8 ms·

Animals definitely do dream, any cat or dog owner can tell that but even smaller animals like rats do also dream. We are vastly overestimating the cognitive ca

Animals definitely do dream, any cat or dog owner can tell that but even smaller animals like rats do also dream. We are vastly overestimating the cognitive capacities of humans, we should in fact have higher respect for other intelligent species living with us.

micromacrofoot 3y ago
overestimating our abilities and underestimating everyone else’s seems like part of the human condition really
User23 3y ago
I think you're vastly underestimating the cognitive capacities of humans. It's not a matter of respect. A healthy three year old already meets or exceeds any animal in cognitive ability, including the ability to improvise tools to solve multi-step problems, pass the mirror test, and know some words. Human supremacy is an empirical fact. A little 120 pound guy can hop on the back of an elephant and boss it around for life. I've seen 100 pound women make killer whales beg for treats. If anything we don't have near enough respect for our own awesome power over the other creatures we share this world with.
- stavros 3y ago
  If we're wondering whether animals dream, I'll go with "overestimating" too. Yes, we're smarter than all other animals. No, we aren't that much smarter.
  - User23 3y ago
    I’m comfortable claiming that building rocket ships and flying to the moon and back[1] counts as “that much smarter” than maybe using a twig to get termites out of a mound or escaping a fish tank in an aquarium. [1] including of course inventing the necessary physics, math, logic, and actually doing the engineering in addition to pulling off the mission. And, of course, dreaming of doing it. Edit: If octopuses or dolphins or whatever animal people think is so clever is in fact so clever, then someone should prove it by teaching them some form of durable symbolic information storage system and teach them to teach other members of their species what they have learned. If they can't do that, then they're not even close to as smart as we are, full stop.
    - ok_dad 3y ago
      Just because we got here first doesn’t mean another species couldn’t eventually do those things. It took us a while to get to rockets.
      - User23 3y ago
        Sure, perhaps in 60 million years we’ll be extinct and Octo Sapiens will be colonizing Alpha Centauri, but today right now on this planet the gulf in intelligence between humans and the other creatures is gigantic.
        ok_dad 3y ago
        The point is that intelligence isn’t measured by thing you know or what your society can do.
        evandale 3y ago
        .. but it is measured that way because we say it's measured that way. If an octopus wants to come up with a better measurement they are welcome to do that but I wouldn't hold my breath.
        ok_dad 3y ago
        Who is “we”? Intelligence is not defined by the knowledge you have or things your society can do, it’s a capacity for reason and logic and etc. Maybe get started here and do more research: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence
        evandale 3y ago
        > More generally, it can be described as the ability to perceive or infer information, and to retain it as knowledge to be applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment or context. I think this lines up with what I consider intelligence. The "we" is the human race and most of us acknowledge we are the most intelligent life on Earth using the measure we invented (retaining, passing on, and using knowledge). I won't be convinced otherwise unless some other being out there proves to us that they can do it better.
- IMTDb 3y ago
  > I've seen 100 pound women make killer whales beg for treats Just like I have seen 3 pound kittens make 300 pounds women’s rush for treats
- SanderNL 3y ago
  Ever met a three year old? It’s a complete mystery the human race survived this state of complete suicidal insanity. For all their beauty and cuteness I would be careful with claims of intelligence. It’s very narrow and very specific. By having kids myself I actually started to demote human intelligence. We are smart eventually but it takes a long, long time and there is a mind boggling amount of stupidity before that stage is reached. Our final stage is indeed very impressive, I agree.
wilg 3y ago
Yeah I’m confused by this, isn’t it commonly understood animals dream? What other explanation is there for my dog moving her sweet little feet and barking softly while she’s asleep sometimes.
- dmix 3y ago
  The brain structure / nervous system of cephalpods is quite different from vertebrate species I'm pretty sure. A lot of the similarities of the complexity/development are based on convergent evolution. So it's not as straightforward of a comparison. At least in this context. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2018.00952/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2018.0095...
  - wilg 3y ago
    not a direct rebuttal, but I would watch a game show called “are you smarter than an octopus”
    - speed_spread 3y ago
      Writing questions for that show would be harder than writing shared unit tests for Haskell and BASIC.
      - 13of40 3y ago
        I think that depends on whether the panel of judges is all humans or they have a couple of octopuses sitting there as well.
        wilg 3y ago
        now this is smart television producing!
        Xorakios 3y ago
        Might sound snarky but really just curious (and I'm older ;) Are we close to standardizing on pluralization in English into 's and 'es? octopuses instead of octopi fishes instead of fish aquariums instead of aquaria media and mediums diverged a long time ago, but it seems as though the last few years has seen a dramatic shift oh good golly, a better question might be: how often do you read your own post and realized you already know the answer :)
megnaro 3y ago
