King Baboon Handling

[ThomasH]

well im glad Dr. doolittle has the answer to the mysteries of arachnids and animals, but i dont buy it. they are VERY complex creatures that we write off as dumb or "less evolved" becuz they dont talk or show emotions. just becuz they are more simple than we are doesnt mean they are easy to figure out. and not to dive into a completely different topic all together whos to say that T's dont exhibit emotions and have thought process...we just dont understand them that well. i feel theres much much more to learn about all of the worlds creatures big and small...and to say they are easily figured out is a bit of a bold statement.



yes...and so as my statement isn't under minded, what i meant was we need to do more research into this "theory" to make it more than "speculation" and perhaps have some sort of "scientific proof" that this young man is correct.

good work to the guy who made the video...it is alot more complicated than originally said but i say lets figure out if theres something more to this than we see.

Show me where I said we know everything about arachnids? I also never claimed I could talk to them. Tarantulas have a very low mental capacity [If we can even call it that.] so yes, in your terms I guess that would make them "dumb." Yes they are also less evolved as well but arguably more adapt. I think the term you meant was adapt. Because arachnids were some of the first animals out of water and have made few changes in 100's of thousands of years and therefore did not undergo as much evolution. But they are very adapt to their environment if that is what you meant. I didn't say they are completely easy to figure out. But it is a hell of a lot more simple than most living things. Scientific observation and specimen disection has shown that arachnids and inverts as a total probably don't have emotions or a clear thought process. Just instinct. I was posting in the manner that I did because of your bold words of "we don't understand ANYTHING" with anything in caps. That was incorrect and even you have since gone back on your word.
TBH

 

[ThomasH]

you are right i will say this much. to use the term lower is a bit off but i was stating this in a close minded fashion as we as humans (not all but a lot) generally assume that animals are lower forms of life and that bugs are WAY down on the evo-latter. ive just recently began studying and learning the magnificent things about the animal kingdom and i too and slightly closed mined to the idea that they are highly intelligent and sophisticated creatures...but im just a dumb human who has thrown away most of my primitive skills and abilities for computers and fast food. :wall:

HIGHLY INTELLEGENT? In reference to most animals. What? That is insane. They are lower on the evolution ladder as I said but they ARE adapt. They are lower forms of life by many standards. In others, they are not. Depends on what factors you define as "lower life form."
TBH

 

[ThomasH]

Also not true. Conducting good research in animal behavior is particularly difficult, and although we've figured out a lot, we have a LONG way to go. This goes especially for tarantulas, on which not much real work has been done. Sure, they might appear predictable in captivity, but captivity and the wild are two very different places. Just the fact that they can adapt to and breed in a captive lifestyle is pretty amazing. There's still a ton of field work to be done though.

Here's one example. Did you know some frogs co-habitate with tarantulas, even here in North America? These tarantulas are known to eat frogs, but they don't eat these. It's not known why this relationship occurs, though people speculate the frogs eat ants that might otherwise endanger the spider, and of course the tiny frog is well defended from its usual predators thanks to the spider. But that's only speculation, it still needs to be tested. These creatures are not as predictable and easy to decipher as you might think.

Would you mind proposing an easier life form? Less work being done brings no evidence to the table. Yes I knew about the frog and tarantula cohabitation. The same thing happens with some lizards and scorpions. I speculate the same thing. I am sure of it. Animals have always been easy to decipher with enough observation.
TBH

 

[Moltar]

Wow you guys. Complicated or not, sophisticated or not, nobody should argue that tarantulas, indeed arthropods in general have anything we could call intelligence (comparable to even a hamster) or emotions or self awareness.

They barely even have what we would consider a brain, just a tiny nerve cluster. They are a collection of experiences and reactions. If something large nearby moves you run into your burrow. If you don't know where your burrow is you run for cover or maybe bite it, if no cover you just freeze and wait for more data or maybe bite it. If something smaller than you moves you eat it. If you feel water you drink it. Air movement nearby = possible danger. An so on and so forth.

That's it; a simple library of acquired cause and effect. Thay have no thought, no abstraction, no emotion. They just aren't wired for it. At best they have instinctive drives that we can (if we choose) misinterpret as emotion or thought. I speak of things like nurturing instinct, defensive behaviors, hunger, etc.

This doesn't make me love them any less or respect them any less. In fact it fascinates me that much more because they don't have mammalian motivations that are familiar to us and there is so much more to observe and understand.

Sorry if that view ticks anybody off but geez... they're not dogs, ok? They're not even mice. Thought is not, never has and never will be part of their existence. They evolved to be quite the opposite long before us smarty-pants mammals even existed.

 

[LeilaNami]

Rather than trying to place arachnids on a dumb or smart scale, I prefer just to think of them as purely instinctual creatures.

 

[lucanidae]

Would you mind proposing an easier life form? Less work being done brings no evidence to the table. Yes I knew about the frog and tarantula cohabitation. The same thing happens with some lizards and scorpions. I speculate the same thing. I am sure of it. Animals have always been easy to decipher with enough observation.
TBH

Yes, any Drosophila work is easier because a ton of research and information is available on them all the way down to their entire genetic code. That's why academics have what we call 'Drosophila envy'. How animals learn at the most basic level was figured out by work conducted on a sea cucumber, a much more simple functioning creature than arachnids. Neurological pathways important to hearing were discovered from Owls, which are much bigger and easier to work with in the laboratory and who have brains that can be dissected with a much more serious understanding of function than invertebrate ganglia. Bacteria have exponentially less complicated structures than animals.... yet we still don't understand them fully. Plants don't even move and we are only scratching the surface of their life history; plant defenses against herbivores are just barley beginning to be worked out. I'm amazed to hear that people think doing this kind of work is easy, it is an incredibly difficult process to publish peer reviewed research. If you want to know more about the real research being done or arachnids (not a guy playing with one spider on the floor) you can check out some abstracts or articles from The Journal of Arachnology. http://www.americanarachnology.org/JOA_online.html#issues

This entire issue is available:
http://www.americanarachnology.org/JoA_tocs/JOA_contents_v36n2.html

Some work on tarantulas titled "Revision of the theraphosid spiders from China (Araneae: Mygalomorphae)" is available near the bottom of that issue. We don't even know how all of these animals are related yet, let alone what they are actually doing in the wild.

