Billy the kid

[Blake Hawke]

Did anyone else see that poor little kangaroo with the arrow in it's neck? It was so sad! They saved her but it was so sad! The little tiny kangaroo just...hopping along...with an arrow in it's neck. Who would shoot such a cute little thing? They're so cute and some crazy mean person just decided to shoot it! What is this world coming to? Now people are shooting innocent fuzzy things? How sad is that!

[Darth Turbogeek]

Hate to break it to you, but Kangaroos are a pest in a lot of places. While the arrowe thing was cruel, Kangaroos ARE NOT CUTE. They can kill very easily and it's no joke if you get mauled by a kagaroo. They have 4 inch claws that can gut you.

BTW, Kangaroo meat is damn nice.

[Blake Hawke]

THEY ARE CUTE!!!! And humans can kill you too. They have guns and all sorts of other weapons.

[Darth Turbogeek]

Own a kangaroo for a while and we'll see if you think if one of those flea insests overgrown rats are cute then

[Blake Hawke]

I would if I could! They're so cute and fuzzy! And they're not overgrown rats! Didn't you ever read the winnie the pooh books as a child? Remember Kanga and little Roo? How can you resist those cute little guys just hopping around...they're almost as cute as sharks! I want a kangaroo:(

[Anbira Hicchoru]

I had kangaroo a few years back...not bad. A little gamey though <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/image/emoticons_classic/smile.gif ALT=":)">

[Blake Hawke]

And I hope you had nightmares about Kanga and Roo! Poor little guys...they're so misunderstood!

[sIlancy]

hmm... kangaroo; never had that before. Had emu and ostrich, but not kangaroo. What I really want to try is snake.

[Darth Turbogeek]

MISUNDERSTOOD?!?!?!!?


I understand Kangaroo tastes good in a red wine sauce

[Blake Hawke]

That is so mean! Why is it that people always label animals as 'cruel' or 'pests' and yet we humans do the exact same things as they do? Just because we're intelligent doesn't mean that we can do the same things and get away with them! If a kangaroo attacks a human , the whole species is labelled dangerous but if a human attacks an animal we most definitely do not call the whole human race 'dangerous' do we? Granted, kangaroos do attack people, but that isn't half as bad as what we do to any animal. Yet they are the ones who get labelled as dangerous. That's as bad as racism. If you overlook the fact that they can attack you, kangaroos are in fact a very beautiful animal. They can leap over objects up to 10 ft high. The Red kangaroo is the biggest marsupial on earth. They can hop up to 60kmh. The babies are born incredibly small and are carried by the mother in a pouch. When the joey gets frightened it often leaps into it's mother's pouch headfirst. Kangaroos eat mostly grass and can go for long periods of time without water. These are incredibly cute animals.
http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/~toddjh/kangaroo/images/sun_roo.jpg

[sIlancy]

I have agree with Blake on this one.

[Hart Kenobi]

I completely agree that humans are the cruelest species on Earth, but I have no problem with kangaroos being a delicacy. We're at the top of the food chain. GET IN MA BELL-EH!! They may look cute, but they were put on Earth for a reason. To control shrub growth and feed predators (us).

I don't share the same thoughts on hunting for sport though. I cant for my life find a logical argument for it.

[Anbira Hicchoru]

Because some species are introduced, or patterns of natural predators have been changed to a point where they have to be culled to keep their numbers from exploding to unhealthy proportions. A good case of this would be whitetail deer, which can get quite out of hand here at times. Yes, I believe in hunting for food, but I'm not above game hunting in that regard. Does that mean that I go out and shoot a rhino or something thats truly in danger of extinction? No. Game hunting's only okay under population-check circumstances.

Otherwise, you get deer rooting in your garbage, bobcats attacking pets, etc. Those species are far from in danger. They're actually pretty overpopulated as it is.

[Blake Hawke]

And what about humans? We overpopulate the world and are more of a danger to ourselves and other species than they are to themselves and us. We destroy animals homes and conduct experiments on them and then wonder why they aren't happy to see us. We get mad because the agressive behavior that we have helped to instill, or at least provoke, gets directed back at us.
http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/~toddjh/kangaroo/images/roo_cat.jpg

[Hart Kenobi]

Well, I wouldn't give the human race as much credit as to say that they, in the past couple of centuries, have changed animal behavior that has been evolving for the past hundreds of thousands of years.

