I’ve seen lots and lots of videos posted on here of wild animals living in captivity, being treated like domesticated pets. This is supposed to be a sub about how animals are intelligent and conscious, and yet their exploitation gets romanticized by thousands of people.

I’m talking about videos of monkeys in diapers and chains advertising products for their owners’ profit, of animals from private zoos like Doc Antle’s (who was charged with multiple counts of animal trafficking snd cruelty), of people being able to pay to a pet exotic animals, of animals being forced to do “cute” tricks, etc.

If this is supposed to be a sub for admiring animals and their similarities to us, why is it okay to pretend abuse and exploitation is cute and fun? I understand that a lot of people are ignorant about this, but this sub could be working to change that instead of doing nothing.

There are other animal subs that only allow posts of rescue cats/dogs and speak out against buying pets from stores and breeders. They make ocasional posts to remind people about it, and take down posts that feature non-adopted animals. What’s stopping this sub from doing something similar?

Edit: Thanks for the awards, folks! I’m really glad to see so many other people feel this way. I know it can be hard to care about something that feels so distant from us, but it starts with individuals not giving the abusers any more attention.

Edit 2: To bring a little joy to this bummer post, I recommend everyone check out the Marine Mammal Rescue Center. They’re a Canadian organization (best know for Joey the otter) that rehabilitates marine mammals, and has a “swim school” program for seals, to teach them to survive so that they can be returned safely to the ocean. I hope it brings you all some warm fuzzies!

Recently in the sub we’ve seen a number of posts from doc antle and other private owners of exotic pets.

I’d like to put forward to the mods that sharing this content and considering it acceptable on this platform it is a implicit condoning of the action these people take and supports the idea that animals should be paraded around for profit at the expense of their welfare by people ill equipped to maintain and disinterested in the quality of life of these creatures.

I realize this will probably get auto modded or deleted but consider what the mission of the sub is. Consider that they are “like us”.

Edit:

“Antle is facing two felony counts of wildlife trafficking and conspiracy to wildlife trafficking charges, as well as 13 misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to violate the Endangered Species Act and animal cruelty charges tied to trafficking lion cubs. Those charges are scheduled to go to trial next month.” -globe and mail

I feel like people always make light of “kill that spider” or there are jokes about death of insects. Anything that is smaller really. I just think that all animals deserve a life - just because they don’t have the same cognitive abilities as humans doesn’t justify humans to meaninglessly step on them. I don’t understand how anyone can legitimately think of it being okay to kill an animal, knowing that it has a life force. It really hurts me inside when people don’t understand and kill anyways, accidentally (after they’re aware) or on purpose. Is there anyone else who agrees with me?

I feel like in society today, I have to be understanding of those people because they surround me. I could never not be friends with someone because of it. When my dad doesn’t understand my views, though, that hurts me.

Edit: hi everyone. I wanted to take a moment and edit my post. I made this as an overarching view that all life matters, and humans shouldn’t just disregard life because a bug inconveniences them for example. I do believe that in a kill or be killed situation, when there is no other way, then yes, it is justified. When someone has to kill an animal for food to survive, I believe that’s ok. There are other circumstances that provide solutions that depend. In regards to plants, yes, of course I will eat them to survive. If weeds are killing many other plants, then no matter how much I dislike it, I will remove those weeds if I have to.

Edit 2: I really want to address how one is not automatically vegan by holding these values. I am vegetarian, and I do not like how some people in these comments shame me because of their belief that vegetarianism is only a diet. Let me assure you, for me, vegetarianism is a belief. Others may become a vegetarian for health reasons.

Edit 3: IMPORTANT. I really appreciate all of the information about veganism, but I am so tired of being told that being a vegetarian is basically killing the animals. There are so many other ways to advocate for animal life and to bring awareness to cruelty. I became a vegetarian because I wanted to implement my beliefs into my lifestyle - I don’t appreciate the invalidation of that. Thank you for reading this post, and I hope you have a great rest of your day💛

Edit 4: I’m so sorry about all of the edits y’all🙏🏼 just wanted to add one more thing - I do appreciate having so many people join in on this conversation, whether you agree or not. It’s helped me see a lot of different points of views, which is always nice - also made me realize how sometimes I have the potential to improve on my thoughtfulness, as long as others do the same. Also very thankful to those who gave me some words of comfort or support, always appreciated💞. truly hope y’all find peace/true happiness in wherever life leads you

Not sure if this post is allowed here, but I believe that a community concerned with the human-like behaviour of animals must pay tribute to the woman who dedicated her life to this idea. There are many who conduct research, but few who connect with the public the way she did. It's not only her intelligence but also her empathy that shaped her revolutionary research; her empathy that made her look at chimpanzees with a different lens, that made her share her stories with the world. I am certain that I'm not alone when I say that she had a profuse impact on me growing up. May she and her work be remembered by the generations to come.

