Ants are as smart as you 2

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1. 

   jdhlax Posted 11:49 am
   11 Jan 2006

   Anthropocentric HubrisIt's absurd to think that only humans teach each other.  Many animals do this.  The prevailing idiocy that humans are so much smarter than other forms of life is undoubtedly responsible for statements like this is "the first proof of teaching among non-human animals."
   
   Jeff Hoffman

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2. 

   clarence Posted 2:28 pm
   11 Jan 2006

   C'monThis certainly isn't news to people who try to reintroduce captive bred animals into the wild. Their biggest problem is to learn how to be surrogate parents and teach their charges how to find food sources in the wild and avoid predators.
   
   If you live with bears, you learn that some bears have been taught (by their mothers) to find their food from logs full of beetle larvae, from wild fruit sources, from spawning salmon in the fall, from the wild.  Others have been taught by their mothers to find their food from garbage cans and orchards.  
   
   I've seen donkeys teach horses how to eat thistle blossoms.  
   
   Of course we're different than any other species.  If there exists a nattering class in the genus Muridae, (mice) the members of it certainly have good arguments to support the thesis that God created the Universe with them in mind.
   
   There are even plants that release chemicals into the air to warn their downwind species-mates that they're being nibbled on, so the forewarned can start producing chemicals to make themselves less palatable.  
   
      

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