…ans so do their rivals, the Six Orange Canaries
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Sasha Explains It All
Who’s Smart Now?
Hi there, folks! This month, I’d like to discuss four species that have been given the green light for sapience since I wrote about this two years ago in my award winning rant “Everybody Can’t Be Smart”.
Now, sapience is not something that all species can achieve. Many species are just incapable of ever becoming individually sapient, although some have, and others may yet be allowed hive mind sapience. But that’s a subject for another rant. Today, we’ll look at two fully approved species and two on a sort of probationary status.
Our first fully approved sapients on the list are capybaras, Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris.
Some intelligence tests put the capybara on the same level as the smartest dogs. I tend to agree with this and that is why I campaigned successfully to grant them sapience. Three hundred of them were uplifted (mentally, not the David Brin way) in early 2018, and another 1,200 have gained sapience since then. Most of them live in the new sanctuary the NHTA created in Argentina & Brazil back in 2019.
Capys have very close knit and complex family structures. They are friendly folks once you get to know them. Since they spend so much of their lives in and around water, some of them are training as ecologist specializing in aquatic ecologies. Others seem to have a real knack for farming, especially water loving plants.
The next fully sapient species is the wombat, Vombatus ursinus.
Intelligent, stubborn, possessed of very slow metabolic rates, and very stinky, wombats are one of the few marsupials that have gotten sapience. They tend to live in smallish groups with their extensive burrows underground. This is okay with most other folks, because I was not yanking your chain when I called them stinky. They are way worse than skunks. I doubt you’ll find a predator that will roll on a dead wombat.
Wombats find most of their employment, when they want it, as underground builders of small passageways, drains and utility tunnels. There are about 500 sapient wombats. Most of them live in the Oolarongo sanctuary.
The two newest sapients are Bonobos, Pan paniscus, and Honey Badger, Mellivora capensis. Their non-sapient versions are a study in contrasts, but you can read up on that on your own.
Bonobos are sweet tempered primates sometimes called pygmy chimpanzees. They are smaller, more gracile and a whole lot less dangerous than chimps, who with VERY few exceptions are banned from sapience. A chimp will kill you to end an argument. A bonobo will have sex with you to diffuse things early on. I much prefer the bonobo way.
In the wild, the bonobo population is endangered and geographically isolated. Over the past 20 years, NHTA scientists have slowly built up a cloned population in a sanctuary just outside Gorilla City in Zaire. There are 200 individuals there and they started becoming sapient back in July. My daughter, Cupcake, and her sister, Tucker, are assistants in the Bonobo Sapience Project. Cakes tells me that the bonobos are coming along well and will soon be interacting in the wider NHT world. Another 200 clones, all babies, are also about to come into the world, since each of the sapient females are pregnant with twins.
The bonobos will be off of their probationary period in a few months and we all expect them to become valuable members of NHT society.
If you were to judge sapient honey badgers by their wild kin, you’d think they were the last species that needed sapience. The wild versions are solitary, vicious, tough, aggressive and deadly carnivores. They make wolverines look friendly. Most other creatures, including lions, tigers and even Cape Buffalo, don’t fuck around with honey badgers. They are also excellent problem solvers.
This is why I was steadfastly against giving them sapience for several years. Then, in 2019, the NHTA Science Counsel outvoted we dissenters and decided to make 12 honey badgers sapient.
Folks, I would have bet my last marrow bone that the experiment was doomed, but I got the surprise of my life. Turns out, at least in the 15 months the experiment has been going on, that sapient honey badgers lose most of their aggression and start working with one another. They have been building a society and constructing crude homes. We are not crazy enough to give them ottopus arms this early on, but we have given them simple tools they can use.
The project’s honey badgers get along well with most other sapient species, although they are still a very cranky bunch. But then, so are wolves and baboons. We anticipate that, if things continue to go well, honey badgers will go off probation and out into the world in about 5 years.
So that’s it, folks. Four new species in the NHTA. I’m sure more will come up for consideration soon, so I’ll keep you posted when they do.
Until my next rant,
Sasha Jane Cross MD, PhD
The Dociverse Blog 