The Geekiest Animals in History

Flipper writes "CNET has compiled a list of the geekiest animals throughout history. The entries include such peculiar characters as Ham The Astrochimp (the first chimp in space), Schrödinger's Cat (used to demonstrate quantum superposition) and Hans, a horse who could apparently do complex mathematics and read words. The classics are there too, Pavlov's dogs get a well-deserved mention, as does Dolly The Sheep. What sounds like a pretty bizarre list is actually strangely interesting — some of these animals are seriously geeky."

Not a chance

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Where's Mr. Peabody?

"Sherman, fire up the wayback machine..."

Re:

[Shadow Wrought]

Or, for those who grew up in the 70s/80s, that TV show with the really smart Orangutan?

Re:

[Intron]

You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred!

Re:Not a chance

[Sponge Bath]

'Every Which Way But Loose'?

That ape only looked smart in comparison to Clint Eastwood.

Re:

[Aetherine]

K9 made it, but not Mr. Peabody?

Re:

[StefanJ]

Mr. Peabody was a neodog, uplifted in 2114. He stole the Wayback Machine to escape his oppressive masters (he was on lease to Halliburton Homeland Security Concepts, Ltd.) and settled in 1960s North America to take advantage of readily available weed and a lax attitude toward cross-species adoptions.

Re:

[HMC CS Major]

Passed out drunk.

Remember humans are animals too

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Lest we give all the glory to other species.

Re:

[spun]

Christ, is it that hard to discern from context when "animal" means "Heterotrophic eukaryote" and when it means "Heterotrophic eukaryote that isn't human?" You are deliberately blurring the meanings when it should be perfectly clear.

Re:

[nathanh]

Where's Mr. Peabody?

Quiet, you.

Re:

[$RANDOMLUSER]

LOL - too funny - you owe me a keyboard.
How long ago did you glark how funny "WABAC" is/was? I only caught it a few years ago when we had a R&B film festival when the DVD came out.

You missed one geeky animal

[revolu7ion]

Steve Ballmer?

Re:Not a chance

[silverkniveshotmail.]

Hans was not able to do complex math or read. Has anyone ever heard of the clever hans effect?

Where is Laika?

[lecithin]

She would have had my first vote.

Stolen from Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika [wikipedia.org]

Laika (from Russian meaning "Barker", as well as being a dog breed) was a Russian space dog that became the first living creature from Earth to enter orbit. She was found as a stray wandering the streets of Moscow. Originally named Kudryavka, she was renamed Laika after her breed type. After undergoing training with two other dogs, she was selected to be the occupant of the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 and was launched into space on November 3, 1957.

Laika died a few hours after launch from stress and overheating, likely due to a malfunction in the thermal control system. The true cause of her death was not made public until decades after the flight. Some former Soviet scientists have since expressed regret that Laika was allowed to die.

(more in article)

Re:Where is Laika?

[hey!]

Laika died a few hours after launch from stress and overheating,

Now when North Korea launches its space program, the do will be cooked on purpose.

Re:Where is Laika?

[rudeboy1]

That is an awefully expensive way to cook up a batch of General Tso's "chicken"...

..or Nim Chimsky?

[nephridium]

Seeing as the Chomsky hierarchy [wikipedia.org] is usually taught to computer science students nowadays, I'd think Nim Chimsky [wikipedia.org] should have been in that list as well (maybe replacing that dimwitted gorilla..), if anything at least for that geekish name or some of his utterances such as "Play me Nim play!" ;)

Re:

[vain gloria]

Good call. Most likely there was only room for one animal astronaut on the list and it's dog-heavy already. Three other possible reasons for preferring Ham:

• A chimp is easier to anthropomorphise. A dog may be a man's best friend, but looking at an ape is like looking in a mirror.
  
  
• Have you ever heard anyone use the expression "We can put a man into space, but we can't..."?
  
  
• Planet of the Apes, dude!

Re:

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> but looking at an ape is like looking in a mirror.

Only if your user name is vain gorilla.

The man in the mirror.

[vain gloria]

I'd be considered the hairy, unkempt member of clan Stallman.

