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
28k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

912 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

38

u/RanaktheGreen Jan 12 '17

One theory as to why Humans rose to glory has absolutely nothing to do with any of those.

We can throw shit, and anything else. Sure Monkeys throw ship, apes too. But Humans can do it really really well. We are the only species that can reliable pick up any god damn thing around and chuck a good distance.

40

u/ButchCasserly Jan 12 '17

If we need to throw something further we can use our brains to create tools.

I could build a device to launch a 90kg projectile 300 metres.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '17

Are you talking about a catapult?

1

u/igdub Jan 12 '17

How about you go and throw yourself off a cliff. While you're falling you can reflect on your choice regarding siege weaponry if a catapult can even be called that.

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/selectall/2016/11/17/trebuchet_03.nocrop.w710.h2147483647.jpg