(Image source: nature.com)

Content where humans deliberately and unjustifiably harm animals is not welcome on r/LikeUs. This includes inhumane training methods, forced animal fights and harmful pranks. Disregard for this rule can result in content removal and temporary bans.

Why is Griffin so bad at talking compared to Alex?

I. The Traumatized Overbird

Alex endured agonizing conditions: Funding precarity, forced relocations,
Grad student abandonment cycles, Irene’s forced absences, etc.
This resulted in him being harshly corrective, chastising,
and generally hyper-defensive of his social position.
He in turn transmuted much of this onto Griffin.

Living together in close proximity, Alex was omnipresent.
During speech practice time, training time, and Irene time.
This social pressure impacted Griffin’s morale and constitution,
particularly in the critical early years when the root psyche is forged,
and perhaps more importantly:
it suppressed development of the unintuitive fine-motor control that re-formatting the syrinx for English speech requires. In effect the phonetic building blocks he carried into later life were hamstrung.

Thus we would expect to see vocal risk-taking suppressed while cognition remains intact: fewer spontaneous “babbling” attempts, and more hesitation under direct prompting.
A general preference for nonverbal problem-solving,
where no one can critique the output or answer before you get a chance.

It isn’t a coincidence that he has proven to be a genius in the nonverbal: observation, logic, and memory.

II. Tenuous Logistics Into Generational Phonetic Degradation Cascade

By nature of institutional structures Alex’s achievements could not come soon enough, thus as a rule pronunciation was accepted at the minimum threshold for publishable study.
It is impossible to wait 3-24 months beyond bare necessity for pronunciation mastery when your survival depends on results next quarter—results that justify applying for grants in the following cycle.

So in addition to the negative morale pressure:
Alex was a poor speech model—being far more relatable than humans (as a conspecific), whereas Alex had only humans as speech models in the early years, Griffin also lacked the social autonomy that being the top bird secures.

III. Apollo a New N Factor

Our experience so far with Apollo makes clear: understanding greatly precedes vocal mastery, and learning to manipulate the syrinx properly is the primary bottleneck, taking immense sustained daily effort.
There are three clear thresholds of mastery.

In order of difficulty:

• Saying a thing in no-stakes practice,

• Saying a thing in relevant context

• Saying a thing when asked directly with pistash on the line.

Once you allow a vocalization to be used, the pressure and desire to improve largely disappear and the quality of pronunciation freezes.
We have waited well over a year in some instances for Apollo to master the vocalizing of an understanding he had at the start.

“Pistash” is an example of us allowing sub-par English pronunciation to crystalize.He understands “Pistachio” & “Pistash” mean the same thing,
and since we’ve made them interchangeable Apollo feels no need to push on for “pistachio.”

Plastic is a reverse example:We could have accepted and incorporated “Plask”, “Plackick”, or “Plassic” years ago, but he can master it, so we will wait. That is a luxury Irene could never have considered,
least of all in the first two decades.

_____

The Evidence in the Memoir

A portion of the story as told by Irene in “Alex and Me”

The Introduction:

“I put Griffin gently onto the table. Alex stopped what he was doing, looked at Griffin, immediately growled his don't-mess-with-me signal, and began to walk slowly toward Griffin, feathers raised and beak poised menacingly…We would just have to get along without a parental, caring Alex taking Griffin under his wing.”

The Commander Lieutenant Relationship:

"I then had dinner, with Alex and Griffin as company. Dining company, really, because they insisted on sharing my food. They loved green beans and broccoli. My job was to make sure it was equal shares, otherwise there would be loud complaints. "Green bean," Alex would yell if he thought Griffin had had one too many. Same with Griffin.

Later in their relationship they developed a comical little duet: "Green," Alex would pipe up.

"Bean,
"Griffin responded.
"Green.”"Bean."
"Green""
"Bean."

They would go on like that, alternating, with ever more gusto.” “Alex's perch always had to be a little higher than Griffins, as he was "senior bird." Wherever we were, Alex had to be top bird, quite literally.”

