That was my first reaction, but pursuing knowledge for its own sake can lead to fantastic discoveries. Imagine if they found that a species that was considered the same as humans until now was actually different and from Mars or had a gene that cured cancer.
Even within the human species, knowing the genetic differences between people can effect recommended medical treatments and what diseases and disorders they are prone to.
It's much more than semantics or even knowledge for its own sake, it already has real-world consequences today.
knowledge is great. i am pro knowledge. on the other hand, arguing about the definition of an emotionally charged term such as "human" is not so great. reminds me of the argument about whether or not Pluto is a planet.
"We don't know if Neanderthals count as humans, or if chimps do, because we can't agree on the defining features of a human"
I don't think any scientist disagrees that chimps aren't humans. The issue in question here is how far back in our lineage do humans go, vs. some other species.
Given that evolution happens continuously, and not in a discreet way, it is completely impossible to objectively determine precisely when we "became" humans, something which is exacerbated by the fact that we're only looking at fossils.
Perhaps, like porn, we should not try to define it further, but there's no question that, when looking at today's existing species, you know a human when you see "it".
The book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind[1] is relevant here (which I've been reading and thoroughly enjoying recently) if anyone wanted to seek out some longer-form information on this and the topics around human evolution and development. The semantics here are really interesting to me because the book immediately points out that not too long ago there were at least 6 species of human on earth at the same time (going by homo=humans, sapiens is what distinguishes us). That concept had never been so explicitly stated to me before, and I find it really fascinating to unpeel.
That's quite a good book but I think that The Secret of Our Success did an even better job of zeroing in on what we can do that distinguishes us from other animals.
if the living being can naturally procreate with me without technological or medical assistance, and generate an offspring that can also naturally procreate upon reaching maturity, then for sure that living being is human.
I rather like that definition, whilst still being repulsed by the ideas of the experiments which might be required to accurately determine the boundaries...
As far as I know purebred standard British Bulldogs cannot reproduce without artificial insemination due to their body type making it physically impossible. Your definition would indicate that two British Bulldogs are not even part of the same species, and likely other dogs with mis-matches in physique.
It's useful in this context, after reading the BBC story kindly submitted here, to go to a webpage by a biology professor, Jerry Coyne, who literally wrote the book on speciation and definitions of species.[1] He wrote, in his webpage follow-up to a professional lecture for other biologists,[2]
"But I want to discuss briefly a shorter second piece by Gibbons in the same issue of Science, 'The species problem.' Here she brings up the controversy about whether modern humans, Neandertals, and Denisovans were members of different species or the same species. This question is far more important in dealing with humans than, say, with fruit flies, simply because there were far fewer types of hominins, and anthropologists’ careers depend on whether or not they name a new species. That’s why there are so many species names in the hominin family tree—names that turn on characters as tiny as a few millimeters in the measurement of a tooth. It’s likely that, several million years ago, three or four species of hominin did exist at the same time—and maybe at the same place—giving rise to fanciful scenarios about war and (especially) inter-group mating. . . .
"But that was more than a million years ago. What about the more modern groups of Homo, like Neandertals? According to Ernst Mayr’s biological species concept, which Gibbons describes, individuals are members of the same species if they can mate with each other when they encounter each other in nature, and, critically, produce fertile, viable hybrids. If they can’t, then there must exist genetic barriers to mixing of genes, the so-called 'reproductive isolating barriers' that maintain the integrity of species."
With that issue clarified, we see that anthropologists who find bones in the ground will always have incentive to be "splitters," identifying more rather than fewer species, and the only way to resolve how many species there were is to figure out which ancient hominids could mate and produce viable offspring who in turn could mate again and again produce viable offspring for more generations.
Studies of ancient DNA used to be impossible. It was a big breakthrough the first time an Egyptian mummy (plainly a modern human) had its DNA sequenced. The DNA sequencing of a Neanderthal[3] was a further breakthrough. It's plain now that Neanderthals and "modern humans" were part of the same biological species. The usual reckoning is that any modern human with traceable ancestry to Europe or to Asia probably has genes and gene combinations characteristic of Neanderthals, which have since spread further all over the world.
