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Post by spaniardx on Jan 4, 2022 19:26:57 GMT -5
And, for some reason, even though I did copy/paste, the link didn't spell felines correctly.
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Post by vitugglan on Jan 5, 2022 9:52:52 GMT -5
In fact, it's up for debate if these animals are, scientifically speaking, speaking — or if they've simply been trained to use specific buttons to conjure specific things. Whether or not their communications are spontaneous has yet to be concluded.
IIRC, this is what words are for - to get a message across. '(I want...) Food' is a message. '(There is a..) dog (...outside)' is a message. There's no 'conversing' as we know it, no higher function of speech, that is, to connect meaningfully, convey abstract ideas, but a journey starts with one step. Are we seeing evolution?
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Post by spaniardx on Jan 26, 2022 14:47:17 GMT -5
Some of Billi's more recent videos, she seems to understand abstract ideas such as later and even tomorrow.
Of course, for all we know, cats and other animals that we interact with, already have a grasp of the abstract and its only that they can now communicate with their people with the buttons that its being made obvious. A lot of professionals who know cats (i.e. folks like vets, behaviorist such as Jackson Galaxy and others) know that its only kittens that communicate by vocalizing. Once they hit a certain age in feral colonies, its kitty body language. Any vocalizing is usual hostile, but cats that live with humans know that their humans communicate with sound and so they vocalize to communicate with us. The buttons are just sounds made with the paws instead of the mouth.
Personally, I think too many "eggheads" have completely forgotten that the phrase "dumb animals" was because they don't speak like we do, not because we considered them lacking in smarts.
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Post by vitugglan on Jan 27, 2022 7:46:12 GMT -5
I'm sure they understand later and tomorrow, or at least concepts like those. That means an understanding of time, and I think most entities understand that. An abstract concept, to me, would be to explain a device that hasn't been made, and the person hearing it understands that concept.
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