Aside from that, I definitely agree with your viewpoint. Mankind has been playing "God" way too often for my tastes.

[number 62]

once humans over crowd...no one goes out and kills us. We are evil and I don't think we should play god.


Hey that picture gave me an idea we should cross bread a cat and a kangaroo to make a cataroo.

[Blake Hawke]

I'm not saying it's wrong to eat them (although I think it's very very mean!). In fact, being a chef, I know some recipes for kangaroo dishes. But it ticks me off that people stereotype animals like that. And yes there have been some brutal attacks. A young boy named Steven was viciously attacked by a male red kangaroo on a golf course. But what they don't stress is that the kangaroo gave off warning signs that he was not comfortable having Steven fooling around near him. This is just one case, and there have been others where the kangaroos have attacked without warning or visible reason. But on the whole there are not a profound amount of cases, and in many of them it was the humans involved that caused the problem.

[Darth Turbogeek]

See Anchira commets. The contitions for the Kangaroo are now so favorable that they have literally become pests.

Dont need to tell me what a Kangaroo is :-p


And I think I do know why Kangaroos attack. One of them is grazing out back now.

[Anbira Hicchoru]

You know...blah blah blah

"Humans are so evil...they've overrun the earth and kill everything"

You know...there's a saying. Might makes right. Its not the most metaphysically or philosophically sound saying around. In fact, in those genres, its kinda shallow. But in terms of nature....darwinian survival of the fittest...we are the apex. In saying we are apex, that means that we are the prime predator atop every food chain on earth. You can claim thats due to evilness or some crap...but the human race was given not only sentient intellect, but the phenotypical means to implement that intellect into nearly infinite amounts of things.

You know, if some alien race comes down, starts shooting us and killing us, and we can't kill them back...then we'll have lost that seating in the scheme of things. However, sentience breeds communication. If we come to understand the aliens and they us...then even THAT is thrown out the window. We sentient animals have that coexistance factor. I haven't seen many lions and wildabeest sharing the same shade under an acacia tree.

Hypothesize that martians find us delicious. While we are being killed to sustain martian fast food, we could call a truce in the big war, point out to the coneheads that there are even tastier things on earth...or maybe have mcdonalds create a soy variant called a McHuman....whatever.

The point is...there is no evil to our total dominance of earth. We've simply wrested control of our environment to the greatest degree. Nobody ponders the evils of beavers that construct their dams that stop up rivers. Nobody ponders the evil otter that uses a stone hammer to smack open an abalone. Rewind human history far enough, and we were operating on the same scale as the otter. So what if we attached a stick to our rock and created a compound tool. So what if we advanced from there.

This reminds me of my plans to sit in PETA meetings, eating a bucket of KFC. Damn hippies, get out of my yard!

[number 62]

we should do what ever we want and if loin, tigers, and what ever dont like it they can make guns and big sticks and stuff and take of the world. Still think humans are evil but hey whats not evil.

[Blake Hawke]

I don't disagree with you on a lot of points. But, although we are intellectuall dominant in most aspects, if you take a look at the animal world they are vastly more intelligent in numerous categories and we, as humans, have adopted many of their ideas as our own. And there is a difference of 'evilness'. Most animals are only evil to the extent of survival whereas humans have taken it too far.

I'm not a memeber of PETA btw<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/image/emoticons_classic/smile.gif ALT=":)"> (although that could be debated) I'm still mad at them for the whole Tom Cruise/seagul thing

[Anbira Hicchoru]

What about those animals that kill for reasons other than sustenance and survival? Leopards, Lynxes, Orcas, and a few others. They must be evil too!

And animals having surpassing intelligence? Pshh prove it.

