I watch a lot of Nature progs and get the feeling that over the past 20 years Animals have changed.?

Question

I have seen wildlife films that show an animal that thinks. Did anyone see the wilderbeast crossing the river and a baby gets taken by three lions, all of them fall in the river and are attacked by crocs.

The mother wilderbeast tries to get her baby back but to no avail. She then appears to walk away but returns 2-3 minutes later with the entire herd and together they save the baby wilderbeast.

Now most people will say thats just natural for a mother to try and safe her baby. But its not natural for a wilderbeast to go and ask the rest of the herd, who had walked away, to come back and help. That is free thinking communication and in the words of the naturalist at the BBC, somethink he had never seen before.

So the point of this question is, are animals getting smarter, using more communication, and are they in fact evolving as we look on.

Answer 1

I saw that with the buffalo and the lions. It was amazing.

You can watch it on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68...

I found it weird at the same time because its not the sort of behaviour you normally see on an animal. At least I have never seen anything like it before.

Answer 2

Over the past 20 years, people have changed too...

Answer 3

I think they are getting more in tune with it all as are human beings I like my astrology so I'll say its the most tuned in age of Aquarius were we can expect to see or hear or is it feel the telepathy between each and all species. We would be able to get rid of all the brain frying frequency disrupting telepathy blocking equipment we have now, that would be good.

Its getting harder to walk down the street without having to say excuse me  please to a black bird or a finch(slight exaggeration) but they do have less fear of us and one as sat in the middle of the path until I have got right up to it. I myself noticed the changes occurring 4 or 5 years ago now, new never seen before insects larger than usual to us bees wasps and spiders and both my mastiff and my boxer are more human than a lot of humans I know.

Answer 4

Perhaps it's more to do with the fact that only a small proportion of people are watching and recording what the animal kingdom gets up to. And that incidence that you described actually happens more often than not. Wasn't the film taken by a member of the public.   I'm pretty sure there are many more instances of animals protecting another, particularly a baby in the group and will attack a predator, I've seen it countless times in nature programmes. I'm not sure they are getting smarter i think they already are but a camera or celeb isn't necessarily there to catch it.

Answer 5

they may be getting minimally smarter but i think its mainly that humans are better at nonbiased research.

Answer 6

Animals haven't changed but the people filming them have.

Answer 7

I don't think the animals are getting any smarter just that we are becoming more aware of them than ever before. I think the sort of thing shown probably happens regularly but normally no-one is around to see & report on it.

Answer 8

I think you on drugs

after 2-3 mins the baby wilderbeast would have been completely ingested

they are dumber now, I remember Johnny Morris, and the animals used to talk to him conversationally, you don't get that now do you?

Answer 9

lies.

Answer 10

I really hope that you are right.  It would be nice to think that animals are developing a heightened intelligence.  Our dog is one of the most intelligent humans (I know she is a Canine) that I know, if you can call that an example, if she doesn't want to do something then she doesn't, if she does then she will do all in her power to do it and invariably wins over us.

Answer 11

No they have always been like that we, humans,  just haven't noticed it before.

All animals,  insects and arachnids are intelligent.  Some more so than ppl (dolphins,  sharks).

Answer 12

the reason for them getting smarter is because of all the human interference.

soon they,ll be walking round with camcorders drinking beer.

because of the amount of times they are filmed.

animals are getting so used to humans

Answer 13

Animals for a very long time have been thought not to have the same emotions and plain common sense of us humans.  This is probably just not the case.

The first footage I saw ever in my life, very similar to the one which you have described, was taken by a cameraman for a film company I worked for back in the 1960s.

Our cameraman in Africa had gone to the banks of the River Nile to test out a new hand-held TV-cam.  In doing so, he focused upon a small fawn [deer] which had come down to the water's edge to drink.  A massive Nile croc lunged out of the water and grabbed the fawn by one of it's rear legs. Immediately there appeared on the scene, running at high speed, a huge Nile Hippopotamus.

Mrs Hippo chased the croc away, right swiftly too and nudged the fawn further up the bank where it stood for a while.  It then went back to drink and the croc came at it one more time.  Mrs Hippo appeared once more, shoved the croc back into the water and took up the now dying fawn in her open mouth where she held it until it had died.

Show me emotion - that piece of footage took everyone in our studio by surprise.  It was never aired.  I guess it's in someone's archieve.

It did happen, believe!

These things must happen in nature all the time.  Now with there being many more 'cameras' out there, we will probably see much more of same.  Hope so.

Answer 14

It's hard to say whether animals are getting smarter or whether we are getting wiser. I've always thought that various pets I have had over the years were capable of reason and empathy. They just don't communicate with verbal language and can't make tools.

Answer 15

This seems to be happening with cape buffalo as well. There are more frequent reports of buffalo cooperating to fight the lions off.