I'm so very glad I don't feel compelled to prove chimpanzees and humans are not related. Trying to reconcile that belief with the world around me would drive me crazy.
Consider:
1) If you were in Africa, and needed a transfusion but no one around had your type O blood, no problem. Just find a chimpanzee with type O blood. Problem solved.
2) Chimpanzees have been put into studies where they've had to do simple math in order to solve a problem. They did the math and got the prize. Perhaps they can't do algebra, but then neither can I.
3) An orphaned chimpanzee, in the presence of it's deceased mother, displays unmistakable body language we humans recognize as grief. (While that may not sound extraordinary, I get the feeling this is one of those things you'd have to witness to fully grasp its significance.)
4) When chimpanzees go on a hunt, they coordinate their efforts and work as a team. So do wolves - I don't mean to say we're completely different from them either. In fact, I believe we learned our territorial behavior through our interaction with dogs (but that's another topic).
5) Chimpanzees cannot talk, but if you teach them sign language, they will learn 300 signs. From that point on, you can "talk" to them.
6) Jane Goodall has observed that with no "training" from humans, chimpanzees naturally exhibit the same body language as humans: "kissing, embracing, patting on the back, touching hands, tickling, swaggering, shaking the first, brandishing sticks, [and] hurling rocks"
7) Chimpanzees will sometimes adopt orphaned chimps not related to them.
8) One of the primary reasons chimpanzees are used for medical research is they are susceptible to *all* diseases that affect humans (though it appears they may be immune to cholera).
9) According to scientist Richard Wrangham, there are only two species of mammal in the world (out of some 5,000) "in which males live with their relatives in social groups and occasionally make trips into neighboring territories to stalk, hunt and kill members of neighboring groups." The two species that exhibit these very unique and specific behaviors are humans and chimpanzees.
10) If you think a zebra is pretty much a horse with stripes, you're reasonably correct. Those two species have 98% gene crossover, the same percentage as chimpanzees and humans.
11) When I see something I like, I invariably say "Oooo."
12) The person a mere two articles ahead of me has just posted a piece in praise of bananas.
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For further reading, click on any of the links provided above.
I am not that much into animal rights, certainly not an activist, but this has occurred to me lately - this preoccupation we humans have with preserving human life in all of its forms. Many consider the earliest pregnancy a human life worthy of protection. Unfertilized human eggs are considered, by some, also worthy of the same protection as human life. Passages in the Bible even go so far as to forbid the waste of viable semen. Others consider the death penalty immoral no matter how "evil" the condemned. War has always been decried as wicked, because of the loss of human life. With all of this concern for human life, might we not want to take a closer look at how we treat chimpanzees? How close do they have to be to being "us" before we consider certain actions against them slavery or genocide?
Just a thought to ponder as the new year begins.
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Comments: 60
Meryl, I might have thought to make that point about dolphins or squid, but I would be at least as lost in a community of chimpanzees as I would be in a community of Hungarians. Except in Hungary, I'd find someone, somewhere who spoke and Indo-European language.
I wonder what would happen if we introduced sign language into ape communities on a large scale, enabling them to carry out a "oral" tradition and pass specific discoveries from generation to generation. Unfortunately, both chimpanzees and gorillas are disappearing so fast, we may never know if that's possible. It's probably a terrible idea anyway . . .
I think all living things deserve protection from extinction.
Life is what is important. And all life is about the same.
Richard, I'd agree that if we back away and look at life from outside humanity, it's all the same. Some, the Fascists, for example would discard the prohibition against killing humans. Between you and me, that of course, is unthinkable. But when we outlaw killing we have to draw a line. I'm wondering if it isn't time for the great apes to step over the line.
Liz, I saw a PBS special on Guns, Germs and Steel. It was fascinating. So thank you for directing me to the author's consideration of man in general. I will look into it.
Dannielle, I went looking around the web for some while before putting this together. I found some speculations that were way too alarming to put in this article (maybe in a followup, but it just sounds *too* crazy, even if true).
Thank you Autumn.
Jared Diamond wrote another book, sort of a sequel to 'Guns, Germs and Steel' called 'Collapse." It analyzes the causes of failure of civilizations. The two books taken together give a vivid perspective on the rise and fall of human civilizations. Diamond repeatedly emphasizes that there is absolutely NO evidence of intellectual superiority based on race.
The closest to human species was Neanderthal man, a species which became extinct about 30,000 years ago. They walked erect. They had mastered the technology of shaping the stones into usable tools. Their brain size was larger than that of modern humans. They buried their dead. Other than humans, they are the only known species who performed certain type of rites to worship the Unknown. Their vocal chords were not as developed as those of humans. The mastery of communication by speech gave humans an edge in coordinating attacks over their competitors for the same ecosystem. Thus a gentler and brainier species was wiped out by their more brutal cousins.
Essentially he is mking future predictions based on rather starkly smooth exponential curve lines of technology growth. the most important detail, i think, is that he makes the argument that in the year two thousand, the rate at which technology was advancing was large enough that 20 years at the specific year 2000 rate are the equivelant of the entire 20th century. because of the exponential nature, by the year 2014 technology will have experienced another 20 years of that year 2000 rate, or another 20th century if you want to look at it that way. from 2014 to 2021 another 20th century. it seems it would begin to pick up at a rate humans could hardly comprehend, according to the graphs. That is where the machines who are essentially human but billions of times smarter and faster come in.
he says we tend to view the growing technology in a linear mode. We look at the last 100 years and say, wow, we have really grown. we've developed about X/year. We make a prediction that artificial intelligence might have all the capacities of a human i say, 300 more of those years, and we assume a rate of x/year over that time period. But those three hundred linear years will pass for technology by the middle of the 2020's, given that technology does not increase on the linear scale we tend to think in, but in an exponential trend.
