Check out this article on chimeras describing attempts to introduce human physiology into animals:

Chimera Article

Imagine the implications if we could create animals with the intelligence and ability to communicate with both humans and other animals. Talk about man's best friend!

I wonder how far they've really come with this?

[edit on 11/22/04 by Ethereal]

[edit on 11/22/04 by Ethereal]

There is already such animals all around us (incidently one already being "mans best friend" )... We just dont bother learning them advanced communications.

I realize there are chimeras all around, but the article describes implanting human stem cells in animals to create human/animal chimeras (which I was not aware existed, but then I'm no scientist.) I thought it was particularly facinating that they mentioned that it may be possible to give animals qualities of human intelligence by introducing the cells into developing animal brain cells.

By human/animal communication I was referring to the animal's capacity to communicate, rather than our failure to educate them in the ways of language, which I know has been attempted many times.

Hm, its going to take alot to make that acceptable among the public... I doubt scientists would even dare to try it.

If an animal has human intelligance, does it have human rights? Is it an animal that we can control? What if it dont like being controlled?

You can quickly draw paralells to the slavery of black people. They where considered animals with human intelligence (and sometimes not even that).

See? Its not quite as easy as making a new mans best friend with ability to communicate.

[edit on 22-11-2004 by merka]

They already ARE trying it, that's my point.

You're absolutely right about the moral implications though. They would be enormous.

Funny you mentioned slavery because it says in the article that one of the first things we would do with this type of animal would be to put them to menial or dangerous tasks currently occupied by humans. Then you would have to argue the benefits to human safety versus the elevated moral status of these animals.

This seems to be popular lately.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

What a waste of time IMO for those jobs thats what robots are going to be for in the future and they will be 1000 times better for those type of task then any Chimera type animal.

With no moral implications to complicate the matter, well until robots reach a true level of AI. Thats a bridge we can cross when we come to it. For now though its way better to lose a robot then to lose a human or animal.

That's all good intentions, but of course its completely wrong in the real world. Right now its not "way better" to loose a robot than to loose a human or an animal - The robot is worth 1000 times as much the human, probably 100,000 times as much if we are talking about a 3rd world country. Humans are plentifull, there's no denying that.

That's why such an animal WOULD be better than a robot, from a corporation point of view: Just breed millions of them. All it cost is food. As an example, you can compare the cost of keeping a cow to building a modern computer (let alone a robot). My guess is that the difference would be astronomical - Cant even compare them.

Sad but true in the modern capitalist world.

[edit on 22-11-2004 by merka]