We are all closely related, and we are related to a great variety of ancient human fossil samples. Where human artifacts and cultural ideas travel, human genes travel, and we are all much more "mixed" and interrelated than people imagined even a decade ago.[4]
Needs more politics. Not even kidding. Enormous arguments over nothing can be very superficially covered by journalists, but the real, dramatic story is someone might get kicked out of some human studies department or funding grant or chair because fossil XYZ is, or is not, a human fossil. Or someone is agitating for, or against, a department schism creating a new "almost but not really human" department of studies with the right or wrong person as highly paid chair of course in competition with the legacy department. Or someone's tenure depends on rabble rousing enough to get publicity to be seen as relevant. Or someone's hiring or tenure has to be denied for various acceptable or unacceptable demographic membership reasons or maybe just trivialities (this is academics after all) and they need a highly dramatic cover story. Maybe some public museum only gets financial funding for "human fossils" and there's a condo developer eyeing that block of land for redevelopment, and it sure would be convenient if the money dried up.
There's probably a real dramatic story underneath the argument, but the journalist somehow managed to miss it.
> Either way, [Linnæus's choice of words implied that humans are fundamentally different from everything else … It is an understandable mistake …
Ummm, I'm pretty sure that it wasn't a mistake. Human beings are fundamentally different from anything else on this planet. If you seek a proof, look around.
Just because we crafted the shoe, doesn't mean we'll make a foot fit in it. "Humanity" is more of an abstract concept that science is usually comfortable with. I think we should look for things to define, and create a word rather than create a word, and then figure out how to define it.
I was always under the impression that species are separated over whether they can breed together successfully or not.
I honestly didn't think it needed to be such a big debate and thought this was long settled. "Can they interbreed?" and if the answer is no, it's a different species.
It makes sense, but how are you going to test that? I'm not sure we are even able to figure out from fossil (DNA) records if various specimens could interbreed.
That was my thought too, if I had to venture a guess as prolific as people are, any species that we could have interbred with are already part of us and you'd be able to find it on the genome just as we have neanderthals.
That's probably the best way at this point to test for it, if it's there or not.
As a thought experiment, if you imagine ring species in time almost anything can "breed" with almost anything else.
Eg each human can breed with a human in the previous generation. Each chimp can breed with a chimp in the previous generation. Right back to their common ancestor.
As long as there's a common ancestor, there should be a viable chain to be followed in most cases.
These definitions are only effective at referring to "species, in the present day" even if you ignore ring species. Everyone is always the same species as their parents. Apparent "different species" in human ancestry are simply artefacts of the missing data in the fossil history.
It's not so much can they interbreed, but do they interbreed in "normal" situations. Dogs and wolves can interbreed, but generally do not. But despite the ability for dogs and wolves to interbreed, we consider them different species.
Presumably, this is one way in which speciation happens. You have a group. Some members of the group start adapting one way, some another way. All the while, interbreeding is possible. Eventually, the behavioral differences become great enough that even though interbreeding is possible, it tends not to happen. The two groups, which generally do not interbreed, will continue adapting and experiencing genetic drift. Over a long enough time, the groups may diverge enough that they no longer can interbreed.
The separation can happen because of one part of the group going after a different ecological niche (such as with dogs). Or the groups can end up being separated geographically.
If we defined "species" to only be if they can interbreed, we would miss this distinction between dogs and wolves (and other species). And it's a useful distinction: dogs and wolves have different behaviors, and if we did not call them different species, we would have to invent a new word and classification to capture the difference. This does mean that it is quite difficult, and perhaps even impossible, to pin-point the exact moment when a new "species" arises. That may seem arbitrary, which it is. We impose our orderly classification system on the disorder of evolution. If we did not, we could not reason about it.
