Questions after watching Life the documentary

musicismylife78

1. meerkats. evidently each meerkat in a tribe or group takes its turn as watchdog, lookout, guard. My question is, how is this decided? Who decides, and how, that one meerkat as opposed to another should be lookout? And once a meerkat is lookout, how is it decided its another meerkats turn? I assume they have no concept of minutes or hours, or even days. How is this all figured?

2. Primates, it was said are among the most intelligent and the most socially conscious of all creatures. While it was said primates are problem solvers, intelligent, can empathize and share, I dont understand the socially conscious aspect of it all. Socially conscious, that term, to me, means a being who is an activist, who is sensitive to the outside world and its problems and is eager to change the system, to change the world. Beyond empathizing and sharing, I saw no other examples of socially conscious behavior. In fact I saw the exact opposite. Primates create hierarchies, they live in patriarchies and created class systems. The class systems were mentioned oddly right after the socially conscious statement. I hate to say it but creating a class system isnt social consciousness in any form. In fact its a barrier to it. They talked about how some primates would be expelled from the group to die. So how are primates socially conscious?

3. Orangatangs pass on information to their offspring, with the mother teaching and molding the offspring for up to 7 years. it was said they pass on the information of how to tell if a plant is toxic or not. I know passing on that information is hard enough to do with a human 4 year old, telling them "dont go in the street or you will be harmed", so how do orangatangs pull off this feat. I assume they communciate in some way with their offspring to tell them "dont eat this or you will die", but how? How is this done?

BM42909

1. rock, paper, scissors

2. lead, follow or get out of the way - being conscious of your social standing is being socially conscious

3. orangutans rear their kids like the Italians do it: spankings - lots and lots of spankings


I hope this helps.

Wilds

That show should have a disclaimer*.


*Do not view this program if you have been involved in the activity of ingesting large quantities of Tetrahydrocannabinol.

catefrances

musicismylife78 wrote:

2. Primates, it was said are among the most intelligent and the most socially conscious of all creatures. While it was said primates are problem solvers, intelligent, can empathize and share, I dont understand the socially conscious aspect of it all. Socially conscious, that term, to me, means a being who is an activist, who is sensitive to the outside world and its problems and is eager to change the system, to change the world. Beyond empathizing and sharing, I saw no other examples of socially conscious behavior. In fact I saw the exact opposite. Primates create hierarchies, they live in patriarchies and created class systems. The class systems were mentioned oddly right after the socially conscious statement. I hate to say it but creating a class system isnt social consciousness in any form. In fact its a barrier to it. They talked about how some primates would be expelled from the group to die. So how are primates socially conscious?

i think when social consciousness is spoken of in relation to primates its more to do with the awareness of their familial unit than feeding the poor.

arq

How is this all figured?

Well is not like they have a incredible complex communication method, i believe is just alien to us, maybe some kind of "rock paper scissor" method we haven't figure it out, but i think that is just an instinct that push the meerkat closest to the lookout post to go and watch.

So how are primates socially conscious?

Socially conscious just mean that they know about hierarchies, there's a boss and where's you place, not like our "socially conscious" society that take care of the weakest.

"dont eat this or you will die", but how? How is this done?

Well I think is just they eat whatever it has been eating for the last 1000 years, they habitat hasn't change in a way that they have to change their diet, so the young ones just eat what ever their mother eats, is not like they're always trying to eat new things, plus I'm sure that as infants they may sometime eat things out of the normal diet that make them sick and just from that bad experience they learn to eat only what their mothers teach them.

Maybe my answer are a little bit rudimentary but well I'm not trying to make a dissertation about animal behavior, it is just my geek side speaking, and thousands of animal planet, discovery channel and some channels alike :P