How do humans differ from other species?

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sv716


mentions a few of the genes that are different between us and our closest relatives the chimps/bonobos

phelixoflaherty

What kind of species smokes a cigarette

Capt'n Midnight

phelixoflaherty wrote: »

What kind of species smokes a cigarette

A rabbit one day managed to break free from the laboratory where he had been born and brought up.As he scurried away from the fencing of the compound, he felt grass under his little feet and saw the dawn breaking for the first time in his life. ‘Wow, this is great,’ he thought.

It wasn’t long before he came to a hedge and, after squeezing under it he saw a wonderful sight lots of other bunny rabbits, all free and nibbling at the lush grass.

“Hey,” he called. “I’m a rabbit from the laboratory and I’ve just escaped. Are you wild rabbits?”

“Yes. Come and join us,” they cried.

Our friend hopped over to them and started eating the grass. It tasted so good. “What else do you wild rabbits do?” he asked.

“Well,” one of them said. “You see that field there? It’s got carrots growing in it. We dig them up and eat them.”

This, he couldn’t resist and he spent the next hour eating the most succulent carrots. They were wonderful.

Later, he asked them again, “What else do you do?”

“You see that field there? It’s got lettuce growing in it. We eat them as well.”

The lettuce tasted just as good and he returned a while later completely full. “Is there anything else you guys do?” he asked.

One of the other rabbits came a bit closer to him and spoke softly. “There’s one other thing you must try. You see those rabbits there, “he said, pointing to the far corner of the field. “They’re girls. We shag them. Go and try it.”

Well, our friend spent the rest of the morning shagging his little heart out until, completely spent, he staggered back over to the guys.

“That was fantastic,” he panted.

“So are you going to live with us then?” one of them asked.

“I’m sorry, I had a great time but I can’t.”

The wild rabbits all stared at him, a bit surprised.

“Why? We thought you liked it here.”

“I do,” our friend replied. “But I must get back to the laboratory.

I’m dying for a cigarette!”

steddyeddy

sink wrote: »

I just watched a PBS series dealing with this exact question, I would recommend everyone check it out.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/humanspark/

If you're having trouble finding it pm me.

It draws the conclusion that essentially it's our abstract ability to imagine ourselves in different situations at different locations and points in time and to imagine how we would act and how our different actions would affect the outcome. It's the same cognitive ability which allows us to imagine other peoples thoughts and to think about what they think. This ability together with our other ability to communicate our complex thoughts through gestures, symbols and language which forms the basis for what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.

The program obviously explains better and in much more detail and I recommend everyone watch it.

This is fairly out there but theres new ideas suggesting that chimps and bonobos can think in abstract ways ill try and find a link.

Capt'n Midnight

steddyeddy wrote: »

This is fairly out there but theres new ideas suggesting that chimps and bonobos can think in abstract ways ill try and find a link.

That BBC Radio 4 docu ^^ suggested that the main changes in DNA since the common ancestors were a gradual evolving of the genes for language (people without it can't speak) , but is changed across primate history. and a drastic change in another highly conservative gene for RNA (yes I'll have to listen again, not sure if mRNA ) that affects early brain development , whereby chimps gene is more close to that of chickens than ourselves !

jdooley28

I think thats a question nobody can really answer. I always would have said language but it was pointed out to me that animals like dolphins seem to communicate in a sort of language. I suppose the idea of religion or worship maybe. Also murder do any other animals kill for anything other than neccessity? Or are any other species have our equivalent of homo-sexuals?

Black Swan

Temporarily at the top of the food chain on planet Earth.

Capt'n Midnight

jdooley28 wrote: »

Or are any other species have our equivalent of homo-sexuals?

yes
even insects

remember the gene for cystic fibrosis is carried by about 1 in 17 Irish people and until recently if you had the condition it's unlikely you'd survive long enough to pass it on. Compared to that the survival of a gene that made men somewhat more attractive to both sexes isn't really difficult to explain if you take in to account that the sisters of gay men may have more children than average. for a lot of history there was no social welfare and marriage even without kids was a form of social welfare and was no doubt preferable to prison

Apple Butt

Our ability to introspect and innovate surely puts us in a class of our own.