> Consider the following: imagine that you assembled a gathering of all your ancestors in the male line for say, the past two million years. Let's say, for illustrative purposes, that the gap between each generation is twenty years. So you'd have 5 people to represent a century - you, your father, your grandfather, your great-grandfather, and your great-great grandfather. That makes 50 people per millennium, 500 people per ten thousand years, 5,000 people per hundred thousand years, and 50,000 people per million years. So two million years of ancestry gets you 100,000 people, the size of a small city, or about enough people to fit in the Rose Bowl stadium.
> So really, not that many people in the grand scheme of things. Now line all those people up in order going all the way back to the first guy, who we'll just call Adam. The difference between Adam N and Adam N+1 is very small. There's no point at which you can say "Adam N is this species and Adam N+1 is that other species." But there's a hell of difference between you and Adam.
We can have a useful handwavy definition of "species", but there's never going to be a way to define the word in such a way that you can always filter every organism that ever lived into one clear bucket or another.
Lots of species can interbreed. Are lions and tigers the same species? OK, maybe we can modify that and say "with fertile offspring." But sometimes the offspring are fertile among couplings we would say are definitely interspecies. For example, some mules are actually fertile!
On the other hand, there's species that are very genetically similar that can't interbreed. And there's species that are very genetically similar that simply don't interbreed or maybe can't without human intervention. (Silly example: teacup breed of dog and huge breed of dog.)
For basically every definition of species you can think of, nature will throw an example at you that makes it look kind of silly. I suppose you could just deal with the silliness, put your foot down, and say "lions and tigers are the same species, deal with it." But what if something like the humanzee is proven possible? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanzee#Feasibility)
- Ring species. A can mate with B, and B with C, but A cannot mate with C
- How do you test it? What about the case where A and B can in molecular terms reproduce (ie the sperm and egg make a viable fetus by IVF) but they can't come together naturally because there's some behavioural issue (different mating rituals)?
- What about things that don't have sexual reproduction?
The fuller generally accepted definition (which Amezarak noted) is to tack on "with fertile offspring." Tigers and lions can breed, but the resulting liger can't reproduce, so lions and tigers aren't the same species.
This is very similar to a problem in linguistics (and in some ways "is" a linguistics problem).
You can define what an acorn is, and you can define a tree, but when does an acorn become a tree? Same with baldness. Everyone can identify a bald person and likewise someone who isn't bald, but when do you go from not bald to bald? This incidentally is part of the fundamental debate about abortion (when does a fetus become a child?).
And it is the same here -- we can define a human and "not human" but we're having trouble defining exactly when it goes from one to the next.
I'm not a big fan of defining objects by their opposites. Derrida argues exactly this in Deconstruction, but it's fairly useless in deriving meaning.
I believe Frege had it right by observing that there is a sense and reference to each and every word or concept. It's not sufficient enough to derive meaning from referential labels; context always matters more.
I saw the linguistics connection as being that distinguishing one genus/species from another is a very similar problem to distinguishing one language/dialect from another. In both cases the population of organisms or of language users doesn't break apart into disjoint subsets naturally---nobody has a label within them saying "homo sapiens" or "Farsi speaker". These distinctions are artificially imposed and ultimately arbitrary.
I'm more interested in who we classify as people. Remember, the word person comes from persona, meaning an actor's mask.
In 2014 it was discovered that a species of Long-finned pilot whales (a type of dolphin) has more neocortical neurons than humans by a factor of two! The neocortex is an area of the brain associated with language and conscious thought.
Do these dolphins count as people? Should we afford them "human" rights? What about other species?
The pig you eat has the same amount of neurons in her cerebral cortex as your cat and dog put together. The cow, more than all three put together. Are they people?
Trying to define personhood using any sort of scientific analysis is a dangerous road that was/is used to justify horrific acts of racism, violence, and subjugation, including Social Darwinism in the early 1900s, and the eugenics movement that followed.
I can think of no objective testable definition of person which is both meaningful (i.e. non-trivial) and not horrific for corner cases or those that would be excluded.