Re:

[Lord Ender]

I've been wondering what happened to my dog ever since he wandered away while we were on vacation in Moscow in the fifties! Thank you for finally bringing me closure.

Geekiest extinct animal

[LiquidCoooled]

Has to be the long horse [boingboing.net].
It was the multicore processor of its day.
Moores' law (not THAT Moore, his great grandfather) held that horses would double in length every 18 months.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

You friggin bastards talking on your cellphones while riding the wheat guzzling long horses, like you need a horse that's twice as long as everyone else's.

I know

[Anonymous Coward]

The Geekiest Animal is the GNU!

How about the Trojan Horse?

[stripmarkup]

Ok, it wasn't really an animal but it's still geeky.

And how about the remote controlled goldfish? [youtube.com]

Re:How about the Trojan Horse?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, Trojan Horses are more greeky.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

> Nah, Trojan Horses are more greeky.

Beware the Geeks, bearing GIFs!

No Danger Mouse!?

[geekoid]

ahhh crum.

I'm old but who cares...

[__aaclcg7560]

Flipper!

Flipper?

[ClayJar]

Darwin could beat Flipper any day of the week (even without his speech module).

Re:

[geekoid]

Darwin is the reason I'm for catching dolphins with tuna.

Re:I'm older but who cares...

[Nefarious Wheel]

Gyro Gearloose!! He's brainy in the same way that Scrooge McDuck is rich.

Tux?

[businessnerd]

I mean I know he's not a real penguin, but a hypothetical cat got on the list. Every linux user (which is some form of geek, myself included) has a special place in his or her (mostly his) heart for that happy little penguin.

Re:Tux?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Schrodinger's cat is NOT hypothetical. He exists... probably

Re:Tux?

[PitaBred]

You haven't observed him, have you?

Re:

[baldass_newbie]

Schrodinger's cat is NOT hypothetical. He exists... probably

If you're not certain, then maybe you're talking about Heisenberg's cat...

Re:Tux?

[MustardMan]

I'm glad someone said it! Shrodinger's cat is an analogy to describe the "collapse of the wavefunction" principle, and not heisenberg uncertainty. It's not that you don't know which state the cat is in - it's that it is in both states until it's observed. I'm sure you knew this already, and hence the clever comment - but it's worth explaining for those who constantly misuse the analogy.

Re:

[baldass_newbie]

I'm sure you knew this already, and hence the clever comment

Of course I did. I'm brilliant. That's why I post on /.!

Re:

[MustardMan]

You're arguing nomenclature that's standard in just about every quantum mechanics course taught in the world. You're arguing nomenclature that was established by the fathers of quantum physics. At this point, it's accepted terminology and you aren't gonna change it. An observation is the same as a measurement is the same as an interaction that can be represented mathematically via an operator. Get over it.

Re:

[cashman73]

Well, K9, the time traveling dog, made the list. And he's definitely a work of fiction. Heck, he's not even a real dog, but a robot. So, the absence of Tux from the list is definitely a scam! Was this list sponsored by Microsoft?

Re:

[Rei]

Well, they did already have one bird: Alex. I'm glad they listed Alex; he's something else. He can form basic sentences (although he has no understanding of grammar), can count low numbers, can answer questions with multiple conditions (such as "how many blue wood"), understands subsets (such as "wood" is a "color"), is familiar with negation, invented the concept of "none" without having been taught it, and all sorts of other things.

People give parrots too little credit. I have a baby Amazon, 5 1/2 mont

Lesser known

[edwardpickman]

Less is said about an alternative test called Schrödinger's lawyer. The test involved the gun discharging no matter what state the particle was in. Schrödinger himself admitted the proposed test was pointless but much more satisfying and humane than the cat test.

The Very Definition of Geekiness.

[o0OSABO0o]

ScuttleMonkey wrote: What sounds like a pretty bizarre list is actually strangely interesting ...

I would add:

I think that finding this a strangely interesting article is the very definition of what it means to be a geek.

Re:

[Hucko]

No, that is nerdy. Geeky, is making money off it.