[Blake Hawke]

To a certain degree, yes they are evil. But in most cases it is because they are in a mating stage and are unusually emotional or they perceive a presence of some sort as a threat. As for surpassing intelligence? Not in all categories but in a surprising amount, animals show equal or higher intelligence. All animals can learn and some can teach. Sea turtles, homing pigeons and even some species of ant have been scientifically proven to navigate better than the average urban man. There are a pair of elephants in the Bronx Zoo who have continuously been able to devise different plans that outwit their keeper, so they don't have to go back into their cages at night. Orangutans trip door locks with wire and using vegetation to insulate the electric fences. Two dolphins in Hawaii respond to the command of 'do something creative together'. When they hear this they construct synchronized routines...each one different from the last. Victor, a budgie proved that not only do animals have feelings but they understand more than we give them credit for. He had a vocabulary of over 800 words, being so familiar with the understanding of certain scientific procedures that he was able to calculate the outcome of scientific experiments that dealt with the procedures that he learned.
Whales and dolphins have created such a sophisticated language that we still cannot understand it. They hundreds of different sounds indicating well tuned conversational skills. There are birds that are so intelligent that they make tools to aide them in hunting and defense. All that we have learned from these animals so far shows evidence of abstract thinking, deception and problem solving. Qualities that we once believed to be exclusively human.

[Anbira Hicchoru]

Sea turtles sense water temperature, pidgeons go by climactic changes, and ants use chemical trails to move about. That isn't intelligence. As for the others...at the very best, they have the rudimentary intellect of a retarded person. That is, they can interact with their environment and respond to stimuli.

And the animals I mentioned kill without any duress due to situational threats or mating needs. They simply kill for the wanton pleasure of it.

These animals may have rudimentary communication, but sentience is far far far far from being proven at all. In fact, their own self-preservation instincts would have given this fact away long ago if they were capable of sentient thought. If you're being hunted or whatever, and you are intelligent, you would adapt to that, and drastically reduce the threats against you...by any means available.

[Darth Turbogeek]

Australia has a problem with wild dogs. They kill just becuase they can.

[Blake Hawke]

Yes, there are cases in which the animals mentioned attack for no visible reason. But not all in the species. As a child I spent days out on the water with my father tracking Orca pods and we became so familiar with certain pods that we would scuba/swim with them as the went rock rubbing.

Humans too, use signs and changes in the surrounding environment to get to the appointed destination. If we are so smart then why is it that we cannot develop a system of getting form point A to point B with more efficiency than an ant?

Rudimentary communication? Hardly. I'm going to use the Orca as an example again. They use different calls for different things. And, like the English language, there are different calls, or words if you like, that are used for the same thing, only to stress them more. For example. If an Orca lets out a high pitched squeal it means there is an enemy nearby, be on the defense. If the squeal is followed by a short click it means there is more than one, and they stick closer together. However, if the original squeal is followed by a low cry it means there is another pod coming. And not only that but it is believed that there is a different call for each pod in the area. J pod, when approached by E pod would squeal and then the cry would end on a higher note. If they were approached by F pod though, it ended very low.
As hard as they are trying, scientists still cannot completely translate all the calls. The reason is believed to be thus...they have words that we do not. There are certain calls that are used between whales that seem to have no use on the surface. Yet they are often used. It is believed that they are having conversations using words that do not exist in our language. This is not the accidental jarble of an unintelligent species.

[Anbira Hicchoru]

You know, thats still rudimentary. Even a cuttlefish can express things through how it changes its skin pigmentation. Still zero evidence of anything resembling a sentient thought process. I mean...why haven't Orcas studied us, among a myriad of other debunking queries <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/image/emoticons_classic/smile.gif ALT=":)">

And as for ants...let me know when they can fly planes. Shortest distance between point a and point b on earth is of course a geosynchronous arc <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/image/emoticons_classic/smile.gif ALT=":)"> . So I think we have that covered.

[Blake Hawke]

Actually, Orcas do study us...they just don't do experiments or hold us in captivity. There are orcas, especially near Howe Sound Pulp and Paper in B.C, that study a certain fishermans fishing pattern and incorporate it into their own hunting schedule...they also learn which fishermen use which methods and, for the most part, stay clear of the ones that use spear methods or extensive nets. And if their language is rudimentary so is ours. The Orca language has been said to be equally, if not more, complicated and intricate than the English language.<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/image/emoticons_classic/smile.gif ALT=":)">

Yes, we do dominate in regards with technology. But for the most part ants and other animals can navigate better than we can. Take a person and an ant, drop them off thousands of miles away from home, with no signs on how to get home, and I guarantee the ant will know the quickest way back (without using cars, planes, ect) before the person has figured out where they are.