I know this wasn't your intention because you're using it to grant personhood to more entities but the implications aren't great regardless.
No, this is the wrong approach. The object is not to define personhood through some objective set of criteria which can then be used to justify evil; it's to use our observations about the world to arrive at a broader and more humane outlook.
The argument itself is wrong as well. If some method X is used for evil, it does not mean X is intrinsically evil.
This is essentially the same flawed argument that's used against many areas of science.
This debate does not even scratch surface. And I find it bit unsettling.
Most Europeans could claim Neanderthal ancestry, because they shared genes. Question if Neanderthals were human is not even theoretical.
Last Neanderthals walked 35K BC. There are tribes which were isolated for 50K or more years. In theory they have a huge genetic difference, also their morphological difference is big, Does that mean they are separate species? Species are often recognized by their shape rather than genes, for example grizzly and polar bear have practically identical genes.
And great apes? I find it insensible to make them humans, when 50% world population does not have even basic human rights. In Western Countries dogs have more rights than many people.
Bet lets assume that great apes are humans. Does it mean they have legal obligations? Could chimpanzee go to prison for torturing animals (bush babies). What if gang of chimpanzee kills other human?
EDIT: For the record, this was said to be Plato's definition of a human after Diogenes (probably my favorite philosopher/practical joker) brought in a plucked chicken and called it a "man" in response to Plato's original definition of humans as "Featherless bipeds"
I think our difficulty comes from the fact that we are unable to admit how exceptional we are. There is a fad at the moment, and it's been ongoing for a century or more, to assign a degree of banality to the biological classification of the human race.
The obvious problem we all have with this is that we are the ones doing the assigning. I'm reading articles like this on a machine designed and built by humans with, if nothing else, the ability to process mathematical equations at a speed far beyond any normal human ability. We do things that are so obviously exceptional and unique that to classify us alongside chimpanzees due to DNA similarities strikes us all as absurd (because it is).
When the article points out that you wouldn't assign a separate genus to an animal just because it uses tools, they're missing the fact that the difference between a bird using a stick to fetch a seed and one that doesn't is absurdly simplistic relative to LANDING ON THE F--KING MOON. At some point, perhaps something that doesn't factor in for other animals should be factored in for us due to the extreme amounts of difference between my DVR recorder and the special rock a chimp uses break open a nut.
To me, this comes across as biological tunnel vision. Since the differences between other animals fall into simpler categories like appearance and genetics, biologists don't want to introduce something like "behavior" into the mix for fear of it complicating the process. The problem is that in the case of homo sapiens, behavior is an unbelievably big deal.
Interestingly, neither you nor I can likely design a DVR or go to the moon. The difference between us and other apes is, we can cooperate by the thousands/millions to get something done. Maybe that's the critical difference.
If you one starts to look at the things we do as a classification, then it gets very messy very fast.
I work on magic boxes all day and construct intangible realities that spit out numbers. Am I still the same group as a member of a tribe untouched by modern civilization in the depths of the Amazon?
What about the same group as Kelly Johnson? Tim Berners-Lee? Vint Cerf? Jack Kilby or Robert Noyce? GalileoPascalNewtonFranklinEulerFourierMaxwellCurie? MandelaDeKlerkMLKGandi?
It seems pretty presumptuous to say "we (as a pan-global diaspora) have achieved great things, therefore we are all special."
If not all then how can we as a race be special? I'd say that if we lump going to the moon onto our collective accolades, so do we lump the Holocaust and various other genocides.
My personal opinion, but it seems like there's a desire to overstate our differences with "other animals." Which generally seems like a prelude to exterminating them without feeling bad about it / trashing the environment / generally believing in our manifest destiny and right to same as humans. But that's my personal opinion.
I think you're reading more into my assertion than what was there. Don't assume that superiority gives us the right to abuse (I would argue quite the opposite) and don't assume that regarding ourselves as equal to other forms of life will somehow lead to virtuous behavior (I would argue the opposite here as well). However, those are debates of their own.