Anyone who agrees with or is intrigued by the above comment may very well enjoy Frans De Waal's book, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? Publisher link: https://wwnorton.com/books/Are-We-Smart-Enough-to-Know-How-Smart-Animals-Are/ https://wwnorton.com/books/Are-We-Smart-Enough-to-Know-How-S...
girvo 3y ago
Parrots dream too, including wild ones. While I appreciate the need for scientific rigour, I'd be more surprised if octopuses didn't dream at all, considering their capacity for intelligence that's already been shown.
- Tagbert 3y ago
  It’s one thing to believe that other vertebrates dream. There is a clear evolutionary link between them and us. Octopus, as mollusks, are very far away on the evolutionary tree. When our lineages split, brains were rudimentary, if they existed at all. If we assume some kind of intelligence in an octopus, is there any reason to assume that it works like ours does? Do they need dreams? Are dreams inherent in any intelligent being or are they a function of how our particular brains operate. I don’t think that that is a settled question.
  - graycat 3y ago
    > Octopus, as mollusks, are very far away on the evolutionary tree. Yes, but for some fast, short, rough guesses, regard intelligence as thinking that yields advantages in surviving in the real world. Then guess that in general intelligence is a source of effective response to the real world. Then, whatever the size of the evolutionary and/or genetic tree, notice that we are all in the same real world. So, all of our examples of intelligence are effective responses to the same real world and, thus, the many examples might have a lot in common.
- busymom0 3y ago
  I just shared that about my mom's parrot and then I came across your comment! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36101594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36101594
ChatGTP 3y ago
I couldn't agree more with you. I've had a bit of an ant infestation at a house I'm renting temporarily and I've been watching them and seen them do some pretty amazing stuff, intelligent stuff. Such as organize themselves in ways to solve pretty complex problems and even try help other injured or dying ants. These are ants, they're tiny little things. Then I read the article here about killer wales destroying ships and other things they've learned, also the fact they get depressed when in captivity. I couldn't agree more with you, and I also think it' why we should me more careful with the harms of our technological progress. It's not up to us alone to decide if we deploy some technology that destroys habitats, we should be equally careful when trying to "fix" habitats that we don't do a lot of harm as well.
- TechBro8615 3y ago
  As fascinating as the ants are, have you told the person you're renting from about the ant infestation? You might want to do that sooner rather than later, lest they blame you for the ants...
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    Infestation was too strong of a word. Yes they know it happens before the seasons change this time of year if any food is left around.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  One of the strangest behaviours I've seen from ants is seeing them(forest ants I believe) walk around on a catnip plant, clearly intoxicated, i.e unable to do anything but walk back and forth meaninglessly on the branches. And yet they seemed to seek out these catnip plants in significant numbers, which almost suggested some vague intent to get high.
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    I love those little guys even more now ha
interfixus 3y ago
Rats have played smarter tricks on me than any other animals I've seen. Sophisticated stuff involving quite precise guessing as to what my next steps would be. Call it theory of mind if you like. My dog is smarter in a generalised way, but boy can you do interesting things with a brain the size of a pea. But the octopusses. The most fascinating part is not really their level of intelligence per se, but that it has evolved from scratch completely independent from us vertebrates. Bona fide aliens in our own backyard. Deep lessons on what converges and what doesn't.
- ClassyJacket 3y ago
  I saw a video recently of a rat setting off a trap with a stick: https://youtu.be/luiXzz5myIk https://youtu.be/luiXzz5myIk
- neom 3y ago
  I've had pet rats most of my life and they're so smart. They are cunning and manipulative for sure, they're so good at learning my behaviors and acting accordingly. Their food motivation is really crazy, check out what this lady has managed to get her rats to do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV9z0c1hjnA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV9z0c1hjnA
rafark 3y ago
Well said. I couldn’t even finish the video, living in such a small space must be horrible.
n3storm 3y ago
You just reduced all animals on earth variety to one Class or Clade: mammals?
busymom0 3y ago
My mom has a parrot (would fly away in evening and then come back every morning to eat and then slowly stopped flying away and would stay overnight, so we decided to keep it) and it also has nightmares or something sometimes at night while sleeping. it would suddenly wake up very stressed, run around with feathers shaking etc.
braingravy 3y ago
The difference is dogs, cats, rats, and people all have a much more recent genetic ancestor, so it’s not a stretch to imagine they have similar brain structures that allow for dreaming. All those Disney movies with singing fish and the like has lead to anthropomorphizing and assumptions that are still being reckoned with scientifically.
GuB-42 3y ago
Dreaming is not a sign of intelligence, it is just a quirk, there is no reason other intelligent species must dream. Octopuses are intelligent, but their nervous system is very different from ours, less centralized. We think they might dream, but it might just be anthropomorphism.