Crickets Play Pacman

[Fox_1]

This is a really neat research project using crickets as the ghosts in Pacman. [pong.hku.nl] Considering that crickets can tell the temperature [dartmouth.edu] and that they have the most sensitive mechano-sensors known in the animal kingdom, [europa.eu] this is a creature that demonstrates many geeky qualities.

Re:

[truthsearch]

It's funny that someone named Fox_1 knows this information yet didn't make it onto the geekiest animals list.

Wht do u get when u cross a polar bear with a Seal

[geekoid]

A polar bear.

Shamu

[mknewman]

I went a Seaworld once and ate dinner at the Dinner with Shamu where you get to see their larger pool, and talk with the trainers. I asked him just how smart they really were and he said VERY smart. I asked how many commands they knew, and he said 300-400, which is really very amazing. They aren't usually mentioned in terms of the smartest animal, usually that's dogs, pigs and horses, but I bet Killer Whales are WAY up there, maybe even higher because of the size of their brain.

Re:

[evil_Tak]

Don't forget about Mushu, the educated whale who thinks he's better than you!

Re:

[gardyloo]

Don't forget about Mushu, the educated whale who thinks he's better than you!

      And here I thought that Mushu was a pork product. Thanks!

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

300-400 commands
I bet that's much more than a soldier understands. (Same applies to GWB)

Er what commands?

[pbhj]

300-400 commands.

Like what? Active vocabulary of english speakers is only of the order 10 times that.

So, jump flip splash eat play-dead score-a-basket knit-a-sweater .... err what else do they do at the shows?

Re:Shamu

[gardyloo]

I asked him just how smart they really were and he said VERY smart. I asked how many commands they knew, and he said 300-400, which is really very amazing.

      Unfortunately, it maxes-out around 300-400, depending on how much time the whales want to spend on training the people.

Re:

[edwardpickman]

I hear it's thought humans can master 500 hundred commands but the whales tend to get a bit impatient and give up after a few years.

Re:

[Bertie]

Well, if you've ever seen the footage from the BBC's Blue Planet series of two orcas torturing a seal to death and then playing with the carcass, you'd have to agree. They tossed it back and forth between each other like it was a Frisbee. Then when they got bored of that, they took it in turns to wallop the poor critter as high in the air as they could using their tails. And boy, were they getting some loft on it. Can anybody else name an animal which plays both co-operative and competitive games of thi

Re:

[cashman73]

Yup, certainly. Don't forget about the dolphins [youtube.com],. . . and thanks for all the fish! ;-)

K-9 is somewhat lame, but the list gets kudos...

[Anonymous Coward]

For being a top ten list with one fucking page view. Thanks for that.

"You Bastard" anyone ???

[pruneau]

If Terry Pratchett favorite camel is not a geek (a mathematical geek at that), what's the beast for ?

"All bastards are bastards, but some bastards is *bastards*."

-- (Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent)

Uh oh...

[kentrel]

Must. Not. Anthropomorphize.

My two votes...

[NerveGas]

    First would be Laika, who gave her life in space exploration. Second would be Freud's Chow-Chow. Determining the mental state of a patient through pheromones and other bodily odors gets two dew-claws up.

      On a somewhat related note of sniffing out people's mental state, one of my neighbors is a K9 cop. He said that several times, the cuplrit of a crime has stayed at the scene and just blended in with the crowd, and as soon as he showed up, without being given a scent or anything, his dog simply went straight into the crowd and picked out the party who turned out to be guilty.

steve

Re:

[trybywrench]

First would be Laika, who gave her life in space exploration

I think you mean who's life was _taken_ in space exploration. not that there's anything wrong with that

See also

[Swimport]

Topping CNET's evilest animal list is:

-1 Hitlers Dog
-2 Stalins Hampster
-3 Osamas Poodle

Re:

[Nick Number]

A small illiterate rodent which apparently feeds on apostrophes.

Who Cares...

[Kent Simon]

about Hoover the seal... He sucked...

Orally Book Covers

[Hodge]

Surely the geekiest animals in history are going to prove to be the ones on the cover of the O'Reilly books.

How about the monkeys flying out of my butt?

