Monkeys: Doesn’t anyone get tired of this?

_{Denyse O'Leary

August 2, 2011

Evolution}

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From Victoria Gill (BBC, 22 July 2011), we learn: “Mandrill monkey makes ‘pedicuring’ tool”:

Scientists from Durham University, UK, filmed the mandrill stripping a twig and using the resulting tool to clean under its toenails.

“A crude “pedicure” carried out by a mandrill at Chester Zoo suggests the monkeys are capable of more advanced tool use than previously thought.”

Vid.

Good to know. But what about bird tool use? If (corvid) birds are better than monkeys, how should our views of evolution change?

Comments

So Lizzie's null (chance hypothesis) is that it's just too darned improbable for a mammal lineage to evolve a vertebrate lung into a bird lung, even though birds already did exactly that (according to her).Mung_{August 4, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle:
That’s why I keep saying that a mammal with bird lungs would be a major problem, because “bird-lungs” aren’t any old lung but a very specificly made lung that evolved in the bird lineage, and not in the mammalian one.
And the evidence is? [Handwaving doesn't count!] Now apparently prior to the wonderfully designed bird lung, there was something known as "the vertebrate lung." And according to Lizzie, the vertebrate lung was retained by all other vertebrates, except birds. and in the lineage leading to birds from non-birds, the vertebrate lung evolved into something completely different. This would be akin to the vertebrate eye evolving into a compound eye like what is found in insects. Why should we believe such a thing happened? And in what amount of time?Mung_{August 4, 2011
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Elizabeth you state: 'Right, but why should that change our views on evolution?' ,,So a monkey picks up a stick to get ants, or whatever, and you consider this evidence for evolution, but you will not consider the fact that no one has demonstrated a gain of functional information, by Darwinian processes, to be evidence against evolution??? That is a very 'unbalanced' view of evidence Elizabeth to put it mildly!,,, In fact the evidence we have shows that the vast majority of beneficial adaptations have less functional information than what was started with: “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain - Michael Behe - December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain.(that is a net 'fitness gain' within a 'stressed' environment i.e. remove the stress from the environment and the parent strain is always more 'fit') http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/ ================== notes: ,,,Though the authors of the 'Evolution of the Genus Homo' paper (Schwartz; Tattersall) appear to be thoroughly mystified by the gaps in fossil record, they never seem to give up their blind faith in evolution despite the disparity they see first hand in the fossil record. In spite of their philosophical bias, I have to hand it to them for being fairly honest with the evidence though. I especially like how the authors draw out this following 'what it means to be human' distinction in their paper: "although Homo neanderthalensis had a large brain, it left no unequivocal evidence of the symbolic consciousness that makes our species unique." -- "Unusual though Homo sapiens may be morphologically, it is undoubtedly our remarkable cognitive qualities that most strikingly demarcate us from all other extant species. They are certainly what give us our strong subjective sense of being qualitatively different. And they are all ultimately traceable to our symbolic capacity. Human beings alone, it seems, mentally dissect the world into a multitude of discrete symbols, and combine and recombine those symbols in their minds to produce hypotheses of alternative possibilities. When exactly Homo sapiens acquired this unusual ability is the subject of debate." The authors of the paper try to find some evolutionary/materialistic reason for the extremely unique 'information capacity' of humans, but of course they never find a coherent reason. Indeed why should we ever consider a process, which is utterly incapable of ever generating any complex functional information at even the most foundational levels of molecular biology, to suddenly, magically, have the ability to generate our brain which can readily understand and generate functional information? A brain which has been repeatedly referred to as 'the Most Complex Structure in the Universe'? The authors never seem to consider the 'spiritual angle' for why we would have such a unique capacity for such abundant information processing. This following short video, and verses, are very clear as to what the implications of this evidence means to us and for us: Modus Tollens - It Is Impossible For Evolution To Be True - T.G. Peeler - video http://www.metacafe.com/w/5047482 Genesis 3:8 And they (Adam and Eve) heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day... John 1:1-1 In the beginning, the Word existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. The following video is far more direct in establishing the 'spiritual link' to man's ability to learn new information, in that it shows that the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores for students showed a steady decline, for seventeen years from the top spot or near the top spot in the world, after the removal of prayer from the public classroom by the Supreme Court in 1963. Whereas the SAT scores for private Christian schools have consistently remained at the top, or near the top, spot in the world: The Real Reason American Education Has Slipped – David Barton – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4318930 