Any other animals out there that look different from their kind, the way we do?

[Iamme]

As you all know, I greatly ponder creationism vs. evolution.... intelligent design... and where man fits into the picture... and the harmony between organic and non organic matter... in particular, our place in our solar system. To answer my question will give me more needed information.

Snakes, snails, squirrels, cats, alligators, robbins...even monkeys. Don't all these creatures basically have the same shape head, eye spread, nose length and width, etc., where you can't tell one from the other, save for what color the hair pattern might be, or if one is heavier than the other? But take several creatures of the same weight; aren't they all pretty much a like? Remember Jinx the cat, in 'Meet the Parents' movie?

Well?

[Amapola]

No.

The problem is you have never spent time observing individual animals. How do you think researchers tell the difference in their wild subjects? Because they are very slightly different from each other.

*YOU* may not be able to tell the difference between my chickens, or goats, but I certainly can.

[Psiload]

Ummm...

http://hyperbean8jojo.googlepages.com/greatdane.jpg

[andyandy]

I would have thought that to an orangutan all humans look pretty much the same, but that they are able to distinguish between their own species quite easily.........

[Iamme]

Ummm...

http://hyperbean8jojo.googlepages.com/greatdane.jpg

No no no. Not that way. Arrrrrrggggghhhhhhhh.

Collie to Collie, Schnauzer to Schnauzer, Dachsund to Dachsund, Afghan to Afghan, etc. Pure breds of course. Like I said...not counting differences in weight or color. Distinct traits other than that.

Ever see an animal-bird-reptile-fish attracted to a female animal because it 'could see something special', in that one, over the others?

Ever see a particularly handsome pirhanna fish? Or fiddler crab?

[joobz]

No no no. Not that way. Arrrrrrggggghhhhhhhh.

Collie to Collie, Schnauzer to Schnauser, Dachsund to Dachsund, Afghan to Afgan, etc. Pure breds of course. Like I said...not counting differences in weight or color. Distinct traits other than that.

Ever see an animal-bird-reptile-fish attracted to a female animal because it 'could see something special', in that one, over the others?

Ever see a particularly handsome pirhanna fish? Or fiddler crab?
The answer has already been given to you.
It's a matter of what you are used to and what your prejudices are.
Haven't you ever heard an old white guy complain about how "All those asians look alike to me...."

[Complexity]

Collie to Collie, Schnauzer to Schnauzer, Dachsund to Dachsund, Afghan to Afghan, etc. Pure breds of course. Like I said...not counting differences in weight or color. Distinct traits other than that.


You are aware that they're all the same species, aren't you?

Your other comments suggest that you know very little of biology or of life as the rest of us experience it.

[Iamme]

The answer has already been given to you.
It's a matter of what you are used to and what your prejudices are.
Haven't you ever heard an old white guy complain about how "All those asians look alike to me...."

My friend just said that to me! Only he used "blacks". But they do NOT. The question has NOT been answered to my satisfaction. Wouldn't you fairly say that we have more facial differences than a cat does? Different thickness of eyebrows, how they slant, spread of eyes, shape of eyes, slant of eyes, lines in face, cheekbones, distance from nose to mouth, narrow or thick lips and all the variances, size of chin, cleft or none, protrusion of face, depth of head, wide set teeth, narrow jaw, length of face, etc.? Jay Leno looks nothing alike compared to what say Jim Varney looked like, as just one example.

On tv today I saw a cat that looked just like my cat I had in Texas years ago. All medium weight cats of the same type seem to look exactly alike to me. In a line-up, would they or would they not look alike, using the things I listed above regarding humans? Ever see schools of trout in a trout farm. Can you tell one apart from the next?

There must be a scientific response to my query.

[Big Les]

People look very different to you because you ARE one, because you've lived with humans all your life. Also because humans are keyed toward pattern recognition in general, being able to conceptualise. Animals are all different, you just won't see it unless you spend a great deal of time studying a given group of a given species.

But, and I bow to superior knowledge on this, I understood that they aren't as different as we are, because the primary mechanism of identification has evolved to be smell rather than sight. Hence very different configurations of eye and hair colour, cheekbone height, lips etc etc, and more subtle differences in say, wolves.

Another point is that humans no longer have a need for full body and face hair, revealing more of the unique aspects of bone structure. Even then, if we all had natural length hair and full beards, I think you'd find it a little harder to VID people.

[Lensman]

I can tell my dog from others of the same breed & colouration, when I had a girlfriend who had two cats, I could tell those apart from other peoples cats - even those with very similar markings.

I've seen photos of chimps with very different facial characteristics.