SuperInfinity

Apple Butt wrote: »

Our ability to introspect and innovate surely puts us in a class of our own.

And do you consider this "class" to be somehow above other classes?

A dog's sense of smell (100 million times better than ours) surely puts it in a class of its own. It doesn't matter if you consider it somehow inferior to our "class", it is not any different.

Apple Butt

A dog's nose can't write War and Peace or build a space shuttle to take you to the moon. That's the difference.

steddyeddy

well apple thats true but i wonder if we can narrow it down to one basic cause for that difference

Cavehill Red

The one significant difference is our giant brains. I don't mean that to sound pat, but that's the reality. The other things which set us apart from most species (communal endeavour, abstract thinking, forward planning and so on) all stem from our brain capacities.
Running the human brain costs a truly vast amount of energy, energy that most species have not evolved to afford. In other species, it was preferable not to expend that energy on brain capacity and brain activity, from a point of view of genetic selection.
But in humans, and specifically homo sapiens, we developed very large mental capacities, which were genetically justified by the benefits that accrued from them.
If dolphins or chimps were to develop down a similar genetic pathway of diverting further energy towards brain development, then I'd fully expect them to become as sentient as we are.

steddyeddy

Cavehill Red wrote: »

The one significant difference is our giant brains. I don't mean that to sound pat, but that's the reality. The other things which set us apart from most species (communal endeavour, abstract thinking, forward planning and so on) all stem from our brain capacities.
Running the human brain costs a truly vast amount of energy, energy that most species have not evolved to afford. In other species, it was preferable not to expend that energy on brain capacity and brain activity, from a point of view of genetic selection.
But in humans, and specifically homo sapiens, we developed very large mental capacities, which were genetically justified by the benefits that accrued from them.
If dolphins or chimps were to develop down a similar genetic pathway of diverting further energy towards brain development, then I'd fully expect them to become as sentient as we are.

Well so many other animals have giant brains in fact our closest cousins neaderthals had slightly bigger brains than us, it also depends on encephalation quotient.

steddyeddy

Cavehill Red wrote: »

The one significant difference is our giant brains. I don't mean that to sound pat, but that's the reality. The other things which set us apart from most species (communal endeavour, abstract thinking, forward planning and so on) all stem from our brain capacities.
Running the human brain costs a truly vast amount of energy, energy that most species have not evolved to afford. In other species, it was preferable not to expend that energy on brain capacity and brain activity, from a point of view of genetic selection.
But in humans, and specifically homo sapiens, we developed very large mental capacities, which were genetically justified by the benefits that accrued from them.
If dolphins or chimps were to develop down a similar genetic pathway of diverting further energy towards brain development, then I'd fully expect them to become as sentient as we are.

not to be a pedantic about it but chimps are sentient

SuperInfinity

Cavehill Red wrote: »

The one significant difference is our giant brains. I don't mean that to sound pat, but that's the reality. The other things which set us apart from most species (communal endeavour, abstract thinking, forward planning and so on) all stem from our brain capacities.
Running the human brain costs a truly vast amount of energy, energy that most species have not evolved to afford. In other species, it was preferable not to expend that energy on brain capacity and brain activity, from a point of view of genetic selection.
But in humans, and specifically homo sapiens, we developed very large mental capacities, which were genetically justified by the benefits that accrued from them.
If dolphins or chimps were to develop down a similar genetic pathway of diverting further energy towards brain development, then I'd fully expect them to become as sentient as we are.

Yep, I totally agree with this. The only thing I would nitpick at a little is how you say: "to become as sentient as we are".

The reason is that I don't believe you can say a chimp is "this sentient" and it's not as sentient as a human. What about a person that has a brain of less capacity as a human, perhaps an old person or a young person or a person who just is that way, do you consider them not "as sentient" as the average young adult? But I do agree with you for the most part.

Cavehill Red

steddyeddy wrote: »

Well so many other animals have giant brains in fact our closest cousins neaderthals had slightly bigger brains than us, it also depends on encephalation quotient.

