Humans copy other animals!
A new study has revealed that birds don’t always act instinctively, but have their own social networks and cultures too.
“It now seems ironic that one of the most popular forms of social networking the world over is called Twitter, which is done by sending tweets with the icon of a small bird – when small birds themselves are busy socially networking anyway.
Songbirds are using their networks to learn behaviour from each other, which they then conform to, just as a fashion can spread on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or any of the other electronic ways of getting in touch which we think we are so clever and cool to have invented.
This has been shown in a stunningly-inventive piece of research from Oxford University, which demonstrates for the first time the spread of culture in a wild animal other than primates (the ape and monkey family).
The fact that animals possess culture, which can be defined as the transmission of behaviours from one generation to the next, has only really been appreciated for half a century or so – previously it was assumed that everything they did was instinctive.”
This story featured in the Independent; read more here.
VLA response:
We love it when these studies emerge – because they confirm what many of us already know, that other animals have significant intelligence relevant to their needs, have emotions, societies and customs (cultures) just as humans do.
It’s all the more reason to afford them the same respect, equality and freedom that we seek to give each other other. They have the same rights as we all do.
Just because humans have developed advanced shiny technologies and ways of destroying life and the world – it doesn’t make us ‘more intelligent’, more dominant or mean we either should or have the right to.
If we are to consider ourselves more superior then we would argue that we should understand the need to respect and protect all life – as responsible guardians and custodians of this beautiful world and all that lives within it.
Isn’t it time then that we truly evolved to embrace this view and adopt this responsibility?
veganlifestyleassoc.com