I think a good reply to that would be how much of the extreme human accomplishment can we call genetic? Could Neanderthals or primitive species in our lineage have accomplished this level of ingenuity given certain circumstances? Are our accomplishments really because of the currents state of our DNA, or because of a strange set of circumstances that allowed us to use our physical makeup to build cars rather than hunt tigers? If so, which other species were likely capable of this, but never had the means to build on it the way our culture has? Then, on the flip side, it's not even clear that many cultures we think of as members of humanity today would have landed on the (f--king) moon. I can see how it's not so obvious who, past and present, should even be considered members of this exceptional intelligence club.
I know! In the past, whites are called "human". Now, rich people are called "human". I am also colored and I am not a racist. Every century has its own definition on the word, "human", no matter in biology or sociology.
58 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadIt's much more than semantics or even knowledge for its own sake, it already has real-world consequences today.
As far as the cancer thing goes, scientists are already studying genes from a lot of non-human animals.
I don't think any scientist disagrees that chimps aren't humans. The issue in question here is how far back in our lineage do humans go, vs. some other species.
Given that evolution happens continuously, and not in a discreet way, it is completely impossible to objectively determine precisely when we "became" humans, something which is exacerbated by the fact that we're only looking at fossils.
Perhaps, like porn, we should not try to define it further, but there's no question that, when looking at today's existing species, you know a human when you see "it".
[1] http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0062316095/ref=s9_simh_gw...
http://smile.amazon.com/Secret-Our-Success-Evolution-Domesti...
"But I want to discuss briefly a shorter second piece by Gibbons in the same issue of Science, 'The species problem.' Here she brings up the controversy about whether modern humans, Neandertals, and Denisovans were members of different species or the same species. This question is far more important in dealing with humans than, say, with fruit flies, simply because there were far fewer types of hominins, and anthropologists’ careers depend on whether or not they name a new species. That’s why there are so many species names in the hominin family tree—names that turn on characters as tiny as a few millimeters in the measurement of a tooth. It’s likely that, several million years ago, three or four species of hominin did exist at the same time—and maybe at the same place—giving rise to fanciful scenarios about war and (especially) inter-group mating. . . .
"But that was more than a million years ago. What about the more modern groups of Homo, like Neandertals? According to Ernst Mayr’s biological species concept, which Gibbons describes, individuals are members of the same species if they can mate with each other when they encounter each other in nature, and, critically, produce fertile, viable hybrids. If they can’t, then there must exist genetic barriers to mixing of genes, the so-called 'reproductive isolating barriers' that maintain the integrity of species."
With that issue clarified, we see that anthropologists who find bones in the ground will always have incentive to be "splitters," identifying more rather than fewer species, and the only way to resolve how many species there were is to figure out which ancient hominids could mate and produce viable offspring who in turn could mate again and again produce viable offspring for more generations.
Studies of ancient DNA used to be impossible. It was a big breakthrough the first time an Egyptian mummy (plainly a modern human) had its DNA sequenced. The DNA sequencing of a Neanderthal[3] was a further breakthrough. It's plain now that Neanderthals and "modern humans" were part of the same biological species. The usual reckoning is that any modern human with traceable ancestry to Europe or to Asia probably has genes and gene combinations characteristic of Neanderthals, which have since spread further all over the world.
We are all closely related, and we are related to a great variety of ancient human fossil samples. Where human artifacts and cultural ideas travel, human genes travel, and we are all much more "mixed" and interrelated than people imagined even a decade ago.[4]
[1] Speciation by Jerry A. Coyne and H. Allen Orr
http://www.sinauer.com/speciation.html
[2] "How many species of humans were there?"
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/how-many...
[3] http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/ancient-dna-and...
[4] "Towards a new history and geography of human genes informed by ancient DNA"
http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2014/03/21/003517.f...
This, I think, is really the crux of the matter. The process of answering the titular question has more to do with economics than biology.
