Quote:
Originally Posted by Derek Roddy
Any reptile biology book tells us what snakes brains are capable of. It's no secret how the reptile brain works and what those parts that make up the brain are capable of based on the evolution of all other animals on this planet.
ALL higher level thinking/reasoning, etc animals on this planet all have the same brain parts. Snakes DO NOT have these parts that have allowed evolution of higher thinking in other species. If reptiles would have evolved with those evolutionary traits...then this conversation may have merit. BUT, It doesn't or hasn't nor will it.
It's not rocket science people.
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Yes, reptile brains are missing regions that birds and mammals have, which is pretty strong evidence considering that some of those regions are associated with emotion. But we cannot say that it is impossible to have emotion without these regions. There are also regions of the reptile brain that do not have homologs in humans and are not thoroughly understood, so it's possible(though unlikely) that reptiles have their own means of feeling emotion, including affection. No biology book I have read has made the claim to know
every capability of the reptile brain, though we can make assumptions based on homologous structures in mammals. Also, we do not know how the function of the limbic territories varies between species(there is at least one paper on the topic which I do not have access to, so the answer might be out there). If other animals, especially birds, have other regions contributing to their affectionate and emotional responses then we would have reason to dismiss the absence of limbic territories in reptiles as evidence of lack of affection.
I'd like to point out that people without university library access can still carry out effective research. News articles, and even blog posts, can be referenced if they cite their sources. They tend to take the hard part out of understanding a paper as well. And you can check their sources by reading the abstracts to determine whether the research and conclusions drawn match what the blog describes, and also look up contributing authors to see what qualifies them to conduct such research and what other kinds of research they have published.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I do agree that you're probably right about reptiles not being capable of affection and I share that view. Any evidence to the contrary has thus far proven to be quite weak. I only wish to correct flaws in the structure of your argument.
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