micromacrofoot 3y ago

overestimating our abilities and underestimating everyone else’s seems like part of the human condition really

User23 3y ago

I think you're vastly underestimating the cognitive capacities of humans. It's not a matter of respect. A healthy three year old already meets or exceeds any animal in cognitive ability, including the ability to improvise tools to solve multi-step problems, pass the mirror test, and know some words. Human supremacy is an empirical fact. A little 120 pound guy can hop on the back of an elephant and boss it around for life. I've seen 100 pound women make killer whales beg for treats. If anything we don't have near enough respect for our own awesome power over the other creatures we share this world with.

stavros 3y ago
If we're wondering whether animals dream, I'll go with "overestimating" too. Yes, we're smarter than all other animals. No, we aren't that much smarter.
- User23 3y ago
  I’m comfortable claiming that building rocket ships and flying to the moon and back[1] counts as “that much smarter” than maybe using a twig to get termites out of a mound or escaping a fish tank in an aquarium. [1] including of course inventing the necessary physics, math, logic, and actually doing the engineering in addition to pulling off the mission. And, of course, dreaming of doing it. Edit: If octopuses or dolphins or whatever animal people think is so clever is in fact so clever, then someone should prove it by teaching them some form of durable symbolic information storage system and teach them to teach other members of their species what they have learned. If they can't do that, then they're not even close to as smart as we are, full stop.
  - ok_dad 3y ago
    Just because we got here first doesn’t mean another species couldn’t eventually do those things. It took us a while to get to rockets.
    - User23 3y ago
      Sure, perhaps in 60 million years we’ll be extinct and Octo Sapiens will be colonizing Alpha Centauri, but today right now on this planet the gulf in intelligence between humans and the other creatures is gigantic.
      - ok_dad 3y ago
        The point is that intelligence isn’t measured by thing you know or what your society can do.
        evandale 3y ago
        .. but it is measured that way because we say it's measured that way. If an octopus wants to come up with a better measurement they are welcome to do that but I wouldn't hold my breath.
        ok_dad 3y ago
        Who is “we”? Intelligence is not defined by the knowledge you have or things your society can do, it’s a capacity for reason and logic and etc. Maybe get started here and do more research: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence
        evandale 3y ago
        > More generally, it can be described as the ability to perceive or infer information, and to retain it as knowledge to be applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment or context. I think this lines up with what I consider intelligence. The "we" is the human race and most of us acknowledge we are the most intelligent life on Earth using the measure we invented (retaining, passing on, and using knowledge). I won't be convinced otherwise unless some other being out there proves to us that they can do it better.
IMTDb 3y ago
> I've seen 100 pound women make killer whales beg for treats Just like I have seen 3 pound kittens make 300 pounds women’s rush for treats
SanderNL 3y ago
Ever met a three year old? It’s a complete mystery the human race survived this state of complete suicidal insanity. For all their beauty and cuteness I would be careful with claims of intelligence. It’s very narrow and very specific. By having kids myself I actually started to demote human intelligence. We are smart eventually but it takes a long, long time and there is a mind boggling amount of stupidity before that stage is reached. Our final stage is indeed very impressive, I agree.

wilg 3y ago

Yeah I’m confused by this, isn’t it commonly understood animals dream? What other explanation is there for my dog moving her sweet little feet and barking softly while she’s asleep sometimes.

dmix 3y ago
The brain structure / nervous system of cephalpods is quite different from vertebrate species I'm pretty sure. A lot of the similarities of the complexity/development are based on convergent evolution. So it's not as straightforward of a comparison. At least in this context. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2018.00952/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2018.0095...
- wilg 3y ago
  not a direct rebuttal, but I would watch a game show called “are you smarter than an octopus”
  - speed_spread 3y ago
    Writing questions for that show would be harder than writing shared unit tests for Haskell and BASIC.
    - 13of40 3y ago
      I think that depends on whether the panel of judges is all humans or they have a couple of octopuses sitting there as well.
      - wilg 3y ago
        now this is smart television producing!
      - Xorakios 3y ago
        Might sound snarky but really just curious (and I'm older ;) Are we close to standardizing on pluralization in English into 's and 'es? octopuses instead of octopi fishes instead of fish aquariums instead of aquaria media and mediums diverged a long time ago, but it seems as though the last few years has seen a dramatic shift oh good golly, a better question might be: how often do you read your own post and realized you already know the answer :)

megnaro 3y ago

Anyone who agrees with or is intrigued by the above comment may very well enjoy Frans De Waal's book, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? Publisher link: https://wwnorton.com/books/Are-We-Smart-Enough-to-Know-How-Smart-Animals-Are/ https://wwnorton.com/books/Are-We-Smart-Enough-to-Know-How-S...

girvo 3y ago

Parrots dream too, including wild ones. While I appreciate the need for scientific rigour, I'd be more surprised if octopuses didn't dream at all, considering their capacity for intelligence that's already been shown.

