well seamus, arent you just in a foul mood today.
I get that way at times... When something like this comes up, there is a certain truth. Something which has been shown to ME beyond doubt to be at least situationally factual and I'm a skeptic... A very skeptical skeptic. I demand proof and evidence and background before I buy much of anything when it comes to this kind of situation. When I encounter two people who I believe to be intelligent and I am unable to convince them of the truth which I know, I get very frustrated at my own inability to explain it in such a manner as to make the truth known. There's really only two options here... Either my explainations are faulty or your understanding is. Given that both yourself and Glenn are opposing me in this, it has to be my explaination.
i understand what you are saying
No offense but as I explained above, I don't really think you do. I'll have to find a different way of wording it.
i think certain basic acts can be learned... on a very primitive nature
They can't be. Let's examine what it is to "learn" something... I say it's the creation of a new behavior or skill or ability. There are a great many things that we think of as "learning" that really aren't, both in ourselves and in animals we observe. An example within ourselves... We think that infants learn how to walk, that it's a grand struggle and an amazing achievement and totally ignore the fact that it happens in every child physically capable of doing so, with the same age range that has ever been born... It's akin to puberty, it happens because our genetics dictate that it should happen. It's not learned, it simply wasn't unlocked prior to that point. In animals to use a few recent examples... Stronger feeding responses were mentioned as a learned behavior with a certain associated object, time or place... This was called learning. It's not. It happens in nature and there is nothing to teach the animals this behavior, pattern recognition simply adds to existing instincts to some degree, subtly modifying them. In nature a leopard gecko may become more primed in it's behavior at a time when local insects are more active, repeated application of a pattern, a series of events associated with an existing ingrained instinct have grown so that the animal can be more successful in it's search for food. It may identify areas where prey species are more likely to be encountered, the time of day or season when they are more abundant or even form an association with a very specific small area where it has observed prey species in the past... This is the same as it's owner wandering by a fishtank with a plastic bag full of crickets. Or a cricket counter full of crickets. Or a tub of mealworms. I believe a great deal of the problem here is that people immediately associate "instinctive" with "simple" which we, as humans, see as a negative trait. There is far more to an instinctive response and an instinctive behavioral pattern than two or three options, they are subtle, complex and detailed. The response generated can change a great deal simply because the stimulus prompting the action was slightly different, but the previously observed behavioral patterns still exist. The instive behaviors can change with the animal as well... older and younger animals can respond differently, males and females, animals in great health, animals in poor health, an animal which has just eaten versus one which hasn't lately, gravid animals, dying animals, a few degrees difference in the temperature, light intensity, barometric pressure, humidity... Tiny minescule seemingly meaningless (to us) changes can take the animal's behavior in a totally different direction.
This can be exploited to help ensure the health of the animals in our care. It allows us to tease feed (there are ways of tweaking most species to eat an item regardless. Find the stimulus which prompts a feed response and replicate it), it allows us to produce fecal samples quicker, to trick a normally agressive species into allowing us to hold it in a way that leaves everyone uninjured... It can be a problem for us too. Someone who is afraid of being bitten (not the same as disliking it) or is uncomfortable or unsure of themselves with an animal will move differently than someone who is confident. It can be a very minor thing, but it can also sometimes be the difference between an animal essentially ignoring the interaction and one responding defensively.
The thing is though... reptiles have no sense of self awareness. There are a number of tests which measure this, reptiles fail all of them. Without having a sense of self, there is no sense of "outside of self" No awareness of another organism as a living entity and as such, there is no real understanding of why a specific response is associated with a specific stimulus. There is no conscious choice involved... With an animal like say... a dog... A puppy may not be comfortable having it's feet touched. The owner must touch it's feet, which may cause the puppy to nip. The owner must ignore or chastize the nip while still completing the action they had intended. The puppy has an understanding of it's actions, it knows that biting can cause pain and it trying to control the situation, by ignoring the pain it can then form a conclusion (might take two or three tries, but this is not a lot) that biting doesn't work. Reptiles don't even have the associated brain structures required for this kind of thought, they are autonomous in their action. Every action. This is proven by the way they WILL bite things which are not a threat and WILL bite things where biting is not an effective counter to an existing threat. Their behavior pattern as a whole (remember there is a great deal which may not be displayed at any given time with any given stimulus under any given conditions) changes on a genetic level. If biting more frequently allows individuals within a species to obtain more food or escape predation, then it will leave individuals who, through genetic drift are more inclined to bite, as the surviving breeding population. Reinforce a genetic trait enough and it becomes more prevalant. Any given species can be said to respond within a fairly narrow range when confronted with identical stimulus under identical conditions. This is why we get animals noted for docility or noted for agression but in all cases there will be individuals which SEEM to act outside of these behavioral patterns simply because they are confronted with different stimulus and in some small degree due to genetic drift (Aru island chondros are more docile as a rule, biaks more agressive. Biaks will be docile under certain circumstances, arus agressive. Chance the conditions and you change the response).