I wasn't referring to cranial capacity, but to brain capacity, the capacity to process information. Neanderthals were also larger and bulkier than homo sapiens, as bone evidence indicates, and obviously the cranial capacity of large mammals, such as mammoths, would exceed our own.
But it's not the cranial capacity that's the defining issue, so much as the energy expended on thought.
There is a further theory which suggests that abstract thought may have come about as a result of an early mental illness, akin to schizophrenia, which permitted early hominids to make connections between things that were not obviously connected.
But whether that's true or not, the fundamental difference between homo sapiens and all other species is the capacity for thought.

Cavehill Red

steddyeddy wrote: »

not to be a pedantic about it but chimps are sentient

Not as sentient as we are, though, which is the point I made.

Cavehill Red

SuperInfinity wrote: »

Yep, I totally agree with this. The only thing I would nitpick at a little is how you say: "to become as sentient as we are".

The reason is that I don't believe you can say a chimp is "this sentient" and it's not as sentient as a human. What about a person that has a brain of less capacity as a human, perhaps an old person or a young person or a person who just is that way, do you consider them not "as sentient" as the average young adult? But I do agree with you for the most part.

I suppose that depends on whether one sees sentience as a sliding scale of self-awareness or a simple binary construct - one is sentient or one is not.
I'd be of the former school of thought, you the latter.

Zillah

Cavehill Red wrote: »

I wasn't referring to cranial capacity, but to brain capacity, the capacity to process information. Neanderthals were also larger and bulkier than homo sapiens, as bone evidence indicates, and obviously the cranial capacity of large mammals, such as mammoths, would exceed our own.
But it's not the cranial capacity that's the defining issue, so much as the energy expended on thought.
There is a further theory which suggests that abstract thought may have come about as a result of an early mental illness, akin to schizophrenia, which permitted early hominids to make connections between things that were not obviously connected.

Actually, it turns out that the important factor is the relationship between brain size and body size. It can be graphed quite easily. You can use this to estimate the average brain size for a given body size and therefore judge whether a species has an unusually large brain for their body size. Humans have unusually large brains for primates, primates have unusually large brains for mammals, and mammals have unusually large brains for animals. Dawkins goes into a lot of detail on this in The Ancestor's Tale.

But whether that's true or not, the fundamental difference between homo sapiens and all other species is the capacity for thought.

Poppy cock. All animals think, we just happen to think in the most sophisticated way on this little planet. The arrogance of people never ceases to amaze me. It is perfectly feasible that an alien race could conduct our most advanced mathematics as intuitively as you can work out your change at the shop. There's nothing fundamentally special about us, we just happen to be the smartest thing currently on the planet. (Edit: You seem to be kind of flip flopping on the whole binary thing, now I'm just confused)

Also, dolphins were mentioned earlier. Turns out their brain to body ratio is almost as good as ours.

Cavehill Red

Zillah wrote: »

Actually, it turns out that the important factor is the relationship between brain size and body size. It can be graphed quite easily. You can use this to estimate the average brain size for a given body size and therefore judge whether a species has an unusually large brain for their body size. Humans have unusually large brains for primates, primates have unusually large brains for mammals, and mammals have unusually large brains for animals. Dawkins goes into a lot of detail on this in The Ancestor's Tale.

I wouldn't disagree with any of that, though I would point out that with a brain-body ratio close to our own, it remains inexplicable that chimps and dolphins have not developed beyond basic tool use.

Zillah wrote: »

Poppy cock. All animals think, we just happen to think in the most sophisticated way on this little planet. The arrogance of people never ceases to amaze me. It is perfectly feasible that an alien race could conduct our most advanced mathematics as intuitively as you can work out your change at the shop. There's nothing fundamentally special about us, we just happen to be the smartest thing currently on the planet.

Also, dolphins were mentioned earlier. Turns out their brain to body ratio is almost as good as ours.

I didn't suggest we were fundamentally special. I suggested the thing that sets us apart from other species is the amount of energy we expend on thinking.
Your hypothetical aliens are entirely plausible. However, one would expect them to be expending even greater amounts of energy on thinking than we do.

SuperInfinity

Cavehill Red wrote: »

I suppose that depends on whether one sees sentience as a sliding scale of self-awareness or a simple binary construct - one is sentient or one is not.
I'd be of the former school of thought, you the latter.

