picture time! Me and a koala at the SF Zoo!

[Honor]

heh... besides... they just -look- smart... "ai... Rabbi Koalavich... I gotta say, you're looking well."

[Squidflakes]

[>.> You could have pointed out, to be polite, that I didn't and don't share that perception that "all herd prey animals are dumb".

I was really fucking tired last night, so I had forgotten we had talked about the whole horse/elephant/"smart" herbivore thing.

I -might- roll over like a good little girl

Tease

Part of the problem is that we're still very new at this "sentience" thing... We don't really understand the nature of intelligence very well. And pretty much universally, across the board, humans have been under-estimating the intelligence of all animals for a long, long time...

Quite true. This is also the reason behavioral science isn't considered one of the "hard" sciences. It is VERY difficult to say something like "Squid are 35% more intelligent than mountain goats." Most theories in behavior are expressed as statistical variations, which sucks when you're trying to explain them to people who don't have degrees in statisitcs. Its even worse when you're trying to get papers published, and you yourself don't have an advanced degree in stats. But now I'm getting off topic.

Last night, you kept saying that it didn't take any more intelligence to be a successful hunter than it did to be a successful herd animal... Meanwhile, the lions are actively communicating... Planning... Co-operating.

That is a statement from the Personification Pit. When watching lions hunt, it is very easy to assume that they plan, co-operate, and communicate. They don't. What you're seeing is a small group hunting instinct, and it is present in lots of pack predators. As intelligent as it seems, it is still just an instinct. A lion will display the same hunting behaviors when going solo as with a pack, on any size of prey animal (save: play behaviors with very very small animals)

Jesus. It hardly even bears discussion, dude... Cephalopods, as yet another example, are -scary- intelligent... you know that. You think they get that from salad? They get it from a) having to outsmart, hunt down, and kill their food - that's the fire - and b) the building blocks they get from their food -that's the fuel.

Warning: This is all tangent.

I have so much information fighting to get out that I'm having hard time typing. I'm going to give the short short answer here, because if I start typing on this subject, I will fill several pages.

First off, the average cephalopod meal is a gastropod or bivalve, meaning that it doesn't move. If it does, it doesn't move fast. Cephalopods are first and foremost, oppertunists. They will expend the bare minimum amount of energy possible to get a meal. Octopuses and squids are piss poor hunters and have neither the stamina nor the prey focus of a land predator. Most of the time, an octopus or squid will approach a prey item slowly and camoflagued, and at the last second will pounce. If the prey gets away, that's pretty much the end of it. There is some persistant stalking, but nothing over distance. Putting it bluntly, octopuses and squid don't use their intelligence for hunting, and after a little observation, that becomes apparent.

What they DO use their intelligence for is hiding and predator evasion. Octopuses and squid are some of the MOST vulnerable creatures in the sea. They have soft bodies, low endurance, and they are very slow distance swimmers. However, octopuses have evolved an unmatched concealment ability and squid have evolved an incredibly complex communication system and heard dynamic.

Octopuses can hide in plain sight. Some octopuses can immitate predators by taking on their coloration and general shape. Octopuses have enough spatial awarness and memory to track a predator that has gone out of their sight.

Squid form medium sized herds for protection. Squid post sentries. Squid are able to communicate visually over moderate distances to warn other squid of danger. Squid will self-sacrifice for the good of the herd.

It is these things that have allowed cephalopods to survive for hundreds of millions of years, not their hunting prowess. Their fire is deception and communication. It almost seems silly to bring this up now, but the reason there aren't more aquatic herbivores is because aquatic plants don't have the same nutritional content or variety as their terrestrial cousins.

[Toawa]

Koalas. They are very intelligent and not only do they not eat meat - they only eat eucalyptus. The thing is folks, eucalyptus is one of the hardest plantforms to digest - even for koalas. But it's in their blood, the mass of their bone marrow, the fiber of their muscles from having it be their exclusive diet. Again they are highly intelligent, they look slow and dumb to conserve the little energy they do get from their food. I've met a few koalas (they are so soft and sweethearts!), they are by no means dumb.

Quite hard to digest; that's why they don't actually digest it. The bacteria in their gut does, and then they digest the bacteria. (Of course, this applies to a hell of a lot of other species, us included.) However, baby koalas, having subsisted solely on milk until leaving their mother's pouch, do not have these bacteria until it's introduced into their digestive tract... by eating their mother's droppings.

(Coprophilia... That's one of my few squick points...)

[Honor]

(Coprophilia... That's one of my few squick points...)

Coprophagia... unless they seem to enjoy it.

[Chiropteran]

Ah, now we're back to tentacles. Good.

Actually, my BF told me a story once about an aquarium that put an octopus in the shark tank; they were really worried about the octopus, but they thought they'd try it. Then the sharks started disappearing. They do all right in a closely stocked environment like that; lots of opportunities. The sharks didn't disappear fast, but they did disappear.

He keeps promising to send me a link to the video (which is how they figured out what was happening; someone finally got the bright idea of putting a camera in the tank) if he does, I'll post it.

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As for eating meat making us smarter over millions of years:

a. If we weren't hunting, and an overwhelming amount of evidence suggests we weren't (in fact, I think we're all pretty much in agreement on that here), then the advantages we needed for that were met by bipedalism; being able to see a long ways (and that elevated perspective is really a huge edge in the grassland because there isn't a whole helluva lot to block your view) and travel great distances fairly efficiently.

Vultures did it by flying, we did it by walking*. Neither of these strategies requires much brainpower. "If you see something that can kick your ass and/or eat you coming, run like hell" is not exactly advanced thinking, even for the animal kingdom.

It's only slightly more dangerous than gathering plants, and probably was NOT very important to our diet and so not much of a selection pressure (except maybe to select for being able to eat more of the available plants instead, which is exactly the route that Paranthropus went; wasn't that effective, they still got eaten)

b. I have never heard of any evidence that eating meat makes you smarter (or that not eating it stunts children, which I have already said in response to an unsupported assertion that vegetarian children are a little bit shorter, weaker, and less intelligent, not to some unrelated point picked out of the air)

c. Even if meat did make you smarter, Lamarck was pretty much wrong: somatic changes brought about by environment are not, in fact, passed on to offspring. So even if there were some magic pill to make you smarter, then unless it involved gene therapy, your offspring would not have that acquired trait unless you gave them the pill.

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As for fighting, fuck that; I won't play that game.

Have your flamewar by yourself.

I must admit, it is difficult not to rise to the bait when you say things like

of all the many by-choice vegetarians I've ever known, they fell neatly into about four categories... a) brainwashed, b) mythologically challenged, c) trendy/affectational, and d) the victims of a misguided or overdeveloped sense of sentimentality...

( FTR, vegetarians live longer, meat is expensive, environmentally destructive, and unhealthy in a number of ways---not just gout, but also hormones, resistent bacteria, BSE, and a number of microorganisms that have been for some time endemic to various meat animals)

The set of all vegetarians you have encountered (though you don't know me as well as you think you do to say things like that) does, in fact, include me. An adult would recant and apologize, but you don't appear to be one, so here is no point in trying to get you to recognize that there's anything wrong with your behavior, so I won't bother. Fuck you, though.
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*Actually, both cases leave two limbs free to carry stuff (though I don't know how good vulture talons are for carrying stuff; no matter, we needed to carry in large part because we're primates and primates share food, plus we can't fly and get out of the reach of a lion or hyena fast that way, so we needed to not be there when any hyenas got there, by grabbing the stuff and leaving with it. My prof pointed out that we probably did not want to mess with hyenas. He said: "Hyenas are social too. They can work together, and they have canines that work"