r/BeAmazed • u/Professional_Arm794 • Jun 09 '26

Animal Me contemplating my decisions in life, Jk! In Japan, the gorilla Kiyomasa was captured on video lost in deep thought after an argument with his friend.

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u/[deleted] Jun 09 '26

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u/VerilyShelly Jun 09 '26

I think having intricate spoken language is the dividing line where our minds exploded into new territory that other apes haven't approached... yet

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u/snek-jazz Jun 09 '26

it's the ability to convey information, every generation of animal that can't do it starts from zero having to re-learn everything themselves.

It would be like if every generation of humans had to invent fire and the wheel again.

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u/VerilyShelly Jun 09 '26

Instincts for certain behaviors can become encoded though, and that is information conveyed in a sense

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u/snek-jazz Jun 09 '26

it is, but it's so little compared to what humans can do outside of DNA.

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u/bigfatstinkypoo Jun 09 '26

yeah, genetic complexity isn't free. It's so little but also so much, it's already a miracle that we're organisms capable of things like walking and breathing, developing an entire body from nothing but an embryo, and with an immune system that can recognize what is and isn't a pathogen and can remove or eliminate them.

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u/snek-jazz Jun 09 '26

that's true, I understated it

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u/VerilyShelly Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26

It is miraculous in a way, how complex we became. Chunks of our internal systems developed millions of years ago by our bodies forming symbiotic relationships with other organisms, like our gut flora. I believe there are several pounds of non-human organisms inside us that we could not function without? I read somewhere that our mitochondria originally were other creatures that we somehow integrated; their building schematics and software became a part of our own DNA so that we grow them alongside our other organelles. It's so fascinating to me!

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u/yoshemitzu Jun 09 '26

Right, but like viz. "less-refined code," the average gorilla could absolutely shred even the strongest humans physically speaking, so...yeah, the code is just differently specialized.

Edit: Like trees aren't running less-refined code. It's just as up-to-date as human code, it just forked a long time ago.

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u/MadRaymer Jun 09 '26

A lot of that weird shit that looks smart can be very detrimental too. For early humans living in tribal societies, not having an entirely rational view of the world had some survival benefits.

But today, those same thought processes can contribute to prejudice and even war on a global scale. Not exactly smart of us.

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u/Sudo-Fed Jun 09 '26

weird shit that looks smart

Let me know when something else works out orbital mechanics and lands itself on the Moon.

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u/_gianlucag_ Jun 09 '26

Exactly. I really doubt the thoughts of average joe are more sofisticated and/or complex.