A number of science fiction writers (David Brin being probably the best known of them) have written about the idea of ‘uplift‘ - sub-sentient animals raised to human (or even higher) levels of cognition by scientific means; the transhumanist movement is quite fond of it as a conceptual meme too.

Which means science fiction and transhumanism can have a day of feeling vindicated; via Peter Watts, a science fiction author whose science qualifications are more than impeccable, comes the news that a team of Chinese scientists have not only discovered the gene that triggers production of a chemical intrinsic to human cognition, but managed to splice it into chimpanzees and observe the protein in question being produced.

Or, in layman’s terms: we may have found a way to create chimps with human intelligence, which may throw an interesting light on Hiasl’s human rights case.

Yet another sf trope that now passes the Mundane benchmark?

[Cross-posted from Futurismic, because it's just too damn good a story not to share.]

We’re reaching a point where it will be possible to fundamentally alter the nature of what it is to be human. But should we use these technologies to do the same things to members of the animal kingdom? Continue reading “The Doolittle debate”

This is the oldest living animal (if you don’t bother counting certain invertebrates):

Harriet, pictured above, was brought back from the Galapagos Islands by good old Charles Darwin himself. She’s still alive and kicking (albeit very slowly) in Australia today.

Link collected from The Kircher Society.

I’ll bet a whole lot of you out there had to read Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ at school. Continue reading “Orwell, the CIA and cartoon movies”