The following video is very suggestive to a 'spiritual' link in man's ability to learn new information in that the video shows that almost every, if not every, founder of each discipline of modern science had a Christian connection: Christianity Gave Birth To Science - Dr. Henry Fritz Schaefer - video http://vimeo.com/16523153 These following studies, though of materialistic bent, offer strong support that Humans are extremely unique in this 'advanced information capacity' when compared to animals: Darwin’s mistake: Explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds: Excerpt: There is a profound functional discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. We argue that this discontinuity pervades nearly every domain of cognition and runs much deeper than even the spectacular scaffolding provided by language or culture can explain. We hypothesize that the cognitive discontinuity between human and nonhuman animals is largely due to the degree to which human and nonhuman minds are able to approximate the higher-order, systematic, relational capabilities of a physical symbol system. http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Penn-01062006/Referees/Penn-01062006_bbs-preprint.htm Event the infamous Marc Hauser has not the sheer discontinuity between human mind and ape mind;: Origin of the Mind: Marc Hauser - Scientific American - April 2009 Excerpt: "Researchers have found some of the building blocks of human cognition in other species. But these building blocks make up only the cement footprint of the skyscraper that is the human mind",,, http://www.wjh.harvard.edu?/~mnkylab/publications/rec?ent/mindSciAm.pdf Earliest humans not so different from us, research suggests - February 2011 Excerpt: Shea argues that comparing the behavior of our most ancient ancestors to Upper Paleolithic Europeans holistically and ranking them in terms of their "behavioral modernity" is a waste of time. There are no such things as modern humans, Shea argues, just Homo sapiens populations with a wide range of behavioral variability. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-earliest-humans.html Geometric Principles Appear Universal in Our Minds - May 2011 Excerpt: Villagers belonging to an Amazonian group called the Mundurucú intuitively grasp abstract geometric principles despite having no formal math education,,, Mundurucú adults and 7- to 13-year-olds demonstrate as firm an understanding of the properties of points, lines and surfaces as adults and school-age children in the United States and France,,, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/universal-geometry/ This article is of related interest: All the Digital Data In the World Is Equivalent to One Human Brain - February 2011 Excerpt: ,,the 6.4 x 10^18 instructions per second that humankind can carry out on its general-purpose computers in 2007 are in the same ballpark area as the maximum number of nerve impulses executed by one human brain per second,” Hilbert and Lopez write. http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-02/new-study-inventories-all-data-world-and-measures-how-its-stored-and-shared etc.. etc.. etc..bornagain77_{August 3, 2011
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The relevant characteristic is the level of intelligence needed to find a solution to a problem arising.
Well, that seems to implies that intelligence is a unidimensional construct. Most concepts of intelligence are not unidimensional. But I'll grant you "a level of fluidity of intelligence" :)
And, it turns out that birds share that with us, not due to any close common ancestry.
Right, but why should that change our views on evolution? In primates, the behavour probably does arise from homologous brain functions; in birds it may not. It may, however - assuming the standard phylogeny of amniotes, it's possible that something intrinsic to amniote brains lends itself to adaptation in the direction of fluid intelligence, and that where that proves adaptive, it tends to emerge. I'm not saying it did happen this way (I'm not saying it didn't either!) just that it doesn't seem to pose a problem, just as broad functional categories like "eyes" or "wings" or "flippers" don't tend to be distributed tree-wise across populations. Things that can be "made" in various ways (extension of a digit, for instance, or of inter-digital webbing) turn up in different lineages, made a bit differently in each. That's why I keep saying that a mammal with bird lungs would be a major problem, because "bird-lungs" aren't any old lung but a very specificly made lung that evolved in the bird lineage, and not in the mammalian one. But birds with tool use doesn't present a problem at all. Also octopuses can use tools :) Brains are awesome.Elizabeth Liddle_{August 3, 2011
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" tool use may be a reflection of our common heritage"? Why? Birds do it too. Unless someone has an agenda to promote, the "common heritage" thing is irrelevant. The relevant characteristic is the level of intelligence needed to find a solution to a problem arising. And, it turns out that birds share that with us, not due to any close common ancestry.News_{August 3, 2011
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But what about bird tool use? If (corvid) birds are better than monkeys, how should our views of evolution change?
I don't see why they should change at all. Primate behaviour is obviously of special interest because humans are primates, and so tool use may be a reflection of our common heritage, and may arise from homologous features. Birds are less useful as a human model, but obviously of great interest in themselves.Elizabeth Liddle_{August 3, 2011
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