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animals’ technology Should technology be credited to animals? If technology is perceived as one species practical activities to adapt the environment, including other species, to accommodate their own needs, it would be anthropocentric prejudice (‘human chauvinism') to conceptually assign technology at the human race alone. Lewis Mumford’s (Technic and the nature of man, 1972) reasoning: "In any comprehensive definition of technics, it should be plain that many insects, birds, and mammals had made far more radical innovations in the fabrication of containers than man’s ancestors had achieved in making of tools until the emergence of Homo sapiens: consider their intricate nests and bowers, their beaver dams, their geometric beehives, their urbanoid anthills and termitaries. In short, if technical proficiency were alone sufficient to identify man’s active intelligence, he would for long have rated as a hopeless duffer alongside many other species. The consequences of this perception should be plain: namely, that there was nothing uniquely human in early technology until it was modified by linguistic symbols, social organization, and esthetic design." ON THE RIGHT: clay nests of the Mud Dauber wasp (Sceliphron caementarium) in a cardboard box at Grabov Rat. Notice the variety of clay sources for their technological needs. |
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