You can spot those differences - if you look for them & don't just superficially glance at them.

Look, do all of these chimps in the attached photos appear identical to you?

[joobz]

My friend just said that to me! Only he used "blacks". But they do NOT. Correct. And animals don't look like each other either.
In other words, just because you can't tell the difference, doesn't mean animals can't.

The question has NOT been answered to my satisfaction. Wouldn't you fairly say that we have more facial differences than a cat does? Different thickness of eyebrows, how they slant, spread of eyes, shape of eyes, slant of eyes, lines in face, cheekbones, distance from nose to mouth, narrow or thick lips and all the variances, size of chin, cleft or none, protrusion of face, depth of head, wide set teeth, narrow jaw, length of face, etc.? Jay Leno looks nothing alike compared to what say Jim Varney looked like, as just one example.
Is sight the only cue animals use to tell eachother apart? What do dogs do when they first meet eachother?

[Amapola]

Big Les has already said it. You are a human, you grew up closely observing humans, you can tell one from another through dint of much practice. If you had spent that same amount of time closely observing animals you would be able to tell the difference between them too.

Frankly, the observation skills of most humans that I know are just not that great. My guess is, most of the people reading my words can not tell the difference between a sheep and a goat. Iamme, if a person doesn't even pay enough attention to be able to tell the difference between a sheep and a goat, how can they hope to tell the difference between individual sheep?

But just because one person is inept at something, it does not mean that others can't be highly skilled at it. I would never dare attempt plumbing, I know nothing about it. However I can recognize any of my animals from across the pasture at dusk in a rain storm. And I did used to raise sheep. Each one had her own name. It's simply a skill that most people don't bother to develop.

[Hokulele]

Although all dogs of a breed may look alike to you, judging by their behavior, they do not smell alike.

[Elind]

It is well known, particularly concerning witness testimony, that people of different races have great difficulty describing or even recognizing those of other races based on casual observation. It's a matter of familiarity or training.

[quarky]

I find, increasingly, that i can't tell movie stars apart. Its a problem for me when trying to follow a plot. I have to ask my wife which gorgeous blond is which, because there's often 2 or more in the same show. Same with the hunky waspy guys. They look nearly identical.

This might be because my eyesight is less than perfect, but it might also be because our standards of good looks are homogenized. The new stars have very symmetrical faces and buff bods. Very few have any strong characteristics, visually.

To be fair, i can't hardly tell mature Japanese beetles apart.

[fromdownunder]

No no no. Not that way. Arrrrrrggggghhhhhhhh.

Since you did use the word "kind" in your header, not species or breed, you were shown two of the dog "kind". That has got to be the fastest shifting of the goalposts on record.

If you want to stick to "kind" though, I think I can pick an Okapi from a Giraffe.

Collie to Collie, Schnauzer to Schnauzer, Dachsund to Dachsund, Afghan to Afghan, etc. Pure breds of course. Like I said...not counting differences in weight or color. Distinct traits other than that.

So, not counting the ways that they actually look different, they all look the same, as long as they look the same to you?

Ever see an animal-bird-reptile-fish attracted to a female animal because it 'could see something special', in that one, over the others?

Ever see a particularly handsome pirhanna fish? Or fiddler crab?

Did you ever see a herd of Zebra? They all look the same don't they? But the markings on every zebra on the planet are unique to each individual Zebra. No two are the same.

I see sparrows, starlings, mudlarks and magpies outside my front window all the time. While I cannot tell the difference between male and female, and how "attracted" they are to each other, I am sure that they can.

Did you ever watch March of the Penguins?

You seem to of the "if I cannot see a difference, there is none" school.

Norm

[joobz]

What do dogs do when they first meet each other?
Although all dogs of a breed may look alike to you, judging by their behavior, they do not smell alike.
Perhaps if I put these two posts into the same post, it'll hammer home the point.

[Confuseling]

A team of British scientists has shown that sheep are able to recognize the individual faces of at least 50 sheep and remember them for more than two years.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/11/1107_TVsheep.html

It's very simple really. You are evolved to differentiate between humans, and socialised to differentiate between people of the races you have spent time around. Sheep are evolved to differentiate between sheep, and presumably to an extent socialised to their own sub-breed (although I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that their abilities are hard-wired to a greater extent than ours).

Expecting, as a human, to be able to tell sheep apart naturally doesn't make sense. What possible evolutionary purpose would it have served?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12617164.100-through-a-sheeps-eye-sheep-use-their-visual-sense-torecognise-food-friends-and-foes-research-into-how-their-brains-controlthis-process-reveals-that-their-perceptions-like-ours-are-not-merelycoloured-by-their-emotions--they-are-intimately-linked-with-them.html

[cripes that's a long url!]

