From: rokimoto557@gmail.com   
      
   On 12/17/2025 8:06 PM, JTEM wrote:   
   >   
   > What a nut job, RonO wrote:   
   >   
   >> What a nut job.  They strip the leaves off a stick and fish for termites.   
   >   
   > And if they don't the stick won't fit in the hole. Big whoop.   
   >   
   > By your testimony, Chimps are intellectual inferiors to ants:   
   >   
   > https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.13671   
      
   This is a nifty paper.  Was it ever verified?  Ants take slaves, some   
   species farm fungi.  How do they determine if decisions are being made?   
   For chimps making the tool and using it appropriately is a learned   
   behavior.  They need to observe others doing it and the results   
   obtained, and even when they try to mimic the behavior it sometimes   
   takes years to translate their observation into what works for them.   
   These ants seem to have an instinctive behavior to use sand grains to   
   pick up liquid food (the liquid sticks to the sand grain), and that   
   behavior results in them piling up sand grains near a source so that   
   they act as a wick to allow them to access the liquid without moving   
   onto the surface.  This paper claims that they switch how they use the   
   sand grain dependent on whether they put surfactant in the liquid so   
   that the ants do not have the surface tension to keep them from   
   drowning.  Instead of going out onto the liquid they pile up sand near   
   the edge and wick it out.   
      
   Wichramasinghe of McLean vs Arkansas infamy was made fun of because he   
   had made the claim that insects were smarter than humans.  Bees have a   
   language and can transmit directions to their hive mates through   
   dancing.  The bees have a functional enough brain to observe the dance   
   and know where to go to find food.  We do not understand how they do   
   that, but it gets done.  The tiny insect brain has enough memory storage   
   to understand the dance and then can translate that memory to action and   
   find the food source or the scouted new home site.   
      
   >   
   > So maybe after millions of years of evolution, Chimps will yet   
   > achieve the level of sophistication of ants, you're saying.   
      
   They have already surpassed this ant example in terms of progressing to   
   human level tool use because chimp tool use is culturally propagated and   
   not an innate behavior pattern.   
      
   >   
   > Or you're VERY disturbed, mentally.   
      
   More projection?   
      
   >   
   > But another thing you're saying is that "Tools" is an action. The   
   > removal of a leaf is an action and that action makes a tool,   
   > according to you.   
      
   Humans do things to make tools.  The tools that they make have specific   
   properties that make them useful for doing things like collecting   
   termites or Homo erectus skinning a kill with a flake stone tool.   
      
   >   
   > No noun, no object -- nothing remaining in the archaeological   
   > record -- because you can't preserve an action.   
   >   
   > Wow. You're a fucking idiot!   
   >   
   >   
   >   
   Just a nut job.   
      
   Ron Okimoto   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)