i do think they recognize certain "events" if you will and change behavior because of it. they become accustomed to it
That's pattern reccognition, not really learning. Any behavior which ends up associated with a certain trigger will have an instinctive basis but the animal will never perform actions outside of those which are instinctive. Make any sense? Triggers can be associated with something the animal is already capable of doing but the animal will never perform an action outside of those it is already capable of and instincts which exist, the really really really basic ones that are the most obvious to us, can never be changed. They can grow to include additional stimulus but can never be removed. So an animal which is inclined to respond defensively to a given stimulus will always respond in that manner even if the stimulus is not a legitimate threat. Squeeze an arboreal boid about six inches down from it's head sometime, not strong enough to hurt it, just firmly and let me know what it does. Keep doing it, let it do it's thing and tell me if it ever changes or if the snake ever learns that you aren't hurting it. That's a strong example because it's obvious... the subtler examples are no less valid and the inability for the animal to make a choice which strays from the predetermined behavior is no less present.
we were just trying to have a conversation about what we thought, what we have seen and opur own experiences.
A conclusion drawn from observation isn't always valid. This is not to say that conclusions should not be drawn, hypothesis formed and explainations for what we encounter created... Just that we should not be married to them. Your observations in this instance were not made for this conversation or to be used in this kind of debate, right? You're looking retrospectively at a few situations (Probably not enough for most people to accept even your observations as scientifically valid, too small a pool) and in hindsight applying human reasons to reptilian behavior. I have set out to do this specifically many times prior to making the observations. It changes things a great deal.
you seem as though you know alot of scientific info but lack the experience in working with and watching these animals behavior
This is gonna be kind of harhs but.... BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Are you serious Robin? You're going to actually sit there and try and contend that none of what I am saying arose or was verified with firsthand ovservation of the animals in question? That I lack experience working directly with the animals?! Holy crap, I was laughing so hard when I read your post that I couldn't breathe and there were tears welling up in my eyes and my chest hurt afterwards. There are obviously people who have worked with, owned, studied, kept, bred, handled and field collected a lot more animals than I have... But I am not some neophyte hobbiest who's had two cornsnakes and a bearded dragon. I do not want to turn this into a pissing contest because it detracts from the discussion but I can pretty much guarantee that I've worked with a lot more animals than you have Miss... This does not detract from your experience and experience has to be looked at for it's quality in addition to it's quantity... I simply want to refute the idea that I have never verified these concepts we're discussing on a personal and firsthand level. In fact the basis for my additional study on the subject was formed through observation of the animal's behavior and after I read what many MANY other people thought to be true, much of which was conflicting, I went and applied ALL of those ideas until I found the one which stood up to scrutiny. By all means continue to disagree if you can provide something which can be explained by your concept but can NOT be explained by mine, but do not question my experience with the animals. In fact, by doing so on this issue, you bring YOURS into doubt. Someone who has worked with a small handful of animals doesn't have the personal observational experience to see the validity of MY statements and will cling to their anthropomorphic garbage because they want their pets to have personalities. You can't appreciate a reptile for what it is, you need to apply human characteristics in order to form an emotional attachment... THIS is the sign of someone with very limited experience who has not dealt with many animals. Like i said... it really doesn't matter much in this conversation, you CAN take your few dozen leopard geckos and verify what I am saying if you choose to and are not close minded about it... But don't start throwing around a list of species worked with or numbers. You won't win this way and I'll have to spend an hour and a half typing on a subject I don't actually want to discuss.
.... i tell you what next year i am going to have blue beauty rat snake babies...... i will send you a pair for free and pay shipping if you do one thing.... study them for a year (minimum) or even more.. them come back here and tell me if a snake can posess intelgence ... your experience and your conclusion