ETA: Put it this way. If you look at a baboon's bottom, a buck's antlers, or a peacock's tail, are you aroused? Threatened? Is anyone you know? Does this not make it fairly obvious that your brain is primed to respond to certain shapes (smells / sounds...), and that other brains wouldn't pick the same ones?

[Gagglegnash]

Hi

http://home.comcast.net/~alsohlstrom/Boxers.jpg

Dogs. Boxers. Yup. Peas in a pod. Indistinguishable, one from the other.

[Confuseling]

http://home.comcast.net/~alsohlstrom/Boxers.jpg
"We can haz individuality?"



:boxedin: sorry

[fromdownunder]

Hi

http://home.comcast.net/~alsohlstrom/Boxers.jpg

Dogs. Boxers. Yup. Peas in a pod. Indistinguishable, one from the other.

Well, to give him credit, Iamme did actually say they all look the same except the ones that look different.

Norm

[Wowbagger]

In experiments: When humans see the faces of other humans, different parts of the brain "light up" (according to electrode analysis), than when we look at the faces of other animals. This indicates our brains are wired to detect more subtle differences in other humans, than other animals. And, this is also evidence of our evolutionary heritage of human bias.

Hypothetically, if intelligent aliens landed on the planet, they would almost certainly think all those humans look alike.

[Richard Masters]

My friend just said that to me! Only he used "blacks". But they do NOT. The question has NOT been answered to my satisfaction. Wouldn't you fairly say that we have more facial differences than a cat does? Different thickness of eyebrows, how they slant, spread of eyes, shape of eyes, slant of eyes, lines in face, cheekbones, distance from nose to mouth, narrow or thick lips and all the variances, size of chin, cleft or none, protrusion of face, depth of head, wide set teeth, narrow jaw, length of face, etc.? Jay Leno looks nothing alike compared to what say Jim Varney looked like, as just one example.

On tv today I saw a cat that looked just like my cat I had in Texas years ago. All medium weight cats of the same type seem to look exactly alike to me. In a line-up, would they or would they not look alike, using the things I listed above regarding humans? Ever see schools of trout in a trout farm. Can you tell one apart from the next?

There must be a scientific response to my query.

We can tell the differences between each other very well because our brains have a dedicated visual center for recognizing human faces.

Of course, it is quite likely that other animals distinguish each other through other means, so they won't need to look all that dissimilar.

Don't forget, also, that animals' fur probably hides a lot of minute features which might help you distinguish them otherwise.

[Elvis666]

When discussing variation within a "kind", pure-bred dogs are the worst example, since they are just that, pure-bred. Each one of those animals is the result of many generations of breeding with the sole purpose of eliminating the type of differences discussed here.

If you want to use dogs as the example, you need to look at those canines in a population that breeds without interference. Given time, such a group will end up breeding a mid-sized, brownish, short-haired animal. These animals will vary in size, exact color, and markings, and will not be identical at all.

I grew up in the country where packs of these dogs were commonplace and it was no problem to distinguish among them. Nor was it any problem for me to distinguish among my father's twenty or so head of Angus cattle. A more homogeneous bunch of animals would be difficult to picture. Those are all solid black and build identically, but, if you have to be able to tell them apart, you can learn to do so.

[Gagglegnash]

Hi

:boxedin: sorry


:dl:

LOL! No problem at all.

[Confuseling]

One thing we haven't yet detailed, though alluded to by Big Les, is that humans may well be specifically equipped for facial / emotional recognition, because of our evolutionary history. A sheep may well be able to recognise another sheep. I would be shocked if it couldn't tell another sheep was scared - that's useful information to a sheep. But I doubt it can tell that another sheep feels jealous because it's watching a ram courting a third sheep it doesn't like.

Take our eyebrows, for example. One argument as to why they still exist (as a band of comparatively thick, visible hair) is to accentuate facial expressions, because humans are such a highly social species. Similarly white scleras in eyes - they make it clear where you're looking, which is if anything detrimental intuitively, but makes sense when you hunt as a pack, or live in a highly socially structured environment.

Humans are subject to different evolutionary pressures. Snakes probably aren't that great at telling each other apart - they simply don't need to be. Chimpanzees, probably not far from our ability. So if you're barking up this particular tree to try to undermine evolution...

[bellonax]

I remember reading about a psychological experiment where they showed young children pictures of monkey and ape faces and they were easily able to tell them apart - but they lost the ability as they got older, mainly cos they weren't constantly exposed to them.

