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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!prls!amdimage!amdcad!decwrl!chabot@miles.DEC (All God's chillun got guns)
From: chabot@miles.DEC (All God's chillun got guns)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Avoiding Anthropomorphism
Message-ID: <42@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Aug-85 17:51:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.42
Posted: Tue Aug 20 17:51:49 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Aug-85 08:33:43 EDT
Sender: daemon@decwrl.UUCP
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 31

>>> Seems to me that in a great number of species, sex is associated with force
>>> and violence (including killing of mates). There are really very few human
>>> behaviors (language may be one) that are unique to Homo sapiens.
>> 
>> 	I don't want to carry this digression too much further, but I'd like to
>> make one point:  If humans aren't doing it, it's not human behavior.  It's an
>> all-too-common mistake to attribute human emotions and motivations to animal
>> behavior.  Let's avoid making that mistake.
> 
> It's also a mistake to assume that human motivations are different than
> animal ones. 
>  
> If the original poster had left out the unnecessary adjective "human", the
> posting would have been correct.

Right.  Okay, let's consider the case of the spouse-murderer.  The female
black widow spider usually eats her mate.  Therefore, we can relate the wife
who kills her husband to the black widow's motivation for survival.

The cuckoo lays her egg in somebody else's nest.  This, of course, can be
directly related to the motivation for day care and babysitters.

Many US Americans travel to scenic Niagara Falls for a traditional honeymoon
trip.  This is transparently like pacific salmon swimming upstream to spawn.

The kiwi is a shy bird whose habits resemble those of the hacker: only coming
out at night (it's the only time the shy folk can get to a chinese restaurant
when it's relatively uncrowded).  Similarly, both will upon occasion lay an 
unusually large egg for something of its size.

L S Chabot   ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot   chabot%amber.dec@decwrl.arpa