Re: Interesting Mammoth article

On Jun 22, 7:42 pm, Bob Casanova <nos...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, 22 Jun 2007 12:32:27 -0700, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by sheldo...@xxxxxxx:

On Wed, 13 Jun 2007 19:38:15 -0700, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Bob Casanova <nos...@xxxxxxxx>:
Glenn? Some sort of acknowledgement would be appropriate...
I guess not...
Good guess.

Yeah, I thought initially you might have changed to an adult
interested in conversation, but I see I was wrong.

You are wrong to think that you show an interest in "conversation" on
t.o. often enough for anyone to think you are being genuine here.
Being interested in conversation, or your concept of it, is not the
criteria for being an adult, Bob.
I doubt if it is even your's. I thought it more appropriate not to
"acknowledge" your last, and part of the reason was actually to give
you a break instead of embarrasing you further. Your flawed reasoning
appeared and appears to me to be obvious. To put it bluntly, it's more
"adult" not to keep sticking pins in idiots than to continue to. But
you insist.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070620112153.htm

"Are Asian elk hard-wired to fear the Siberian tigers who stalk them"
When wolves disappear from the forest, are moose still afraid of
them?
No, according to a study by Wildlife Conservation Society scientist
Dr. Joel Berger, who says that several large prey species, including
moose, caribou and elk, only fear predators they regularly encounter."

Ah, so the fauna in the Americas wouldn't have feared
humans, since they hadn't regularly encountered them, just
as I stated below, and which you denied. OK, thanks for the
agreement.

Let's see; you've said that animals "acquire" a fear of predators and
that they don't "naturally" develop a fear of predators. Below you add
the evolutionary concept of "many generations" to it. Just above it
appears your "not having regurlarly encountered them" is consistent
with this belief.
Yet the reference I posted, and you didn't object to, indicates that
animals do *not* have an "evolutionary acquired" fear of other
animals. They do not fear predators they do not regularly encounter.
They don't "lose" an "acquired" fear they developed "over
generations", since that would take "generations". Read the excerpt
again; are they "hard-wired"? No.
I never denied that animals in America would not have regularly
encountered human predators. That'd be a somewhat difficult course to
support, especially since I haven't denied that humans are predatory.
The article doesn't evidence that the animals wouldn't have feared
humans, since humans, existing in the areas they hunted in, would seem
to have been regularly encountered. Now you may want to place a great
deal of emphasis on what constitutes "regular" to make your (sic)
"argument" sound reasonable. It occurs to me though that you'd have
some difficulty in showing other things you've said aren't
contradictory, like the "massive amounts" of bones found.

It appears that what you just said could be seen as adding to the view
that your argument consists of saying "Evidence confirming an
observation is evidence that the observation is wrong."

The article was used to show you that animals do not have an innate
fear of specific animals, that they learn fear, as individuals, by
their experiences with them, and what they learn from the behavior of
others around them that have learned. This confirmed my "observation".
You came along and claimed that very evidence is the evidence my
"observation" was wrong. Your "regularly" in "regularly encountered"
is your evolutionist funny bone causing you to lose control, but
doesn't give you a free pass to claim that the evidence confirming an
observation is evidence that the observation is wrong.

Drop the evolution bull*** and get real, Bob.

You have a nice life, too, Glenn. Write when you can do more
than cut/paste articles you apparently don't understand. One
of the things you apparently don't understand is that
evolution has no part of any of this, except as a selective
filter over many generations. And the American megafauna
didn't have "many generations" once humans arrived.

That's your claim. How many generations did they have, how many would
they have needed, Bob?
Where in my article above does it include the evolutionary concept of
taking "many generations" to develop a fear of a certain predator? Can
you explain the "90 years" in terms of your concept of "many
generations" or in terms of early american involvement with say
mammoths, in the last sentence of that article? "For example, elk in
the mountains of Siberia--who subsist alongside tigers, wolves and
bears-- responded five times faster to the recordings than did elk in
Rocky Mountain National Park (Colorado) where major predators have
been absent for some 90 years." Perhaps you think that animals can
"lose" this fear in a very short time that takes many generations to
acquire?

<snip>

[My statements you disagreed with, for reference]





...primitive humans, armed only with spears and
bows, can kill nearly at will, especially in areas not
previously (or recently) inhabited by humans. They also,
based on evidence, were quite good at causing entire herds
to stampede over cliffs.
and
that the animals in the Americas, even if they initially
recognized the humans as predators (a somewhat dubious
assumption) would have taken a significant amount of time to
learn that humans, unlike any of the other predators with
which they would have been familiar, could kill from a
distance.
...Humans were both smaller and less numerous than the
megafauna present in the Americas at the end of the last
glacial, and bear no obvious similarity to the predators in
the area at the time. And herd animals such as horses and
cattle pay little attention to unfamiliar animals, other
than to keep them under sporadic surveillance and out of
"killing range" (which would *not* have been as the herds
would have assumed, especially if they witnessed how
relatively slow humans are in a sprint). Herds have the same
behavioral characteristics today.
...Animals don't automatically recognize unfamiliar
threats; that takes time. And the dead ones wouldn't be
around to pass on any acquired wariness to their offspring.

<snip>
--

Bob C.

"Evidence confirming an observation is
evidence that the observation is wrong."
- McNameless- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


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