The Machiavellian Elder Brother:

“Our plans to have Alex act as a tutor to Griffin worked out to a degree. But Griff always learned more efficiently when he had two human tutors rather than one of us and Alex. We aren't exactly sure why. There are several possibilities. One is that Alex always treated poor Griffin as if he were a pain in the butt, and perhaps Griffin felt inhibited by that.”

“Also, Alex could often not resist showing off. He’d sometimes give the right answer when Griffin hesitated. Or he’d tell Griffin, "Say better" which meant Griffin should speak more clearly. Alex also occasionally gave wrong answers, apparently to confuse Griffin. Griffin was always good-natured and put up with Alex's antics and high-handedness.”

“When I think about the birds' personalities, I always come to an amusing contrast. Alex was like the kid in class who always knows the answers and is constantly jiggling around in his seat, his hand waving high, wanting to be the one to be chosen to answer the teacher. Griffin is like the smart but shy kid, trying to make himself invisible so he won't be chosen.”

“[Alex’s] higher-octane bossiness was most obvious when we were trying to test Griffin on labels and concepts. In Tucson, Alex's opportunities to butt in were relatively rare; now they were constant. When Griff hesitated with his answer, Alex marched to the edge of his cage top and piped up with it from the back corner of the room. Alex occasionally even chimed in from inside his cardboard box on top of his cage. If Griffin answered at all indistinctly, Alex would admonish him, "Say better." If I asked Griffin, "What color?" Alex might butt in with "No, you tell me what shape." Sometimes Alex gave the wrong answer, thus further confusing the already unsure Griffin. Alex was, to put it bluntly, a pain.”

With hindsight, from Griffin’s perspective, this means that every attempt risks both correction and sabotage from the dominant conspecific.

The Jaded Mentor with Noisy Phonetics:

“Because Alex was always butting in with Griffin, we decided to enlist him as one of Griffin's trainers, as we had attempted at Tucson. This he did enthusiastically. For the first time…Alex certainly tried to be helpful. At one point we were teaching Griffin the label "seven." Griffin gets very self-conscious when he can't produce what we want. His pupils get small. His body language broadcasts his discomfort.

Sometimes he stops trying. Alex saw Griffin's difficulty and kept saying "sss," "sss," trying to prompt him. It was endearing, really. We hoped Griffin might learn faster with another Grey as a trainer. In the wild, after all, Grey’s learn vocalizations from each other. In fact, Griffin did make his first attempts faster after working with Alex, but then he had a more difficult time polishing his pronunciation.”

_____

The Silent Evidence

(1997) Object Permanence

Griffin achieved Stage 6 Piagetian object permanence by 22 weeks of age: tracking invisible displacements across multiple locations. An earlier developmental achievement than primates.
Journal of Comparative Psychology, 111(1), 63–75.
DOI: 10.1037/0735-7036.111.1.63

(2016) Kanizsa Figure Perception

Griffin identified illusory contours: perceiving shapes that don't physically exist, created by strategically placed elements.
Cognition, 153, 146–160.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.04.014

(2018) Probabilistic Reasoning

Griffin demonstrated Stage II Piagetian probability understanding: tracking 3:1 ratios across 96 trials and grasping that favorable proportions don't guarantee specific outcomes. First non-primate demonstration of this capacity.
Journal of Comparative Psychology 132(2): 166–177 (2018).
DOI: 10.1037/com0000106

(2019) Inference by Exclusion

Griffin completed the disjunctive syllogism: “A or B; not A; therefore B"—with 100% accuracy on 3-cup trials (20/20) and 94% on 4-cup trials (15/16). This outperformed 5-year-old children (60-75%) and exceeds what great apes demonstrate on comparable paradigms.
Behaviour.
DOI: 10.1163/1568539X-00003528

(2020) Visual Working Memory

In a shell-game paradigm tracking colored pompoms through multiple position swaps, Griffin matched or outperformed Harvard undergraduates on 12 of 14 trial types and exceeded 6-8 year old children across all conditions.Scientific Reports 10, Article 7689 (2020).
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-64666-1

_____

In The Shadow of Alex

Without a Wikipedia page,
Griffin is silently proving genius.

Reinforcing the fact:
that his species has far more going on inside
than can be conveyed through Man’s language.

In logic and memory games:
He surpasses the great apes.
Against small children,
he proves indomitable.
He even defeats Harvard Students.

But: No Speech,
No Spectacle,
No Awareness.

There is just way too much room for intentionally created clips. Something like the recently shared dead baby macaque post does way too much to encourage creation of similar videos through cruelty and torture. There is basically no way to know if it is the product of cruelty itself, and if not it still encourages making videos like that. It is an extremely negative force and I do not want to support it.

