So we’ve basically all been educated in this human/language centric way where weve had it re-enforced that humans are the best smartest most top of the food chain “being” we kinda separated ourselves from the other animals.

I bring that up cos it’s basically the opposite of what you’d do to understand say (obviously intelligent) aliens. You wouldn’t study all the stuff you can do that they can’t and call them unintelligent. You’d do your best to learn about them and forget yourself.

Think of old European anthropologists studying natives “they have a primitive concept of marriage where they put their hammocks next to each other when they are married.” Only we learn later on that tribe thinks monogamy is silly nonsense, sometimes they move their hammocks around, and men just sleep with women coz they like each other’s company. (That was something I actually read… somewhere…)

Fucking whales songs are insanely complex, where a bunch of them sing the same song, then make changes over the season. Next year it’s a new song.

https://www.npr.org/2015/08/06/427851306/it-took-a-musicians-ear-to-decode-the-complex-song-in-whale-calls

They all kinda work together on it or something who knows, maybe it’s some kind of language. The point is, it’s this incredibly complicated thing and we had thought it was basically just random noises. It’s not though, it’s not random. Personally, I tend towards the fantastic and like to think they’re floating around talking about math.

I get it, a spiders brain is small so it can’t be very smart. It couldn’t be like a bee drawing A GOD DAMNED ANALEMMA to explain where fucking good flowers are. That would be dumb. (Ok, I admit the analemma is a total reach, but fuck me they’re [bees] talking about the position of the sun and drawing a figure 8!)

There’s dudes somewhere on the planet that make deals with birds. simple animal training?Re-enforced learning? Maybe, but this is just co-op with a wild bird. Not like a trapped bird that’s been trained. This bird will just show up and be like “yo, honey?” And the homies will be like “iight, let’s get that honey.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/07/21/these-amazing-wild-birds-understand-when-people-call-them-to-help-hunt-for-honey/%3FoutputType%3Damp

You talk to the few humans that grew up feral, the ones that managed to learn English post living with the wolves. They describe how they kinda started thinking at some point. How their brain works different now that they have language.

You have deaf kids talking about how much they missed out on from not having language, inability to learn from basically overhearing conversation, from watching people.

Neither of them talk about “I was a robot and now I’m not.” Or “I wasn’t conscious before I had language.” They had emotions, they wanted things and invented ways to get them. The way animals will problem solve. Life is a long series of problems for everything.

That’s the closest we’ve been to talking to animals. no one that worked with koko was an expert in sign language

My point is, this spider is clearly executing a plan. Just because it instinctively weaves the web doesn’t mean it doesn’t have some spidery understanding. A spider can probably map out a 3D space in ways we could never imagine, it’s different not stupid.

“ecologist Suzanne Simard discovered that trees communicate their needs and send each other nutrients via a network of latticed fungi buried in the soil – in other words, she found, they “talk” to each other.”

Honestly I really wanna say “read this shit about trees” but I didn’t wanna risk someone reading my rant and missing that payoff. So

read this shit about trees
Or google tree fungal networks

https://megaphone.upworthy.com/p/trees-talk-to-each-other

Just because we are bigger, and stronger, and can eat it, and tragically fucking vivisect it- doesn’t mean we are better. The fact that we’ve boiled insects down to “they’re too simple to have what we value as intelligence” doesn’t mean it doesn’t have some kind of inner life.

It’s worthwhile to study animals and life and science, it’s bullshit to tell students insects are simple. There’s nothing “simple” about DNA it’s complex shit that we’ve hardly begun to understand.

Life is crazy, and absurd, and complicated, and absolutely fantastic. It’s the best, but we have to try to understand it on its own terms. Ants don’t actually have queens SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS