Anthony Bourdain On Stupid Animals–Ari Solomon Gives Facts
Written by Vegetarian Star on October 29th, 2009 in Animal Issues, Business, Chefs.
In a recent article on the Huffington Post, Ari Solomon, president and co-creator of eco-friendly soy candle company, A Scent of Scandal, brought up a recent comment made by celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain.
On Larry King Live, Bourdain had commented that it was okay for humans to kill animals for food because humans were designed to chase down “smaller and stupider” creatures.
“It was the “stupider” remark that caught my attention, and not just for Bourdain’s obvious grammatical shortcomings,” said Solomon.
Solomon then gave some wonderful facts on the intelligence of animals:
Pigs may be smarter than Bourdain:
“Pigs have the mental capacity of a four year-old human child and have beat humans in memory games.”
Dolphins are talking about Bourdain behind his back:
“Dolphins have a very distinct language that scientists now refer to as “dolphinese” which humans can’t decipher. For all our human knowledge, we have no idea how to understand what should be, according to Bourdain, a “stupider” means of communication.”
Pigeons are like men because they don’t ask for directions:
“Did you know, for example, that pigeons can fly thousands of miles to find the same roosting spot with no navigational difficulties? Some species of birds, like the Arctic Tern, make a 25,000-mile round-trip journey every year. Many species use built-in ferromagnets to detect their orientation with respect to the Earth’s magnetic field. Can you do that?”
To read Ari’s entire article that describes animals’ intelligence, visit Huffingtonpost.com.
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October 29th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I wonder how many animals Bourdain has chased down?
October 30th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Yes, these animals are intelligent, but are they more intelligent than humans?
Anyway, a predator (which humans are) doesn’t catch stupider (or weaker) species; a predator catches the stupider or weaker individuals within the species.
If every individual in the prey species was stupider and weaker than every one of its predators, all of the prey would eventually be killed and when they were gone, the predators would all die of starvation.
Bourdain didn’t use his words very well, but humans have evolved to be hunters – front-facing eyes, canine teeth, etc.
January 7th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Unlike predators who have front facing eyes to better see and chase down prey, humans have front facing eyes for the same reason all primates have front facing eyes, so they see the next branch in the tree and not fall to their deaths. And like other primates, who are predominately vegetarian, and like almost all other herbivores, including horses, humans have so-called “canine” teeth. But the canine teeth of humans, horses and other herbivores are nothing like the sharp fangs of true predators. Our teeth are much better suited to ripping through the skin of an apple than through the thick flesh of a cow. That’s why we invented knives – to overcome the fact that we are not biologically fit to be predators. Sometimes I think that people who cling to the idea that humans are naturally carniverous suffer from something akin to penis envy.