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Conquistador said:
Interesting, but it's hardly sound to draw any conclusions about humans based on a bunch of experiments on flies and bumblebees.

Dr. Kawecki says... “We could speculate that some diseases are a byproduct of intelligence.” WTF is he talking about? STDs?


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Hmm...Interesting. A couple of points.

1) Most therories about human behavior, intellect, and disease have come from animal studies. Scientist choose certain animals to study for certain reasons and certain parts of the body and disease process. For example, rabbits have similar eye structure and function to humans, so early make-up experiments were completed on rabbits eyes to see how they respond. In this case, perhaps the flies and bees have behaviors that mimic what the researchers were looking for.

2) There are many diseases that are a by-product of intellect. One good example is Lung Cancer caused by smoking. Human intellect processed tobacco and rolled it into a cigarette....~90% of lung cancer is smoking related.
Another example would be things like Drug-Resistant TB. Humans basically created this...we originally created drugs to treat TB and then used them to treat TB in a population that was not followed and given appropiate drug therapy.
Another example would be obesity. Intellect created places like Fast Food Resturants, transfats, high-calorie foods...and obesity is a result.

3) Animals are far from being ignorant. We are using dogs to detect cancer. It is believed that they are capable of smelling a chemical reaction of the early tumors that is occuring at the cellular level. The dogs respond by sitting or lying at the cancer site. They have been ~85% accurate. Our machines and intellect can't get the tumors are this level.

When avalanches occur, there is only about 10 minutes that people have to survive. Dogs find avalanche victims by searching areas as large as football fields. Smell but intellect combined.

Animals are capable of love. Have you ever had two dogs? When one dies, the other usually becomes depressed. Some require treatment. I define that loss as a loss of love to that dog.

Also, I would consider protection a form of love. Have you ever see a dog protect a child in a family? That is not trained. The dog understands that is it's pack....it's pack behavior is to defend. I consider that a form of love.

Animals such as monkeys can think. Many have learned language and are capable of communicating with people. They have also shown emotion.

Animals lives are not completely devoid of the things you mentioned.