[bdrasin]

I'd think they deserver at least an honerable mention

Re:

[cashman73]

I think this monkey [youtube.com] should definitely be on the list,...

Who made theese lists ?

[Joebert]

I tried to think of an explaination for #10 being on the Top Ten Girl Geeks [cnet.co.uk] list but I had to give up before my head exploded.

Re:

[Charles Dodgeson]

I tried to think of an explaination for #10 being on the Top Ten Girl Geeks [cnet.co.uk] list but I had to give up before my head exploded.

Agreed. There is no excuse for that. And why isn't Hedy Lamar [wikipedia.org] on that list?

Schrödinger's Cat is DEAD!

[Bake]

Poor cat. Being left alone in a box without air or water or food for all that time.

Even if the cat had plenty of food in that damn box it would have died of old age a looong time ago.

Re:Schrödinger's Cat is DEAD!

[D4rk Fx]

You mean NOT dead.

Re:Schrödinger's Cat is DEAD!

[gQuigs]

Wait just a second... I thought the whole point was that we would NOT know until we open the box. And if we did we could be changing it's state possibly invalidating the experiment. DEAD or ALIVE, neither. Inclusive?!

Re:Schrödinger's Cat is DEAD!

[geekoid]

SO, where does reanimation fit within Schrödinger's little there? huh? HUH?

It could be an undead cat.

Yet another list...

[Swimport]

CNETs sexiest animals list:

1: Sheep 2: Snakes 3: Donkeys

Sloth?

[zcubed]

When I first read the title of this article, sloth is the first thing that popped into my mind. After reading more I realized what the article was about

Just so you know.

[CODiNE]

Koko's dialog all goes through her owner for editing first. All the gibberish is removed until something sorta kinda interpretable is left. Often the interpretatons require huge mental leaps. I've met a couple deaf people who've seen Koko at a zoo and they all said she just signs random words all the time. Yeah, yeah, they're not animal behaviorist experts or whatever, but check out the AOL chat transcript with Koko sometime... It's full of wild wishful thinking by her owner who will stop at nothing to make sense of random signs and movements.

One of my favorite parts:

Question: Do you like to chat with other people?
HaloMyBaby: That was from Rulucky!
LiveKOKO: fine nipple
DrPPatrsn: Nipple rhymes with people, she doesn't sign people per se, she was trying to do a "sounds like..."

Yeah, I'm really sure Koko was trying to say the word "people" by signing "nipple" which sounds just like it! Fun read.

Re:

[MenTaLguY]

Not sure that was the best example. True, the rhyming explanation was rather lame, but if the sexual harassment lawsuits were founded, then there might be another more awkward reason [wikipedia.org] for Koko's choice of sign...

Koko

[AaronW]

I was pleased to see Koko the gorilla on the list. When I was young I managed to see her when my father was doing some work to help the gorilla foundation back in the early 1980s. At the time, I wore braces and she found them very interesting and made up a new sign on the spot for them. They also had another gorilla, Michael. My sister made the sign "Koko loves Michael" to which Koko responded, "Michael dirty toilet", which apparently she came up with and was not taught. Koko was never very fond of Michael, though her attraction to some of her handlers was known even back then.

-Aaron

No...

[ePlus]

Domo-kun?

I don't buy this

[Sponge Bath]

...a horse who could apparently do complex mathematics

A horse that understands the square root of negative one? No way.

Re:

[geekoid]

You just don't understand his answer!

The Square Root of -1 is neigh.
And we all know horse neigh when they hear "Frau Blucher"

Which means "Frau Blucher" is the Square Root of -1

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

A horse that understands the square root of negative one? No way.

You can do this with any horse. Ask it for the square root of negative one and imagine the hoof stamping once.

What do you call an exploding monkey?

[geekoid]

a BaBOOM!

Re:

[hehman]

The parent is Informative?! We need to stop giving mod points to the author of Big Book of Combustible Animals.

KoKo the gorilla and lawsuits?

[MrJynxx]

I didn't know gorilla's are subject to the same laws as humans in the United States. Eventhough it is a serious matter, it is kinda strange he's being charged with sexual harrassment.