[wafonso]

I remember reading about a psychological experiment where they showed young children pictures of monkey and ape faces and they were easily able to tell them apart - but they lost the ability as they got older, mainly cos they weren't constantly exposed to them.

I'm fairly sure this study is mentioned in "The Stuff of Thought".

[CurtC]

http://home.comcast.net/~alsohlstrom/Boxers.jpg

I think the one on the right had recently peed on the carpet.

[Gevaudan]

The variation may not be as extreme, but it is there, even with animals of the same general build and color. I used to work at a kennel and I could tell apart dogs that even the breeder could not just based on subtle differences in their looks. And right now I have a litter of kittens, three of which are 'identical' tabbies that I can tell apart with ease (I can confirm identities when I weigh them). Like other posters said, it's a matter of being acquainted with the differences and also probably a measure of how observant one is.

[Vic Vega]

The question has NOT been answered to my satisfaction.


Your question has been answered perfectly....

[aggle-rithm]

When I first got involved in dog training, I was telling a co-worker about how much you can tell about a dog's inner state by observing its facial expressions.

He scoffed, saying, "Oh, sure, like dogs have facial expressions!"

I replied, "Umm.... yes, they do."

It's amazing how much you notice if you take the time to observe other species, and how little you notice if you don't.

[aggle-rithm]

All medium weight cats of the same type seem to look exactly alike to me.

"To you" is the operative term. We have three black cats that I have a hell of a time telling apart, which is bad because they sometimes have to take different medications and eat different diets. I know one of them has a notched ear from being spayed, and one of them doesn't wear a collar. Without those cues, I'd be lost.

Meanwhile, my wife can easily identify each of them from across the room. (Or so she claims.) She's always getting after me for failing to recognize the very different face shapes. One, she says, has a triangular face, one has a square face, etc.

To me, all their faces are approximately the shape of a cat skull.

[blutoski]

There must be a scientific response to my query.

You've been given one, but phrased so you could understand it.

More technically, there have been many studies done to understand the quality and reliability of witness testimony. One thing that is consistent is that people do worse at distinguishing between two people of an unfamiliar race.

As people are exposed to more and more people of the ethnic group in question, their ability to distinguish individuals improves.

Our inability to distinguish between two individuals in a different species is a pretty obvious extension of this.

As pointed out, people who work with a type of animal are better at distinguishing among the individuals under their care than the rest of us. My niece can tell her gerbils apart, but I can't.

When I worked with mice, I got progressively better at recognizing when they had been placed in the wrong cages by others.

Also: as pointed out by Gould, there's an anthropocentric attitude toward the question of appearance because we are a highly visual species. Many species make their mating decisions based on sound or smell, which have a wide variation that's not even on our radar.

[Loss Leader]

This is the story of the bee
whose sex is very hard to see
You cannot tell a he from she
But he can tell and so can she.


(my sources attribute this to Richard Lederer)

[Big Les]

Put it this way. If you look at a baboon's bottom, a buck's antlers, or a peacock's tail, are you aroused? Threatened?

Permission to sig this with great aplomb.

[Confuseling]

I would be, in this order: Honoured; curious to see the rogues' gallery that clicked the link through to the original post; and frightened to ponder what they thought they might find.

[Amapola]

This is the story of the bee
whose sex is very hard to see
You cannot tell a he from she
But he can tell and so can she.


(my sources attribute this to Richard Lederer)

If you are willing to pay attention, you, too, can tell the difference between a queen and a drone. In fact it's not difficult at all - even when I very first started to keep bees I could tell easily. :D

It's all simply a matter of obsevation. Yes, there are things we can not sense - we can't hear the difference in an elephant's call, we can't smell the difference in a dog. That does not mean I can not immediately recognize my neighbor's dog when I see it.

When I first started raising and showing rabbits I had a little trouble but it was not long at all before I could easily recognize my castor mini rex buck, Buck Rogers, from a line-up of 12 other castor mini rex bucks. No one else was confused either, not even the little kids. Not ONCE did I see someone take the wrong rabbit down off the show table. And occasionally I witnessed a class of 50 or more New Zealand Whites.

[jimbob]

No no no. Not that way. Arrrrrrggggghhhhhhhh.

Collie to Collie, Schnauzer to Schnauzer, Dachsund to Dachsund, Afghan to Afghan, etc. Pure breds of course. Like I said...not counting differences in weight or color. Distinct traits other than that.

Ever see an animal-bird-reptile-fish attracted to a female animal because it 'could see something special', in that one, over the others?

Ever see a particularly handsome pirhanna fish? Or fiddler crab?

Peacocks.