Classic winter's day...

[fajrdrako]

I slept late this morning: something I don't normally do, but obviously this month all my normal patterns are out the window. Had a delicious breakfast of pancakes with fruit, and played around on IMVU with maaboroshi and maaseru, which was fun, though I find avatars and physical environments get in the way of conversation rather than enhancing it - particularly since all my typos are visible to my companions. Ouch! I type very fast and very inaccurately, fixing as I go. Doesn't work well in real time.

I walked to the Museum of Nature, met up with the OSFS crowd, and explored the dinosaurs. We knew the museum was under reonvations; didn't know that 2/3 of it is under wraps and inaccessible. Started out with a film on squids and their brains. I happen to heartily dislike all films about underwater creatures, especially fish; but the squid was kind of interesting. They were doing squid intelligence tests, trying to figure out how much of its behaviour is due to instinct and how much is intelligence and reasoning power. Suprisingly interesting.

For the rest, well, what the Ottawa Museum of Nature does well is dinosaurs. These may have interested me when I was four years old, I'm not sure, but ever since then I've found dinosaurs a total bore. This includes their dessicated skeletal remains, their painted plaster simulacra, and drawings or charts thereof. I did work up a little interest over a proto-feline creature whose name I have already forgotten, a skeleton of an aquatic dinosaur with the longest neck I have ever seen, and a thing like a turtle with spiky plates, about twenty feet long, that Lyn dubbed 'Leo' after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

I was intrigued by a map of North America in the Late Cretaceous Age, and miffed that the write-up didn't tell us when that was in terms of years and dates. (I do so prefer historical time to geological time! You know where you are with dates.) At that time, what is now North America was bisected by a large channel, making two distinct continents roughly divided by the prairies and the U.S. midwest, which were under water.

If I understand Wikipedia on the matter, this was about 70 to 80 million years ago. But I wonder why the Wikipedia map implies that only the U.S.A. existed at that time?

And why do I find ancient geography and long-vanished seas fascinating, but dinosaurs not worth a second glance?

I walked to the museum from my place - it takes about 15 minutes - and then home again. I've walked so little all month, it was a pleasure: a sunny cold day, but not bitterly cold. I walked home by way of the Rideau Canal and enjoyed seeing hundreds of people skating for the first time this year. I wished I'd taken my camera, with the sunlight amber through the trees, and all the colourful skaters.

Comments

[wijsgeer.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a good day!
I love squids and their family. They are amazing. Since you state that you don't like underwater films you propably didn't look at the clip I sent to piffle last year. But it showed how a squid could make one of his tentacles like 'leg' and use it as a lever to topple a stone on an enemy. I can't help being impressed, be it instinct or intelligence. BTW how did they seperate the two?

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I like dinosaurs! I especially like the fact they have discovered all these "fluffy"/feathery ones - relatives of our small, feathery, garden and domestic dinosaurs...

Perhaps that's the key: look on them as Logan's family tree!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Since you state that you don't like underwater films you propably didn't look at the clip I sent to piffle last year.

No. I thought "fish, eeyew" and ignored it.

But it showed how a squid could make one of his tentacles like 'leg' and use it as a lever to topple a stone on an enemy.

Cool. Similarly, this film showed a squid who'd found a semispherical shell and was sitting in it, propelling himself quickly by his tentacles as if it were a boat. It certainly looked intelligent! And I find it interesting that you and I and the people doing the squid intelligence tests to a large extent defined 'intelligence' by the creature's ability to use tools, or find his way through a maze - that is, manipulation of physical objects for his own use. Lacking language, what other measurements do we have?

...be it instinct or intelligence. BTW how did they seperate the two?

Well, really, they couldn't, so they left it an open question, and an unanswerable one. I am myself not convinced that instinct and intelligence aren't the same thing - different perceptions of the neurochemistry of the brain expressed in somewhat different ways, but as more of a continuum between "behaviour urged by the subconscious" and "behaviour chosen by consicious thought".

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

My interest in dinosaurs perks right up when they have colourful feathers and fly. Logan is probably descended from those guys but he is so much prettier - it's enough to make a person believe in evolutionary progress!

[wijsgeer.livejournal.com]

And I find it interesting that you and I and the people doing the squid intelligence tests to a large extent defined 'intelligence' by the creature's ability to use tools, or find his way through a maze - that is, manipulation of physical objects for his own use. Lacking language, what other measurements do we have?

yes, they might have abstract tought for all we know. I think intelligence can also be identified by social/cultural difference. If different communities of a species have different customs (either toolmaking, or social customs, or stuff that looks like language) than that does make me think of intelligence. Namely the capacity to willfully adapt.

And well, it is brainchemistry, but that is not very enlightning, since that goes for all behaviour or creatures with a brain.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

it's very apparent when they are tiny babies! I always think of baby birds as hatchling dinosaurs! And they look so vulnerable and cute as the little quills appear.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

they look so vulnerable and cute as the little quills appear.

That is so true. I thought they looked like tiny aliens, with their big dark eyes and wings like arms and triangular heads. So sweet and tiny, and chirping from just about the moment they hatched.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

they might have abstract tought for all we know

I wonder what a squid would dream about. Dolphins and whales are seen as intelligent because of the ways they interact with people. If a squid doesn't recognize the intelligence of a human - and why should he? - what way would he find to interact?

Possibly better if he doesn't; I don't want to feel like a cannibal, but I don't want to give up eating calimari either.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Yes! They are adorable!