If my puppy humps my leg can I sue him?

Re:

[cashman73]

Hmm,... so that explains that one dot over the San Francisco Zoo on the sex offenders map!

Re:

[R3d M3rcury]

Well, I'll admit that it's a bit more complex than that...

Essentially, it's the "Your employer has an obligation to keep you safe from sexual harrassment" argument. So if I grope the cute guy down the hall, he can sue my employer. Besides, lawyers will customarily go after the money, and companies have more money than individuals, so you blame the company for hiring me in the first place.

If I bring my puppy to work everyday and he humps your leg and I don't do anything about the puppy humping your leg and

Re:

[funkify]

The sexual harassment problem wasn't caused by Koko, but rather Koko's trainer. You see, Koko was first exposed to human breasts by the trainer. As could be predicted, Koko developed a boobie fetish and demanded to see boobs. Now, when a gorilla demands to see your boobs what do you do? But anyway, as the litigation goes, the trainer allegedly coerced the other female trainers to show Koko their boobs, too.

IIRC, Koko is a female herself.

not even an honorable mention

[shellacked]

for Maxwell's Demons?

They allow you to derive the thermodynamic value of information. It doesn't get much geekier than that ;-)

Unix Geek Creature

[wolenczak]

Where's Maxwell's Daemon?????

HEY!

[iminplaya]

What about Snoopy?? He was a WWl ace, an author, a world traveler, multi-lingual, a real lady's man(dog?) and he could do cool tricks with his dog food dish.

How about Tycho Brahe's elk?

[SuperJ]

What about Tycho's elk? [wikipedia.org] (scroll down to the appropriately named paragraph)

Tycho was known for his star measurements, and the elk died falling down the stairs after it drank too much beer (apparently the ancient equivalent of Hosehead from Strange Brew :-).

From their geeks and nerds list

[glwtta]

he also invented the Turing machine, a forerunner to the modern microcomputer

Holy. Crap.

And of course the winner goes to...

[mr_stinky_britches]

And of course the winner goes to...
The Liger [wikipedia.org]! What else?

--
Wi-Fizzle Research, etc [wi-fizzle.com]

Re:

[puppet10]

the runner up was the Tigon [wikipedia.org] right?

Not much to do wit the animals...

[PhotoGuy]

I was kind of hoping that the article would deal with animals that had what we might consider geeky tendencies by nature (for example, using tools); not just animals which humans put in some arbitrary situation. Slapping a monkey in a space capsule makes it no more a geek than if you had done the same with a bunch of bananas, instead... Pavlov's dog? It exhibited a basic (errr, pavlovian) response, that is a pretty low level thing (drooling when it heard cues for food), about as far from inherent geekine

Mabel the Swimming Monkey

[Rob Carr]

I think Mabel the Swimming Monkey [wikipedia.org] should be on the list. What SYSADMIN or SYSOP hasn't asked "Did you remember to mount a scratch monkey?" Or, for that matter, had the chance to ask "Can you swim?"

As the owner of two African Grey parrots, I have to give props to Alex's inclusion on the list. The bird developed the use of a "zero-like [livescience.com]" concept and abuses grad students. Pepperberg was actually able to document statistically that "Alex is ornery [amazon.com]."

Pepperberg is also teaching Alex to surf a parrot Internet a

Yay a Parrot!

[Kranfer]

I am happy to see a parrot on there. I own 6 myself... although their vocabulary is limited to "Hello", "night night" and at 2 in the morning when I get home the conu8res tell me "Goto sleep" thats about it. Wish they were geeky parrots :(

Cc:

[Stavr0]

aka CopyCat the first cloned pet [wikipedia.org]

I had a psychology professor...

[Zelph]

...Who was on the team of scientists that trained the space monkeys. He told us some amazing stories about his experience. He said that they would starve them for a couple of days until they were downright hostile, and then they would drop a banana pellet into their chamber when the monkey would touch a joystick that was mounted in the chamber. Once the monkey figured out that the joystick = food, they would make the monkey hold the joystick for long amounts of time. Then they put a monitor in there with cr