I think he is. He looks pretty mean too.
Hitler got reincarnated as a CAT!!! and a very unhappy looking one too. 
Just a joke my ultra right friends. Im not endorsing reincarnation. I know there are some who are sooo sensitive here that a mere joke may be taken as a mortal sin! 
He could also look lie Charlie Chaplain? maybe? 
Ummā¦No.
Absolutely.Arghh a dolphin is not a fish
Also while an adult dolphin is typically more intelligent than a human baby, the former is no less innocent because it is an animal.
Really? Im just a THING?
You are definitely not a thing.I have been reading your posts with interest. Are you referring to Koko the gorilla? She is very intelligent and can string words together to make a new word."One of the great things about being human is the ability to use our intelligence and reason to look beyond our ourselves and our own immediate desires and needs for survival. "
"You seem to think animals have the same dignity as persons, which they do not. "
Both of these quotes taken from different postings seem to me to get to the heart of this discussion thread. Human intelligence forms the basis of our survival in that it leads to our passing on both morality and ethics. Dignity is not solely a human trait or instinct. I have brought my dogs to a dog park and after watching them for awhile seem to think that they have a defined dignity. It doesnāt rise to our level but they have it.
Both of these postings brought back to mind a journal I read years ago where a gorilla was taught sign language as an experiment in animal intelligence. One of the thoughts that this gorilla signed back was āDonāt kill meā. At first I thought about the line of about monkeys and typewriters typing out Shakepeareās works. But the article went on about the apparent conversations between animal and trainer. Somehow the thought of ascribing dignity to an animal becomes not to far stretched of an idea. Do they have dignity or a least a sense of dignity as we tend to believe in it? Where those animal researchers ascribing intelligence and human thought processes where it didnāt belong? Or was it an experiment that ran amok?
Please donāt think of me as a believer in PETA. These two thoughts by seperate posters opened up a line of questioning for me. Any thoughts???
I believe that I have seen an animal use reason in person. I have seen videos of an octopus solving a complex puzzle which would require reason. I donāt think I am anthropomorphizing there. I have never heard of a case which I believe of an animal being malicious, except perhaps the whale which the story of Moby Dick was based on. I have heard of this being attributed to two different sperm whales who were renowned for attacking whalers on sight, presumably out of revenge or anger.
Get back to me when they can understand the concept of zero.
The concept of zero is boring. I prefer kitties!
Cannibals - They will eat anything so you canāt depend on their opinion.
The first known use of zero by the Romans was around 500 AD. Are you saying that the earliest Christians were incapable of rational thought because most, if not all, of them had no concept of āzeroā? Zero is an abstraction in mathematics, and not a requirement for reason or logic.
Animals are not and can never shown to be equal in dignity with humans. All it takes to understand this is a rudimentary understanding of the creation accounts in Genesis.
I must be missing your point. Why do you think that the dignity of humans and understanding the concept of āzeroā are relevant to the OP? Please elaborate.
Kitties can be very dignified. One named āgracieā is snuggling on this cold morning right now. Hard to get angry at that.The concept of zero is boring. I prefer kitties!
Only humans have the capacity to understand zero. Even before humans did understand it, they still had the capacity. This seemingly insignificant fact about human intellect versus that of animals shows that we are different in a way that goes beyond the empirical. Animals are just thatāanimals. I find it incredibly annoying (and excessively silly) when people treat their pets as āchildren.ā Further, the environmental extremists who assign greater dignity to animals than to the unborn have disordrerd priorities. Animals do not deserve to be afforded the same rights and dignity as humans, no matter how brilliant you think your cat is.
Is this Gracie? Gracie says; " Iās can has Cheeze burgerz?"
Must have been hitting the catnip, just a little too much! I guess biologists would consider this line of thinking as rather quaint or outdated. The current theories, as I understand them, are that certain cognitive functions tend to occur around certain brain sizes. For example, whales have large brains, and they clearly communicate in a very complex language. Phonically, it is far more complex than anything man has invented. If you subscribe to some of the ideas of information theory, it might follow that whales are able to communicate far more abstract concepts than humans are. Indeed, one of the theories about the affinity of porpoises to man in the water, and the protection that porpoises have provided humans against shark attack, and so on, is that a porpoise can ping you and determine that you are a fellow mammal by identifying your lungs full of air. A blue whale might think that you were fairly stupid because you cannot see the entire floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Why canāt you do that? Surely you are as smart as a whale, arenāt you?
Yes, by some anecdotal accounts and by some experimental measures, dolphins make very rational choices, and so do other animals with large brains such as octopuses and primates. Primates have expressed abstract emotions such as gratitude, when there was clearly no possibility of a behavior learned by rote. Octopuses are outstanding puzzle solvers, sometimes surpassing the abilities of a child when presented with a new and unknown puzzle. I wonāt fault St Thomas for coming to his conclusions based on the limited information available to him. He lived in a time when there was little distinction between religion and science, so his insights must be interpreted in that light. One of the challenges in this discussion is that we bring our own human perspective to it. Neither you nor I can know if an Orca has a concept of zero. We may think that the capacity to know differential calculus is some great endowment from God, while an Orca may dismiss that as trivia compared to the abstract thinking which it is capable. You just canāt prove much about the mind of an animal.