*gasp* maybe I should join PETA...I'll have to become more dedicated to the cause though<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/image/emoticons_classic/smile.gif ALT=":)">

[Sanis Prent]

If you take away our cars, planes, GPS systems, its only fair to remove the ant's chemical guidances too. NOW lets see who gets where faster.

Face it...part of our apex hold on earth is the fact that we can make these wonderful devices. That makes us better than the other species, in that black and white darwinian way of thinking

[Blake Hawke]

That's only one aspect of intelligence though. I didn't say animals dominate or are equal in all aspects but they are in certain categories. You can take away an ants chemical guidences, and yes it will hinder him/her but they will still know how to get home faster. Their antenas have this weird thing that sends 'maps' to their little brains....they literally have a built in GPS system<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/image/emoticons_classic/smile.gif ALT=":)">

Gah, you shouldn't have posted as Sanis...now I can't stop thinking of Brad Pitt and how cool he was in Spy Games<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/image/emoticons_classic/smile.gif ALT=":)">

[Anbira Hicchoru]

I assure you, the only reason the ants can do that is because of the chemical trails they leave behind. They've done experiments to inhibit that chemical, and the ants start stumbling around like Otis from the Andy Griffith Show.

[Blake Hawke]

African red ants (which really hurt if they sting you) don't use chemical trails. There are also species of ants in the Rain Forest that do not use chemical trails.

[Anbira Hicchoru]

Find them for me then. And gimme documentation to boot <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/image/emoticons_classic/smile.gif ALT=":)">

[Blake Hawke]

gimme a few minutes....my pal 'google' an me will find them...

[Blake Hawke]

okay here we go....

Behavior Research
I found a book called "An Introduction to the Behavior of Ants," which has some useful information relevant to this project.
While reading this book, I was constantly struck by the huge variety in behaviors observed. The pheromone trails, as a case in point, are either unimportant or nonexistant in many species. Almost every comment on the behavior of Ants in the book was preceded by a qualification of the form, "In blank Ants..." where blank was a very specific species specification. It occured to me that it would be hard to find enough information on a specific species, so I should pick and choose those behaviors I think are interesting, and make my own species of ant that has its own behaviors conglomerated from the common behavior types the book talks about.

I specifically focussed on discussion of the pheromone trails; how they are laid, how and when they are followed. It appears that there are almost no ants that navigate solely on the basis of chemical trails. Many ants use visual landmarking and angle with respect to light sources. Since these are features I wasn't going to implement as being controllable by the user, it was worthwhile to take a shortcut here: some ants actually keep track of their movement and calculate the direction they would need to travel to return to the nest; here I can cheat and say that the ant knows approximately where its nest is at all times. This is, in fact, the only piece of non-local information the simulation allows individual ants to have. Since this is a short-cut for behavior exhibited by real ants that does only depend on local information, I am not worried by the exception Simulating the ants' calculations would be pointless, since analytically it would evaluate to the same information.

So ants pretty much know where the nest is, and can go straight there upon finding food. This illiminates the need for the "nest" pheromone. Indeed, the book suggests that ants don't actually leave pheromone trails unless they have found food and are returning to the nest. This makes the food gathering process much more efficient, and the trails will be much straighter.

I also noted that the rate at which real ants come out of their nest is not constant. It turns out that an ant returning to the nest with news of a new find will recruit a great number of ants to go help bring it back to the nest. The rate is considerably greater when a new find is discovered. Thus, ants must make a decision as to whether food is a "new" find so they know whether to recruit ants to go pick it up. I simulate this decision with a sampling of pheromone concentrations at the location of the find. Ants who find new food leave a great deal of pheromones behind, so if the food is already "known about" by at least one ant, the pheromone concentrations at the sight will be high.

(found at www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~mat...rsch.html) (http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~matthewk/cs174crsch.html))

the book (if yu bother to read it) will tell you the exact name of the species (the scientific one)