Hold on, I know there is a sliding scale of self-awareness, I just don't agree that it is wise to throw around the word sentient such as you did. (Actually I disagree with the entire concept of "self-awareness" to begin with as I believe it has no meaning, but let's say "consciousness").

Whether it is a sliding scale or binary construct has to do with interpretation of LANGUAGE. I just want to make that clear. It's a language dilemma.

I don't really agree with Zillah's post since I believe he misinterpreted what you said completely, the one word he picked out, before he went off on his rant. His rant would have been good though if it were on one of the many people who do believe in such a special position for humans within the animal kingdom.

Cavehill Red

SuperInfinity wrote: »

Hold on, I know there is a sliding scale of self-awareness, I just don't agree that it is wise to throw around the word sentient such as you did.

Whether it is a sliding scale or binary construct has to do with interpretation of LANGUAGE. I just want to make that clear.

Yup, that's true. Let me be clear, then. I posit that human beings are differentiated from other species by the amount of energy they expend on thought. While other species, including those genetically close to us (chimps, bonobos, and further on gorillas) and some further away (cetaceans) have demonstrated levels of intelligence, despite the fact that they possess similar body-brain ratios, they do not match us because they do not expend the same amount of energy on thinking.

SuperInfinity wrote: »

I don't really agree with Zillah's post since I believe he misintepreted what you said completely, the one word he picked out, before he went off on his rant. His rant would have been good though if it were on one of the many people who do believe in such a special position for humans within the animal kingdom.

Exactly. We're not something spiritual or special or supernatural or any of the other distinctive terms used. And we are, as Zillah suggested, simply the most intelligent creatures on the planet. But the reason for that is the amount of energy we expend on thinking - our brain capacity and our plethora of synaptic connections (and possibly our connective mental cognition.)

SuperInfinity

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Yup, that's true. Let me be clear, then. I posit that human beings are differentiated from other species by the amount of energy they expend on thought. While other species, including those genetically close to us (chimps, bonobos, and further on gorillas) and some further away (cetaceans) have demonstrated levels of intelligence, despite the fact that they possess similar body-brain ratios, they do not match us because they do not expend the same amount of energy on thinking.




Exactly. We're not something spiritual or special or supernatural or any of the other distinctive terms used. And we are, as Zillah suggested, simply the most intelligent creatures on the planet. But the reason for that is the amount of energy we expend on thinking - our brain capacity and our plethora of synaptic connections (and possibly our connective mental cognition.)

Okay, again just nitpicking I wouldn't rely so heavily on the amount of energy we use up. Our brain uses up lots of resources. For example, Omega 3 and other fatty acids and all types of other maintainance are also needed to have our brain function properly, nutrients that could be used elsewhere. Amount of neurons might be a better way of looking at it, elephants have larger brains but their neurons aren't packed nearly as dense as ours are. EQ or encephalization quotient seems to be a good construct but not so much exactly how much energy you expend.

All types of animals have to conserve more energy depending on their environment. I think you would run into all kinds of problems and contradictions with that theory, for example insects can be quite intelligent despite using up very little energy. You would fare much better with "percentage of the energy that their brain uses up", rather than raw energy used up.

Cavehill Red

Slightly off the subject, there's a 'Planet of the Apes' type theory than runs that if gorillas had made it to the coast first and began eating fish (rich in those Omega oils the brain just eats up), then we'd be the species in the zoos and they'd be the ones inventing space travel technology.
It's no surprise we're genetically closest to chimpanzees. Like us, but unlike their close cousins the bonobos, we're an aggressive, warlike species. Bonobos and gorillas are much more pacific.
Playing counter-history for a moment, one wonders what a gorilla or bonobo dominant planet might have been like. Likely, it would be a less competition-based, more pacifist society than our own, and on those grounds, possibly preferable.
Similar arguments have been made for the Neanderthals too.

