Also, this was many pages back, but Erioguez, when I was making the example about cannibalism, I was specifically talking about cultures where cannibalism became a social taboo because of natural selection, yeah.
I know there's still cultures that practice mortuary cannibalism, and aside from kuru (Which has a very long asymptomatic phase) generally don't have any resultant health issues.
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!A "Sentient" creature is something that is able to feel and think. Almost all animals are sentient. I don't think sponges or coral count but everything else moves and reacts to the world around it. A "Sapient" creature is harder to define, but it's generally agreed that humans are the only sapient animal on Earth. It means they are capable of reason and learning from their experiences, or it could mean possessing wisdom. The word is mostly used to delineate between the intelligence of a human and that of another species of ape. People, especially sci-fi writers, use these terms improperly. If you're talking about an alien race with human-like levels of intelligence than the word you use to describe them is sapient.
On a less esoteric note, guess which channel just got 2 million subscribers?
Cephalopods are smarter than your average bony fish, but that doesn't mean they are comparable to cetaceans. They are very intelligent for animals whose brain is a ring surrounding their throat, and they are certainly more intelligent that most other ocean dwellers their size, but they aren't in the same league as the others. They also function in enterily different ways, being self-raised, short lived sociopaths with completely different brains.
(And not knowing orcas are dolphins speaks poorly of the documentaries you were watching :P )
Also, there is a distinct lack of parrots and corvids in those listings, and those DO show intelligence comparable to those of great apes.
Dolphins are an specific subset of toothed whales, and the orca falls within that subset (as do the pilot whales and the false killer whale, which is known for producing fertile hybrids with bottlenose dolphins), but animals such as porpoises, belugas or narwhals do not, instead being close relatives. And then you have the river dolphins, which aren't true dolphins, or even a real group. Oh, and the beaked whales and sperm whales are around there as well, being toothed whales and not being dolphins.
Well, at the very least, it makes more sense than songbird names...
(I also understand the pain of Abridged Aquaman, by the way, and sorry for letting my zoologist part derail the thread).
It's hard to pin down a definition for sapience because it's based more in familiarity than measurable scientific facts.
Sapience basically means that it's close enough to our species that we would feel bad for eating it.
Our relationship with other animals is based heavily on species arrogance. We've tried several times to explain WHY we're better than all other animals while begging the question that, of course, we are better. Is it because we're smarter? Is it because we're the only animal with a soul? Is it because we're the only animal capable of compassion or, paradoxically, the only animal capable of war?
One explanation after another has been posed and ultimately shot down, but we keep looking for an answer because, end of the day, the alternative is that we aren't superior to every other living thing on Earth. As a species, we find that unacceptable.
"Sapient" species are non-human species that resemble us or that we can relate to enough that we're willing to extent our Automatic Superiority Over All Living Things to. This alien looks like a pretty human woman and speaks our language, so she's sapient. This elf is a human with pointy ears, so it's sapient. This orc is just an ape with larger teeth and uglier face, so it's not sapient and we can slaughter them en masse without feeling bad about it.
EDIT: Note that we've also done this with other human races too, such as the research we put into studying Native Americans early in the U.S.'s history to try and pin down the exact genetic trait that makes them an inferior species of mindless savages.
edited 14th Feb '16 11:09:55 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Well, sapience is defined as possessing forms of higher-level thinking such as a sense of "self". We are the only sapient species we know of based on our current knowledge, so we kinda have no choice but to use ourselves as the benchmark.
And funny you bring up orcs, considering the upcoming Warcraft movie is built on the fact that orcs aren't these mindless beasts.
edited 14th Feb '16 11:12:27 AM by Watchtower
Chimps use fucking guerrilla tactics, orangutans are capable of murder... We like to erect barriers that separate ourselves from "lowly animals", but unless we focus on our weird chins, we will eventually run into spectrums. Specially in terms of brainpower; we do not have special brains, we just have a large for our size monkey brain.

And even those weren't actively malicious. It just so happens that their life cycle would fuck the world up for everything else.
edited 13th Feb '16 1:41:39 PM by LSBK