Reconnect With Nature Blog

Are We Unique?

     I recently read an editorial in the 03 March 2007 New Scientist that had the title, “We're not unique, just at one end of the spectrum.” The editorial pointed out that humans were long thought to be unique in their skills and accomplishments. Now, however, a variety of animals has been shown to use tools, to have some if not all of the elements of language, and to have cultural transmission of information. The editorial concludes that we are not unique, and this lack of uniqueness should give us more connectedness with all of life.

     I applaud the editorial. I think that this is an excellent re-orientation to our thinking. In the 1970s, humans were considered to be unique because we of all animals could make tools. Then along came Jane Goodall’s studies of chimps who could fashion tools that could be used to scoop termites out of their mounds. Suddenly there was a plethora of examples of animals using tools, including examples now of chimps using spears to hunt gazelles.

     Then in the 1980s, human were considered unique because we had culture, defined as information transmitted by learning from one generation to the next. But John Tyler Bonner’s book, The Evolution of Culture in Animals, showed that a number of animals could transmit information as well to other generations. The uniqueness of culture fell by the wayside.

     In the 1990s, language was considered to be just about the last bastion that separated us from the rest of the animal world. But then a variety of studies started to show that animals also had language. Vervet monkeys, Diana monkeys, and Campbell’s monkeys had different words for different predators. And lest you think that only primates were capable of this, studies have shown that prairie dogs have most of the design features found in human languages, and chickens have different calls for aerial and terrestrial predators.

     But I would like to add a word of caution about the interpretation that we humans are at one end of the spectrum. That smacks of the Aristotelian Scala Naturae or the Great Chain of Being, in which all animals were ranked in a linear chain, with humans (of course) at the top and the amoebas at the bottom. The Scala Naturae provided the justification for assuming that monkeys were incomplete copies of humans, and cats, dogs, rodents, and pigeons could be used to find out how humans learn and react physiologically. Yes, we all are related evolutionarily, and we all have certain evolutionary commonalities. But we each have our own species-specific differences, and if we humans were not writing with our anthropocentric perspective, it might be difficult to know where the end of the spectrum might lie.

     In fact, I argue that there is no end to the spectrum. We humans do some things extraordinarily well. But there are other things that we can’t do. We can’t hear in the ultrasonic range, the way that bats and dolphins can, and we cannot use ultrasonic information to form “mental pictures” of the objects that are out there in complete darkness. We can’t generate electricity the way that electric eels can, nor can we hear subsonic sounds the way that elephants can. We can’t even spread our wings and fly the way that a dragonfly can.

     Nature is a collection of unique species. Certainly, there are evolutionary connections, but there are specialized adaptations as well, that make every single animal and plant species unique. And where we draw the end of the spectrum depends on our point of view. Perhaps a better interpretation might be a cloud of points, like stars in our universe, with some points closer to others depending on their evolutionary connections, and no end to the spectrum, just like there is no end to the universe.

All Life Is Special

A few days ago, a story on NPR said that college students were more narcissistic and self-centered than they were in the past.  A recent study (see link) found that students’ scores have consistently risen on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory test since 1982. The study suggested that this might be due to teaching children that they are special, and further suggested that children who think that they are special will have less empathy for others. 

Not having seen the actual study, I cannot comment on the details. However, it seems to me that having children think that they are special should not be a problem.  After all, every human being on this earth is special, in that no one has exactly the same genetic makeup. Each individual is unique, and in that sense is special. No one has exactly the same talents, beliefs, motivations, and appearance as any other human (identical twins perhaps come closest to this).

However, forgetting that each individual is unique, we often make broad generalizations about people and their behavior. At the extreme of this is the categorization of people into stereotyped groups or populations.

This kind of thinking carries over to the way that some people view animals. Some wildlife managers and other biologists think of animals not as individuals, but as populations.  I have had biologists tell me that individual animals do not matter, that it is the population that matters, so there is no point in trying to save or rescue single animals.  On this basis, some people feel free to “cull” animals to preserve the population, or to exterminate groups of animals as long as the populations are not seriously affected.

But whether they live or die matters to individual animals. Just as all humans are unique, so is every animal.  And all life wants to live.

People thinking of themselves as being special might be a good trend. Rather than having less empathy, perhaps children who are raised feeling special about themselves might have more empathy for others who are also special. If they think of themselves as special, perhaps they will realize that all living things on this Earth are also special, and deserve to live.