There's probably a real dramatic story underneath the argument, but the journalist somehow managed to miss it.
Ummm, I'm pretty sure that it wasn't a mistake. Human beings are fundamentally different from anything else on this planet. If you seek a proof, look around.
Definitions (by definition!) cannot be "correct" or "incorrect". They can only be more useful or less useful.
I honestly didn't think it needed to be such a big debate and thought this was long settled. "Can they interbreed?" and if the answer is no, it's a different species.
That's probably the best way at this point to test for it, if it's there or not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
Eg each human can breed with a human in the previous generation. Each chimp can breed with a chimp in the previous generation. Right back to their common ancestor.
As long as there's a common ancestor, there should be a viable chain to be followed in most cases.
Presumably, this is one way in which speciation happens. You have a group. Some members of the group start adapting one way, some another way. All the while, interbreeding is possible. Eventually, the behavioral differences become great enough that even though interbreeding is possible, it tends not to happen. The two groups, which generally do not interbreed, will continue adapting and experiencing genetic drift. Over a long enough time, the groups may diverge enough that they no longer can interbreed.
The separation can happen because of one part of the group going after a different ecological niche (such as with dogs). Or the groups can end up being separated geographically.
If we defined "species" to only be if they can interbreed, we would miss this distinction between dogs and wolves (and other species). And it's a useful distinction: dogs and wolves have different behaviors, and if we did not call them different species, we would have to invent a new word and classification to capture the difference. This does mean that it is quite difficult, and perhaps even impossible, to pin-point the exact moment when a new "species" arises. That may seem arbitrary, which it is. We impose our orderly classification system on the disorder of evolution. If we did not, we could not reason about it.
No we don't? Domestic dogs and most wolves fall under Canis lupus, they're differentiated as a subspecies level but they're the same species.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10478762
In particular, take this example:
> Consider the following: imagine that you assembled a gathering of all your ancestors in the male line for say, the past two million years. Let's say, for illustrative purposes, that the gap between each generation is twenty years. So you'd have 5 people to represent a century - you, your father, your grandfather, your great-grandfather, and your great-great grandfather. That makes 50 people per millennium, 500 people per ten thousand years, 5,000 people per hundred thousand years, and 50,000 people per million years. So two million years of ancestry gets you 100,000 people, the size of a small city, or about enough people to fit in the Rose Bowl stadium.
> So really, not that many people in the grand scheme of things. Now line all those people up in order going all the way back to the first guy, who we'll just call Adam. The difference between Adam N and Adam N+1 is very small. There's no point at which you can say "Adam N is this species and Adam N+1 is that other species." But there's a hell of difference between you and Adam.
We can have a useful handwavy definition of "species", but there's never going to be a way to define the word in such a way that you can always filter every organism that ever lived into one clear bucket or another.
Lots of species can interbreed. Are lions and tigers the same species? OK, maybe we can modify that and say "with fertile offspring." But sometimes the offspring are fertile among couplings we would say are definitely interspecies. For example, some mules are actually fertile!
On the other hand, there's species that are very genetically similar that can't interbreed. And there's species that are very genetically similar that simply don't interbreed or maybe can't without human intervention. (Silly example: teacup breed of dog and huge breed of dog.)
For basically every definition of species you can think of, nature will throw an example at you that makes it look kind of silly. I suppose you could just deal with the silliness, put your foot down, and say "lions and tigers are the same species, deal with it." But what if something like the humanzee is proven possible? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanzee#Feasibility)
- Ring species. A can mate with B, and B with C, but A cannot mate with C
- How do you test it? What about the case where A and B can in molecular terms reproduce (ie the sperm and egg make a viable fetus by IVF) but they can't come together naturally because there's some behavioural issue (different mating rituals)?
