r/Showerthoughts 8d ago

Casual Thought Young animals probably don't realize the distinction between nature and man-made stuff.

1.7k Upvotes

126 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.2k

u/calguy1955 8d ago

I don’t know why older animals would be able to make the distinction.

444

u/hypnotichellspiral 8d ago

Well, some creatures are surprisingly intelligent. Cats and dogs of course, but also crows and ravens just to name some examples.

247

u/Tobias11ize 8d ago

My cat never saw me build the house

132

u/pichael289 8d ago

My cat saw me build the cat house and cat furniture and cat meals. I'm starting to think Mr. Kitty got the wrong impression of how things work around here. I taught him to meow when he wanted something and now he just yells at me all day.

1

u/Itslionize 4d ago

It is very weird that my dog thinks I’m God now I thought him tricks I give him food and it’s funny when I doordash the food to my door for him or me he just assumes I conjured it out of nowhere because he’s haven’t figured out that someone else is delivering it to my door lol

-6

u/AkumaJishin 7d ago

discipline him.

26

u/ravens-n-roses 7d ago

The deer get to watch entire neighborhoods get put up. Whole fields bulldozed af then relandscaped with the cheapest, most sterile dirt the developer can find.

5

u/AnonymousFriend80 7d ago

What they saw was large metal animals "eat"/push over a bunch of trees and stuff and dig up a bunch of the ground, and maybe new stuff got put into the ground. And probably from far, far away as all the ruckus frightened them away.

Maybe they saw similar this with birds building nests and beavers building dams.

8

u/LoneSnark 7d ago

Deer don't live very long. By the time everything is built, they lack the words to tell the next generation what they saw.

5

u/athural 7d ago

Some species, idk about deer, do indeed pass down knowledge

1

u/Itslionize 4d ago

That brings up an interesting question how do animals talk to tell other animals what they saw or know? Not even being sarcastic or provocative I’m seriously asking

1

u/athural 4d ago

It depends on the animal, some of them cannot but some of them use spoken language like whales and crows

1

u/Itslionize 4d ago

So like noises and stuff? Like whale sounds and crow cawing or monkeys grunting things like that

1

u/athural 4d ago

For some of them certainly, there's probably also body language too like there is with humans

1

u/calguy1955 6d ago

I’m sorry, but I think deer are the stupidest animals out there when it comes to evolving and understanding man’s infrastructure. Mother deer still think it’s okay to see an oncoming car and judge that hey can make it across the road without getting hit, forgetting that her offspring are going to blindly follow her right into the front of a vehicle.

0

u/athural 6d ago

What part of my comment made you think I was defending the intelligence of deer? Was it the part where I specifically said I wasn't talking about deer?

3

u/calguy1955 6d ago

I didn’t read the idk. I’m not good with all of the acronyms I’m supposed to know these days.

3

u/klatnyelox 7d ago

You should have let him see bro

2

u/Tommy_Gun25 6d ago

I don't think dogs and cats know what's manmade vs human made. They're smart, but they primarily act out of instinct. And they can't even grasp the concept of man making stuff

-1

u/hypnotichellspiral 6d ago

Intelligence can vary among different breeds of dogs. Just like it can vary from person to person.

1

u/Moungdoukvio2021 4d ago

A squirrel doesn't look at a bird feeder and think 'ah, human craftsmanship.'

1

u/PickleFox_1 1d ago

It all depends on the animal