Key Human Characteristics

There are some pretty staggering leaps of logic here. Not unlike our monkey forbears leaping from branch to branch high above the ground, actually.

Note that tree climbing and leaping from branch to branch is just as likely to lead to dextrous hands and opposable thumbs as some sort of divine predestination for tool-making (or whatever it is you're positing here). Ditto with binocular vision: yes, predators have it, skittish terrestrial prey animals don't, but those aren't the _only_ factors; again, there are lots of arboreal herbivores that have both eyes firmly planted on the front of their faces, for obvious reasons.

Our eyes are high off the ground for an animal of our weight... um, okay. But how does this tie in with your larger argument? Note that any number of 1-ounce birds regularly hoist their eyes to far higher positions. That might be an absurd response to your underlying point, but since you don't state what that point is, it's hard to know if that's the case.

On the subject of birds, our exceptionally far-seeing eyes (and/or the eye-brain combination you are touting as a key human characteristic) are inferior to those of many birds. Birds' brains aren't nearly as large as humans', it's true, but again, since you don't actually go into detail about just why it's so wondrous that we can see so far or with such high resolution, it's hard to know how your underlying premise is affected by the many other species that surpass us in those areas.

Large parts of our huge brains are devoted to sight, recognition, and language: well, okay. But I don't notice anything to indicate you've done any actual investigation of the subject beyond the aforementioned leaping to conclusions. Most other organisms on the planet are miniscule compared to humans, of course, making the relative hugeness of our brains a little less remarkable in and of itself, unless you're writing a paean to bigness per se. And yeah, the human brain is relatively large, even for our body mass, but there _are_ bigger brains on the planet.

Our communication and cooperation abilities are far beyond those of any other creatures? Again, I'd have an easier time giving your argument a hearing if I'd seen any sign that you had even a casually interested layman's knowledge of ethology. Other animals certainly cooperate, both with and without the presence of big brains. Some of them also recognize other individuals by sight (though why recognizing other individuals by sight, as opposed to by smell or sound or some other sense, would be deemed inherently superior is hard for me to figure out).

Many of the same marine mammals that outrank us in the brain-size comparison are possessed of complex communication skills, including human-equivalent development of brain structures apparently devoted to the task. True, we haven't succeeded in decoding their communications, but it's hard for me to see how that fact argues in favor of, rather than against, our brains' inherent superiority.

"And since we can recognize individuals on sight and use tools together there's really no animal on earth that can come close to competing with us." Well, that's certainly a dramatic summing up of your argument. But it's hard to evaluate your statement without a definition of what you mean by "competing."

Let's see. We might reasonably define "competing" as: "succeeding in existing on the planet for a long time in an essentially unchanged form." Species longevity, let's call it. Unfortunately, humans don't do too well by that standard. Silverfish, without much to speak of in terms of brains, vision, tool-use, or complex societies, have existed essentially unchanged on the planet for 300 million years -- roughly 100 times longer than humans have.

Hm. How about number of individuals living at any given time? Oops. Our bigness works against us there. If you were to rank all the species on earth by number of individuals currently living, humans would probably be down in the low single digits, percentile-wise.

Or maybe you mean that, one-on-one, a properly tool-equipped human can kill any other single non-human organism on the planet. Sort of a "WWF cagematch" approach to defining interspecies competition. I don't know, though. Seems to me a single AIDS virus, without benefit of tools, brain, vision, or even a metabolism, can occasionally out-compete us in that sense.

I can't help thinking that, when you get right down to it, your definition of "competing" is stacked in humanity's favor. Basically, you've looked at our own species in far more detail than any other, and are just tremendously impressed with our attributes. So without bothering to make a similar study of the rest of the planet's life, you declare us the victors in a grand contest for awesomeness, choosing as criteria all those characteristics that impress you the most about humans.