Tagbert 3y ago
It’s one thing to believe that other vertebrates dream. There is a clear evolutionary link between them and us. Octopus, as mollusks, are very far away on the evolutionary tree. When our lineages split, brains were rudimentary, if they existed at all. If we assume some kind of intelligence in an octopus, is there any reason to assume that it works like ours does? Do they need dreams? Are dreams inherent in any intelligent being or are they a function of how our particular brains operate. I don’t think that that is a settled question.
- graycat 3y ago
  > Octopus, as mollusks, are very far away on the evolutionary tree. Yes, but for some fast, short, rough guesses, regard intelligence as thinking that yields advantages in surviving in the real world. Then guess that in general intelligence is a source of effective response to the real world. Then, whatever the size of the evolutionary and/or genetic tree, notice that we are all in the same real world. So, all of our examples of intelligence are effective responses to the same real world and, thus, the many examples might have a lot in common.
busymom0 3y ago
I just shared that about my mom's parrot and then I came across your comment! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36101594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36101594

ChatGTP 3y ago

I couldn't agree more with you. I've had a bit of an ant infestation at a house I'm renting temporarily and I've been watching them and seen them do some pretty amazing stuff, intelligent stuff. Such as organize themselves in ways to solve pretty complex problems and even try help other injured or dying ants. These are ants, they're tiny little things. Then I read the article here about killer wales destroying ships and other things they've learned, also the fact they get depressed when in captivity. I couldn't agree more with you, and I also think it' why we should me more careful with the harms of our technological progress. It's not up to us alone to decide if we deploy some technology that destroys habitats, we should be equally careful when trying to "fix" habitats that we don't do a lot of harm as well.

TechBro8615 3y ago
As fascinating as the ants are, have you told the person you're renting from about the ant infestation? You might want to do that sooner rather than later, lest they blame you for the ants...
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  Infestation was too strong of a word. Yes they know it happens before the seasons change this time of year if any food is left around.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
One of the strangest behaviours I've seen from ants is seeing them(forest ants I believe) walk around on a catnip plant, clearly intoxicated, i.e unable to do anything but walk back and forth meaninglessly on the branches. And yet they seemed to seek out these catnip plants in significant numbers, which almost suggested some vague intent to get high.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  I love those little guys even more now ha

interfixus 3y ago

Rats have played smarter tricks on me than any other animals I've seen. Sophisticated stuff involving quite precise guessing as to what my next steps would be. Call it theory of mind if you like. My dog is smarter in a generalised way, but boy can you do interesting things with a brain the size of a pea. But the octopusses. The most fascinating part is not really their level of intelligence per se, but that it has evolved from scratch completely independent from us vertebrates. Bona fide aliens in our own backyard. Deep lessons on what converges and what doesn't.

ClassyJacket 3y ago
I saw a video recently of a rat setting off a trap with a stick: https://youtu.be/luiXzz5myIk https://youtu.be/luiXzz5myIk
neom 3y ago
I've had pet rats most of my life and they're so smart. They are cunning and manipulative for sure, they're so good at learning my behaviors and acting accordingly. Their food motivation is really crazy, check out what this lady has managed to get her rats to do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV9z0c1hjnA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV9z0c1hjnA

rafark 3y ago

Well said. I couldn’t even finish the video, living in such a small space must be horrible.

n3storm 3y ago

You just reduced all animals on earth variety to one Class or Clade: mammals?

busymom0 3y ago

My mom has a parrot (would fly away in evening and then come back every morning to eat and then slowly stopped flying away and would stay overnight, so we decided to keep it) and it also has nightmares or something sometimes at night while sleeping. it would suddenly wake up very stressed, run around with feathers shaking etc.

braingravy 3y ago

The difference is dogs, cats, rats, and people all have a much more recent genetic ancestor, so it’s not a stretch to imagine they have similar brain structures that allow for dreaming. All those Disney movies with singing fish and the like has lead to anthropomorphizing and assumptions that are still being reckoned with scientifically.

GuB-42 3y ago

Dreaming is not a sign of intelligence, it is just a quirk, there is no reason other intelligent species must dream. Octopuses are intelligent, but their nervous system is very different from ours, less centralized. We think they might dream, but it might just be anthropomorphism.