Also....

There is no such thing as an evolutionary ladder. There is an evolutionary tree, which you can branch off of at different points, but there is no ranking system of 'how evolved' something is within that tree. Also, spiders have been in current form for much longer than we have, so the processes of evolution have actually acted more on them than they have on us. (Evolutionary forces never just go away, they may influence subtle changes or actually select for equilibrium, but they are ever-present)

Invertebrates see things we can not see (such as UV and polarized light), they had agriculture and livestock (ants tending a multitude fungus and hemipterans) long before we began to walk on the planet. They have formed evolutionary bonds so intense it boggles the mind (blister beetle larvae working as a group to impersonate a female bee, infecting a male bee that tries to mate with them, jumping onto the real female when their original host mates...and finally eating the female bee's larvae and pollen stores....and of course, Fig Wasps, one of the most complicated evolutionary relationships.... which we still don't understand completely). There are even truly intelligent spiders who can plan a route to prey, during the execution of which they lose site of the target for long periods of time before capturing it, and also impersonate the mating dances of several species of male orb weavers to match the species of female they are trying to eat. Also, they learn these tactics over time, they are not simply born with them (Genus Portia). These animals are not automatons, and the more we study them the more we realize how true that is.

 

[ThomasH]

I wasn't talking the whole encillada here. I was talking simple aggression and basic needs. Not neurologic pathways and all that.
TBH

 

[lucanidae]

Well, Theraphosid physiology isn't particularly well known either. But there are examples of where it is known. Drosophila and Schistocera (a cockroach) we know some 'basic needs', such as escape responses, all the way down to the entire route of information transfer from cell to cell that causes the response. Every chemical and electrical gradient from stimulus to response has been worked out. And, it turns out, these vary between orders, families, even species in the same genus. So little is known and so little can be 'worked out' just by watching them. Watching them is a great start however, and I would argue that we haven't even done close to enough of that in the field.

When we figure out the defensive response of tarantulas in the detail we've been able to accomplish in model organisms such as Drosophila, I'll be very much impressed. I give it a minimum of 20 years though before we have a grasp that detailed on a decent number of Arthropods.

 

[LeilaNami]

define what you consider 'intelligence'.

 

[lucanidae]

The ability to learn and modify behavior far beyond a basic repertoire in order to suit different situations. To acquire knowledge and apply it to practice. Which is exactly what Portia (and others) do.

 

[LeilaNami]

The ability to learn and modify behavior far beyond a basic repertoire in order to suit different situations. To acquire knowledge and apply it to practice. Which is exactly what Portia (and others) do.

So you say that it is a problem-solving response. What about a preset response to a change in environment. In other words if A happened, do this. If B happened, do this. Now I've seen some other inverts like dung beetles problem solving in order to shape the ball of feces to roll it home but could that also be considered a preset response?

 

[lucanidae]

That is inherent in it, but that's not all I said.

The ability to learn and modify behavior far beyond a basic repertoire in order to suit different situations. To acquire knowledge and apply it to practice.

I'm not saying present responses don't exist. They certainly do. But do we understand how they work? How does the animal assess its environment? Where is the response information stored? How is it transferred? How is the link between cause and response maintained? How long does it take for this response, and does the length vary between different situations even in the same animal? All of these questions and many more must be answered before we can say we fully understand something. And that's just physiology, which, although it can be linked very closely to behavior, is still only a small part of the collective study of life on earth.

As for the dung beetles; is it a characteristic (same every time) response? Do individuals exhibit the exact response or do they differ? Are males and females different? Do they have a trial and error period before they get it right? These are all questions that factor into the ultimate answer to your question, and I would bet that unfortunately they aren't known yet.

 

[LeilaNami]

That is inherent in it, but that's not all I said.

The ability to learn and modify behavior far beyond a basic repertoire in order to suit different situations. To acquire knowledge and apply it to practice.

I'm not saying present responses don't exist. They certainly do. But do we understand how they work? How does the animal assess its environment? Where is the response information stored? How is it transferred? How is the link between cause and response maintained? How long does it take for this response, and does the length vary between different situations even in the same animal? All of these questions and many more must be answered before we can say we fully understand something. And that's just physiology, which, although it can be linked very closely to behavior, is still only a small part of the collective study of life on earth.

As for the dung beetles; is it a characteristic (same every time) response? Do individuals exhibit the exact response or do they differ? Are males and females different? Do they have a trial and error period before they get it right? These are all questions that factor into the ultimate answer to your question, and I would bet that unfortunately they aren't known yet.

Haha, I like debating with you. You always have interesting things to say. :} I'm now compelled to research further into this on my own.

 

[nexen]

there are other videos of this guy handling...is he a member on the boards or just someone doing it for the love of the game?

FYI: This guy is an active member of the boards. I don't really know him personally but he definitely respects his animals and seems to know his stuff everytime I've communicated with him.