Cavehill Red

SuperInfinity wrote: »

Okay, again just nitpicking I wouldn't rely so heavily on the amount of energy we use up. Our brain uses up lots of resources. For example, Omega 3 and other fatty acids and all types of other maintainance are also needed to have our brain function properly, nutrients that could be used elsewhere. Amount of neurons might be a better way of looking at it, elephants have larger brains but their neurons aren't packed nearly as dense as ours are. EQ or encephalization quotient seems to be a good construct but not so much exactly how much energy you expend.

All types of animals have to conserve more energy depending on their environment. I think you would run into all kinds of problems and contradictions with that theory, for example insects can be quite intelligent despite using up very little energy. You would fare much better with "percentage of the energy that their brain uses up", rather than raw energy used up.

Again, I should have clarified. I meant relative energy usage diverted to brain activity for thought, with the possible addition of connective reasoning.

steddyeddy

Zillah wrote: »

Actually, it turns out that the important factor is the relationship between brain size and body size. It can be graphed quite easily. You can use this to estimate the average brain size for a given body size and therefore judge whether a species has an unusually large brain for their body size. Humans have unusually large brains for primates, primates have unusually large brains for mammals, and mammals have unusually large brains for animals. Dawkins goes into a lot of detail on this in The Ancestor's Tale.



Poppy cock. All animals think, we just happen to think in the most sophisticated way on this little planet. The arrogance of people never ceases to amaze me. It is perfectly feasible that an alien race could conduct our most advanced mathematics as intuitively as you can work out your change at the shop. There's nothing fundamentally special about us, we just happen to be the smartest thing currently on the planet. (Edit: You seem to be kind of flip flopping on the whole binary thing, now I'm just confused)

Also, dolphins were mentioned earlier. Turns out their brain to body ratio is almost as good as ours.

So true thanks for posting it, i think that the arguement of body brain ratio is quite outdated. neadethals had big bodys but their brain was still huge for their size and their brains would have required a huge amount of energy.

Cavehill Red

steddyeddy wrote: »

So true thanks for posting it, i think that the arguement of body brain ratio is quite outdated. neadethals had big bodys but their brain was still huge for their size and their brains would have required a huge amount of energy.

IF they used it as we do.
If however they did not divert so much energy into thought as we do, as is likely given the energy their sheer physical mass required, then obviously they would not have attained equivalent intelligence.
This can be seen today in relation to dolphins or chimps, which have similar brain-body ratios. Or indeed in whales, whose cranial capacities vastly exceed our own (as do their knobs - a visit to the Icelandic penis museum will give any male an inferiority complex when they see how big a dessicated, flaccid whale penis is!).
The key issue is how much relative energy is used for thinking. Chimps spend way more time shagging and fighting than we do. Dolphins are also a lot more violence-minded than you might expect.
I said this earlier, but were either species to develop along the lines of genetic selection for greater brain energy, it would be entirely expected that their intelligence would match our own.

SuperInfinity

steddyeddy wrote: »

So true thanks for posting it, i think that the arguement of body brain ratio is quite outdated. neadethals had big bodys but their brain was still huge for their size and their brains would have required a huge amount of energy.

Zillah was arguing for the body brain ratio, Cavehill Red was arguing against using it too much and also relying on energy expenditure. For example it is thought that Neanderthals would have expended less energy than we do.

Personally I believe Neanderthals were smarter than we are despite the alleged lower brain-metabolism, and our ancestors about 200,000 years ago most certainly were smarter than we are today.

NOBODY uses body over brain ratio like (body/brain). EQ is certainly NOT "outdated" and never will be, it fits the vast majority of species. It isn't perfect but then it was never intended to be.

Cavehill Red

SuperInfinity wrote: »

Personally I believe Neanderthals were smarter than we are despite the alleged lower brain-metabolism, and our ancestors about 200,000 years ago most certainly were smarter than we are today.

This is highly intriguing. What makes you think that, given the extinction of Neanderthals (almost definitely due to weaker, smaller homo sapiens intrusion on their territory during the Ice Age), they were also smarter than homo sapiens?
It would seem to me that intelligence was the only advantage homo sapiens had in that context.
I'd concur with you that we are CURRENTLY becoming less intelligent (in the last few decades), due to the eradication of the link between genetic selection for beneficial traits, as a result of explosive population, caused by better hygiene and nutrition.
But 200,000 years ago? What makes you think that?