To be less nice?

[JimC]

"Caring" has meaning to the Vorblatt Horde of Aldebran 4...

(mind you, they consider it to be a mental illness, and consign any member of their tentacled species to the slime pits if they exhibit it...)

[pErvinalia]

Ha! Is JimC unearthed as "That Alien Guy"??

[JimC]

Ha! Is JimC unearthed as "That Alien Guy"??

No, just another SF tragic...

[pErvinalia]

Your secret is safe with me, Jim

[mistermack]

I've never had illusions about the niceness of humans.
We can be nice, and we can be extremely nasty. Most of human history has been nasty. And much of the world still is.

[Coito ergo sum]

What if it can be proven that humans are less caring than another species even if that species turns out to be a insect? What if humans are less nice than say ants?

Then ants should receive appropriate kudos, and a robust pat on the thorax.

However, I think this speculation is clearly impossible. As we know from the Fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper, the ant is a a so-called "hardworking", self-reliant, libertarian who would deny food to a starving grasshopper just because the grasshopper wasn't lucky enough to amass a disproportionately large store of food for the winter. Therefore, ants could never be seen as nice and caring. QED.

[orpheus]

"The Ondt and the Gracehoper".

Ah there, Mr. Joyce!

[charlou]

[charlou]

No. That just shows that some animals behave in a way that we would recognise and describe as "caring". It doesn't show that they understand the concept, no more than a spider understands "carnivory" or a flea understands "parasitism". Your claim was that "caring" and "nice" have meaning to animals other than humans.

I suppose it depends what you have in mind with "meaning" ... While animals don't have the language to articulate feelings in the way we do, I think many species demonstrate a range of emotional behaviours and responses which reflect and shape their experience of life.

[JimC]

No. That just shows that some animals behave in a way that we would recognise and describe as "caring". It doesn't show that they understand the concept, no more than a spider understands "carnivory" or a flea understands "parasitism". Your claim was that "caring" and "nice" have meaning to animals other than humans.

I suppose it depends what you have in mind with "meaning" ... While animals don't have the language to articulate feelings in the way we do, I think many species demonstrate a range of emotional behaviours and responses which reflect and shape their experience of life.