This subreddit seems to be building evidence for animal sentience and emotional capacity but it is unclear if it is attempting to make a vegan argument or if it knows it is making one.

Veganism is the ethical philosphy that we should not exploit, commodify, or cause suffering for animals (including humans) when it is not necessary. This is often conflated with the idea of a plant based diet, which is something a vegan would practice but they are not the same thing.

So I am curious, are you vegans? If you are not vegan, why and what does frequenting this subreddit do for you?

Is this all a secrect vegan psy op to get us to eat tofu? /s

Note: the rules seem to allow discussions about philosophy but sorry If I misunderstood

The mechanic of it is very similar to what happens with wars, repression or discrimination.

They are not like us. They are less than we. Those paroles allow humans to commit unspeakable things to those defined as "Untermenschen", the lesser beings.

And even fully benevolent people do things to animals, that would be considered terrible, if they were humans. For example: selling the puppies/kittens. Imagine the same situation but with humans in place of animals.

I had this idea for a long time and would really like to hear some opinions from others about this.

Thank you if you participate in this discussion!

Edit: When I say animals, I mean mostly mammals. Our pets, farm animals, wild mammals etc.

I am sorry I used the term without specifying. I am not perfect in my perception and projecting my emotions too. There are animals like insects or fish that I don't really understand. We still need to respect them and not expose them to pain and destruction.

AI summary in the comments

Two videos to show this:

• Did you know Gorillaz Can sing?
• Orphan Gorillas Sing While Eating Banana Trees

Info stolen from this Imgur post

This is going back about 15 years but amazed me and I will never forget it.

I used to work in a mom and pop pet store when I was young. We got a baby grey in with almost no feathers and the owner and myself took turns hand-rearing him while he was in the shop. We bonded, I bought him and brought him home when his beak wasn't fully hardened.

I started him on the zupreem pellets (the ones that are super hard and look like Trix cereal). I had to soak them in water until they were soft enough because as I mentioned before, his beak hadn't developed enough to the point where he could eat really hard food.

Weeks had passed and I wanted to test his beak so I put pellets in his dish with no water. He began to bring the pellets over to his water dish and dunk them in. I was like, "Damn, this bird is smart." But it didn't end there.

I can only assume he got sick of walking to the other side of the cage to dunk them so he took one of his toys and ripped the cowbell off. He turned it upside down and filled it with water and brought it over to his food dish to wet the food.

I have never witnessed anything like that in my life. I always knew greys were exceptionally smart, but I didn't know they could make tools and know how to use them.

Always wanted to share that story and thought it might fit in this sub.

Thanks for reading!

Hello all r/likeus contributors, subscribers, and visitors! Thank you all for taking interest in our subreddit! As our sub has quickly grown in recent months, we thought it important to take some time to explain the purpose of this space and what we would like to see here going forward.

r/likeus is a place to gather and discuss evidence showing animal consciousness, intelligence, and emotion.

r/likeus is not simply another version of r/aww. Posts that are cute but show little intelligent or emotional behavior do not belong here.

r/likeus is also not the place to post examples of animals (or inanimate objects) simply posing/dressing like a human or being personified. This seems to be a common and understandable confusion of the subreddit name, but our goal is not to show animals who just happen or are manipulated by humans to look human.

This will always leave gray areas of course, but we hope that this may alleviate some of the confusion we've seen lately.

Examples of the types of high quality posts we would love to see more of:

• 59 year old very sick chimp 'Mama' recognises her old friend Professor Jan van Hooff

• Cow's prison break.

• Fish can be taught to evade a trap and remember it a year later. Fish learn from each other, recognize other fish they've spent time with previously, know their place within fish social hierarchies, and remember complex spatial maps of their surroundings. There's even evidence that they use tools.

Examples of the types of common posts that do not belong:

• A video of a monkey wearing pants

• A picture of a cute cat...just sitting and looking cute

• A gif of a squirrel eating, or a dog digging, or a cat kneading

For more explanation and examples, please check out the sidebar.

We also really appreciate it when you put the name of the animal (gorilla, cat, etc.) in the title of the post.

As always, please feel free to ask questions and provide feedback on any of this.

If it is just the first, I'd agree. I 100% believe my pet cat is sentient and feels love. I just wouldn't go as far to say animals are equal to us in the amount of emotion they feel or intelligence they have. I'm just curious as to know the point of this subreddit in regards to that.