Such species-ism isn't anything new, of course. It forms the thematic heart of the Biblical creation myth, for example. Going by the hint of your first-sentence reference to "the origin of human life," I'm guessing that a defense of that myth's accuracy (in at least a thematic, if not a literal, sense) is part of your motivation in posting this item. If so, then certainly, more power to you in your belief. I don't think that belief could survive intact if you were willing to examine actual evidence, though. That debate took place in the scientific community a couple of centuries ago, and your side was unable to (ahem) compete.

But as long as you're willing to be extremely selective in the data you look at, and focus more on the object of your affection than the larger world to which you're comparing it, then yeah, us humans are pretty awesome. Because we _are_ remarkable. We're just not unique in that sense.

JC: I actually wasn't making any particular arguement at all, which is why I didn't bother to give any support for my assertions. I was merely outlining some of the key reasons why humans are the dominant species on the planet. And how is that defined? Everything else exists at our sufferance.

As for your critique of communication in general, that's what my PhD research is in and there's nothing that comes close to human language.

Huh. I thought you were working on a degree in computer science, and that your dissertation related to constructing a computer-based simulation in which autonomous agents developed and displayed characteristics of communication. That seems fairly far from implying expertise in biological sciences generally or animal communications specifically, but to the extent you actually have a significant academic background in subjects like biology, zoology, or animal behavior, please accept my apologies.

In that case, though, I'm curious about something. In the past I thought I'd noticed you using language that implied you hold sympathetic views toward those who challenge evolutionary theory, and who posit creationist-leaning alternatives like "intelligent design." Was I wrong about that?

I've always thought it would be really hard for someone to both be educated at a college level in the biological sciences and still find such alternative theories at all compelling. I'd be interested in hearing where you stand on all that, and how you arrived at your views.

But either way, sorry to jump to erroneous conclusions.

Well my cat can smell yogurt from another room, can jump 7 times her height, and never needs a bath.

Human beings are currently dominant on earth for the same reason the Hell's Angels have dominated Oakland street life, in areas not controlled by black gangs, for years. Because they're bad and willing to prove it on anything that gets in their way. Bad in the sense of tough and unafraid. As far as the moral aspects of being bad, that means nothing in the jungle and it means nothing on the street. Inside some people's homes right and wrong can be very important, as long as they're tough enough or connected enough to defend those homes. As a species we're tough enough to impose our morality on the entire planet, and guess what? The flaws in it take on an exaggeration of scale.
Right and wrong mean nothing to glacier ice, or water.

Wow this is new. Human beings that hate their own species? Actually I guess it's not, but it is sad to see how a post about the pretty cool features human beings have that make us successful becomes a spring board for self-loathing. well I guess some people can't take joy in the mysteries and wonder of our biology. It's sad really.

Here's a quibble: What do you mean when you say that we're the dominant species? I would think that the relevent measure of species success would be its long-term suvivability. On that scale, lots of lower life forms would seem to be ahead of us. Cockroaches come to mind, and probably some nematode species.

Maybe you mean dominant in terms of ability to kill or extinguish. On that score, too, the cockroaches are quite safe from us, as are virtually all of the lower animals.

I can only think of one species-neutral way in which we could be said to be dominant or superior to other species: We will likely eventually be able to leave Earth and establish self-sustaining colonies elsewhere, thereby spreading our odds of survival and outlasting the Sun's eventual extinction. But then, if we ever do settle other planets, we will probably take plenty of cockroaches and nematodes along with us---whether we intend to or not.

(I'm not trying to make any profound point here. Just having some fun with Michael's premises.)

In a certain sense, humans are a "dominant species" in regards to the influences we exert upon the rest of life. Never before in the Earth's history (as far as I know) has a species been able to (or if your a skeptic, at least the possiblity) alter global weather patterns.

You are all idiots.

Our eyes may not be as good as an eagles, etc. But we are, at the moment, the dominant species on this earth. Our communication capabilities both long term (thru books, media, etc.) and one on one are the best we know of.

SO WHAT