Friday, October 17, 2008

Animal Skill Learning And Creativity In And Out Of Their Natural Environment

Many researchers have noticed that you can train a wild animal to do something, like a shark, wolf, guerilla, tiger or Chimpanzee, but when they go back into the wild they simply dismiss the skill and do not bother to teach it to their wild companions. Yet some skills, which are of value to the animal they will teach their offspring and local social groupings if they can in fact be used in that natural environment.
Indeed, well I do not have a problem with this logic. And would add that once back in the wild, if the new skill proved useful then it most likely would be passed on through teaching and imitation [another animal trait perhaps associated with empathy and thus mirroring] and one should not necessarily assign intelligence to mirroring or copying, although a form of intelligence, original ideas seem more a sign of intelligence in that regard and then there is the creativity with problem solving which seems to be the big kicker which researchers find hard to judge at times.
Creativity in my opinion needs a better metric, as I often consider this having possession of so much myself and do not know why. What I find interesting in that is that creativity without action goes un-rewarded and is hard to measure. Thus you can have extremely creative people yet do not know it until you have a discussion [with animals we don’t as communication is difficult presently] and often in humans you find very creative let’s say introverts and introspectives, but until you look at their drawings, video game creations, writing, art and such you would never know. They are just regular people. Perhaps this thought is of value to you or someone you know. If so consider this in 2006.
"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington

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