- What about things that don't have sexual reproduction?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger#Fertility
So all your ancestors count as the same species. And all their descendents count as the same species. So there is a single species.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem
You can define what an acorn is, and you can define a tree, but when does an acorn become a tree? Same with baldness. Everyone can identify a bald person and likewise someone who isn't bald, but when do you go from not bald to bald? This incidentally is part of the fundamental debate about abortion (when does a fetus become a child?).
And it is the same here -- we can define a human and "not human" but we're having trouble defining exactly when it goes from one to the next.
I believe Frege had it right by observing that there is a sense and reference to each and every word or concept. It's not sufficient enough to derive meaning from referential labels; context always matters more.
In 2014 it was discovered that a species of Long-finned pilot whales (a type of dolphin) has more neocortical neurons than humans by a factor of two! The neocortex is an area of the brain associated with language and conscious thought.
Do these dolphins count as people? Should we afford them "human" rights? What about other species?
The pig you eat has the same amount of neurons in her cerebral cortex as your cat and dog put together. The cow, more than all three put together. Are they people?
I can think of no objective testable definition of person which is both meaningful (i.e. non-trivial) and not horrific for corner cases or those that would be excluded.
I know this wasn't your intention because you're using it to grant personhood to more entities but the implications aren't great regardless.
The argument itself is wrong as well. If some method X is used for evil, it does not mean X is intrinsically evil.
This is essentially the same flawed argument that's used against many areas of science.
Most Europeans could claim Neanderthal ancestry, because they shared genes. Question if Neanderthals were human is not even theoretical.
Last Neanderthals walked 35K BC. There are tribes which were isolated for 50K or more years. In theory they have a huge genetic difference, also their morphological difference is big, Does that mean they are separate species? Species are often recognized by their shape rather than genes, for example grizzly and polar bear have practically identical genes.
And great apes? I find it insensible to make them humans, when 50% world population does not have even basic human rights. In Western Countries dogs have more rights than many people.
Bet lets assume that great apes are humans. Does it mean they have legal obligations? Could chimpanzee go to prison for torturing animals (bush babies). What if gang of chimpanzee kills other human?
Featherless biped with broad flat nails.
lol
EDIT: For the record, this was said to be Plato's definition of a human after Diogenes (probably my favorite philosopher/practical joker) brought in a plucked chicken and called it a "man" in response to Plato's original definition of humans as "Featherless bipeds"
The obvious problem we all have with this is that we are the ones doing the assigning. I'm reading articles like this on a machine designed and built by humans with, if nothing else, the ability to process mathematical equations at a speed far beyond any normal human ability. We do things that are so obviously exceptional and unique that to classify us alongside chimpanzees due to DNA similarities strikes us all as absurd (because it is).
When the article points out that you wouldn't assign a separate genus to an animal just because it uses tools, they're missing the fact that the difference between a bird using a stick to fetch a seed and one that doesn't is absurdly simplistic relative to LANDING ON THE F--KING MOON. At some point, perhaps something that doesn't factor in for other animals should be factored in for us due to the extreme amounts of difference between my DVR recorder and the special rock a chimp uses break open a nut.
To me, this comes across as biological tunnel vision. Since the differences between other animals fall into simpler categories like appearance and genetics, biologists don't want to introduce something like "behavior" into the mix for fear of it complicating the process. The problem is that in the case of homo sapiens, behavior is an unbelievably big deal.
I work on magic boxes all day and construct intangible realities that spit out numbers. Am I still the same group as a member of a tribe untouched by modern civilization in the depths of the Amazon?
What about the same group as Kelly Johnson? Tim Berners-Lee? Vint Cerf? Jack Kilby or Robert Noyce? GalileoPascalNewtonFranklinEulerFourierMaxwellCurie? MandelaDeKlerkMLKGandi?
It seems pretty presumptuous to say "we (as a pan-global diaspora) have achieved great things, therefore we are all special."
My personal opinion, but it seems like there's a desire to overstate our differences with "other animals." Which generally seems like a prelude to exterminating them without feeling bad about it / trashing the environment / generally believing in our manifest destiny and right to same as humans. But that's my personal opinion.