AUG 18, 2013  

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tools & language

My fascination with Mud Dauber wasp (Sceliphron caementarium) continues. [See earlier comments and photos in Weekly [111218] and Photo Gallery [pg0FC and pg0FD]. Most of our guests were introduced to the wasp - their cells are built even in our living room, see the photo on the right. And most of my comments are on the subject of animal technology. I am, of course, not the first person to notice the beauty and perfection of animal technical skills and achievements but my thoughts ran down various channels.

A comforting thought, enhanced in the nineteenth century, was that humans are essentially tool-making animals and that techno- logy is the key to human evolution. The twentieth century thinkers, aware of the new insights on animal technology, shifted away from technological human uniqueness to language and symbolism as the key to understand the supremacy of humans in the animal world. Sorry, but it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the shift was just to save the self-congratulations of the anthropocentric prejudice (‘human chauvinism').

What’s wrong with the language & symbolism hypothesis? For one thing, it shows a fundamental lack of understanding what are the criteria for communication values. I, myself, made several observations on communication skills of ants. One of them is reported earlier [091011] but the other one, involving some design, I’ll report here. I’ve placed a pile of datura seeds approximately three meters away from their underground quarters, the connecting path being on the clean concrete driveway. I followed closely the first ant scouts who reached the pile, and I’m sure the huge army of ants started from their quarters toward the pile before the scouts physically returned to the quarters. Maybe ants don’t have some- thing similar to human language, maybe, so what if they don’t, but they definitely are not in need of human-type communication technology.

And you know what? You’ve guess it right - I don’t believe in the natural supremacy of humans. Dominancy and/or dictatorship - yes, supremacy - no.

tools & language

 

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