• TheMadFool
    13.8k
    Humans smoke. I mean tobacco in the form of cigarettes which require us to inhale smoke. When we smoke for the first time some but not all reflexively cough. The smoke irritates the air passages. But after sometime we get used to it and the cough reflex is suppressed.

    From the animals I've only seen chimps and heard of gorillas smoking. They're primates, our close cousins.

    No other animal can ever pick up the smoking habit. At least that's what I think? In fact I've seen dogs cough and sneeze when someone's smoking.

    Why is it so? Why is it that only primates can pick up the smoking habit?

    Does the opposable thumb come with an ability to inhale smoke?
  • Hanover
    12.8k
    Why is it so? Why is it that only primates can pick up the smoking habit?

    Does the opposable thumb come with an ability to inhale smoke?
    TheMadFool

    Maybe do an experiment where you put on oven mitts and see if you can make a cigarette, light it, and smoke it and do it all while using a dog's equivalence of your brain.
  • Wayfarer
    22.3k
    If there is a potential bad habit somewhere in the universe, something will evolve to indulge in it. It’s one of the lesser-known consequences of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle.
  • Hanover
    12.8k
    An epidemic:5oqajb3fusfb6ze5.png
  • ArguingWAristotleTiff
    5k
    @TheMadFool
    Your observation is something I would have noticed if I was paying attention to the smoking aspect but I haven't as I love watching animals and their habits. I used to joke that my horse Dasher, if he was a human, would have been a chain smoker.

    Why? Horses have habits that can become a bit obsessive much like chain smokers but instead of lighting up, Dasher would grip the galvanized steel paddock rails in between his teeth and would drag his teeth back and forth on the rail, all day long. We call it "cribbing" but Dasher? I think he would have been just as happy with smoke, after smoke, after smoke. :up:

    Occasionally he would kick back a beer with us but that tidbit is for another day. :cool:
  • Ciceronianus
    3k
    So, had Plato known of tobacco, he would have defined man as "a featherless biped capable of smoking." In which case Diogenes would have appeared brandishing a plucked chicken fresh from a fire declaiming "Behold Plato's man!"
  • Monitor
    227
    Dasher would grip the galvanized steel paddock rails in between his teeth and would drag his teeth back and forth on the rail, all day long. We call it "cribbing" but Dasher? I think he would have been just as happy with smoke, after smoke, after smoke. :up:ArguingWAristotleTiff

    So, have you decided that Dasher was content while doing this all day long?
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