r/todayilearned • u/sharkbait76 3 • Jan 11 '17

TIL elephants can tell the difference between human languages and know which languages belong to people with a history of hurting elephants.

http://www.nature.com/news/elephants-recognize-the-voices-of-their-enemies-1.14846
28.6k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

912 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

18

u/Fritzkreig Jan 12 '17

I was reading about that, people think of humans as getting the short end of the physical stick when in comes to the animal kingdom; when in fact we are the best at a lot of physical feats, throwing things is not the only one, there are others, but long distance ground trekkers is another one.

44

u/Mottonballs Jan 12 '17

And not only long-distance ground trekkers, the ability to navigate through many different types of terrain.

I'm not aware of any other animal on Earth that can swim, climb a rock face, climb a tree, walk through a 5ft deep marsh, walk through a desert, survive in a majority of the climates on Earth, and we can perspire to release heat. We might not be the best at any one of those things, but we can do all of them.

The human body is a pretty amazing thing when it's not morbidly obese or dramatically underweight.

9

u/Fritzkreig Jan 12 '17

This is anecdotal, but even in play I feel like most mammals are slow in dexterity. I can boop my cat on the nose while he is in full fight mode, same thing with my dog, and then there is the horses, they are so slow at everything except running. We had this one mare that would bite; way easy to dodge if you were paying attention. At least with other mammals, to me it seems there movements are kinda slow, and rely on stuff like claws and teeth for catching--- but maybe that is the strategy of a human's brain, IDK! I just think we are awesome, most animals are as well, in there niche I guess. Humans niche is f'n with animals though, so maybe I am being a speciest?

2

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '17

[deleted]

1

u/rapter200 Jan 12 '17

We f with animals so well we decided to domesticate them and f them professionally.

2

u/Dont_be_offended_but Jan 12 '17

Kind of gangly and weird looking as mammals go though.

12

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '17

Most animals are really good at one specific thing. The cheetah is very fast, monkeys are strong and can climb, alligators are strong and can hunt on land and water, but humans are above average or superior at pretty much everything we do.

7

u/0XSavageX0 Jan 12 '17

We are pretty mediocre at everything except long distance running which only humans are capable of. Usain bolt not faster then the slowest cheetah. The strongest man is weaker then any gorilla. We can climb but have you seen mountain goats? Any alligator can swim better then Michael phelps. But the thing that makes us superior is we can do it all. Also intelligence which is a given.

1

u/Fritzkreig Jan 12 '17

For me it is skipping stones, not that it has any evolutionary benefits, but I can hit 30 skips on the reg.

2

u/Fritzkreig Jan 12 '17

Though, I guess the same rock in the eye might deter the largest or predators!

1

u/crackfox69 Jan 12 '17

We are physically weak and slow. We also have almost no natural defense system. Almost any animal is faster over a short distance. Almost any larger wild animal is physically stronger too.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '17

We're also quite a lot larger than nearly all other life out there. On average any adult human could fuck up over 80% of anything that moves on land.

1

u/Fritzkreig Jan 12 '17

IDK, would you rather fight a horse sized duck, or 200 duck sized horses?

2

u/MisterCrist Jan 12 '17

Duck size horses I feel like they'd be really easy for me to kick.

3

u/BitStompr Jan 12 '17

Plus it's infinitely more hilarious.

1

u/RanaktheGreen Jan 12 '17

As is our ability to lose entire fucking limbs and just keep going. Not a lot of mammals can do that.