SO. a couple predictions he makes without blinking an eye:
nanotechnology by the 2020s, including the ability to replace the nucleaus in our cells with a nanocomputer (replacing DNA with an artificial digitial system to reverse many aging processes and eliminate other errors), replace ribosomes with a nanombot who constructs the aminoacid chains (the proteins) more efficiently. this would run on a wireless network to you brain, or could be integrated into our normal elecric pulse nerve system.
by 2030 the cost to manufacture one pound laptop (though laptops wont so much remain) with the full intelligence of a human will be 1000 dollars. in 2005 when the book was written, computer intelligence was at the level of a lizard. of course, while a computer may only match human intelligence it will be orders of magnitude faster and will have the ability to essentially download knowledge from other sources. the author predicts the machines will pass a test (i forget the name) that etablishes something as fully human by 2029.
ability to grow our parts and feed them into our body without surgery
and just for hope: a benefit of the genetic revolution will be growing extremely cheap and high quality meat for starving people. Only the meat will need to be grown eliminating animal suffering.
so the ramifications of such a technology burst would obviously be a large debate surrounding what is human? What about a human who has had their heart and circulatory system fully replaced by nanobots? what about an artificial brain?
Reading this book has brought me to questing the same thing you are quetioning in this article - what about lesser forms of life? I sure as hell hope the machines will respect their roots, don't you? in 50 years, if we don't nuke our world before then, we can pretty much expect to either be trillions of times less intelligent than a machine or to become partially machines ourselves.
sorry that took so long. Your thoughts are very interesting and i think once religious people get over the hangups they have with rejecting damn good theories in favor of evidence void and unworkable ones, they will start to see the importance of protecting all life. It makes sense that our neglect of other species is essentially the same as our neglect of outgroup humans. I agree with the person above who stated that humans used to demonize the other group, but it obviously still occurs in any war and even in our refusal to help those in africa, etc. I have to think that as humans become more intelligent with the help of machines, our compassion will grow with our understanding.
That approach of takes care of the problem of blastocyst rights as well, I think.
Dolphi, there's some who think the Neantertals may have interbred with Homo Sapiens, and also that they may have had the ability to talk. It makes perfect sense that, in the absence of technology that would favor a gentler people, the brutal ones exterminated their competitors.
Thank you Martha.
John, I hope technology makes us a little smarter. I've met a great many very religious people who have no problem with the idea of evolution. They just take their religion very seriously. They believe their religion can accommodate new information, and if it can't, they change the way they think about God.
Aniko, you're right about the concern for apes being an extension of human-centric thinking. Both dolphins an octopi (sp?) are very intelligent. Suffering is often cited as a criteria for where we enact our mercy and "humanity". Very good points!
Protect them - absolutely!
Pricilla, one of the links above goes to Jane Goodall's website. She is a tireless activist. I have to confess, I have no idea, and will have to go check it out myself.
What we can do is stop threatening others of our species. Next, we can stop annihilating other species in our quest for sybaritic lifestyles. Many people would say, "Who me? I am not threatening others." But of course, they are, just by driving 10 mpg SUV's to pick up their kids, running the A/C in their houses 24/7, etc.
Somehow, we have to change that mindset. We have to convince Yuppie Mom and Joe Sixpack that EVERYTHING WE DO AFFECTS EVERYONE ON THE PLANET!
Please explain. What "certain rights" do you feel all life forms have? What "rights" do we have as humans that other life forms do not have?
The monkeys at a resort have become alcoholics. I think they said something like 80% or so were alcoholics and would steal drinks from the patrons. There was a small percentage that were "recovering alcoholics", and another small percentage that would not touch alcohol. These, however, would steal Cokes, and other soft drinks as long as their was no alcohol in it. Needless to say it was a hilarious video, and yet one that made you think. To sober up these monkeys would go a place that had kaoline mud and eat that. (Kaopectate is commonly used to settle the stomach. The monkey's use this to cleanse their systems.)
Thank you Martha!
June, I've heard of at least one instance where monkeys seemed to chew on a particular plant because they knew it had "medicinal" properties (or perhaps more accurately, it made them feel better).
Debbie, put me to work, gee . . . well, I've said I'm not really an activist . . . I want to say I'd like an end to chimpanzees in medical research, but what medical advances might not come to pass if I get my way. I'd like the nature reserves containing gorilla and chimpanzee habitat to be secure, but I don't know how to stop the neighboring peoples from hunting them for food and cutting down the trees. I'm fresh out of ideas. Jane Goodall has thought long and hard about these things and probably has great ideas. I'd be willing to give money, if I could be assured it wouldn't be spent on a blizzard of junk mail and return address stickers. . .
One of the best lectures I have attended was by Mark Hauser on animal minds. His book was an understanable and enlightening read too.
Elephants also exhibit many humanlike traits. They are very social, family oriented animals that form strong emotional bonds. I think we have to look at this (protecting chimps) as part of the bigger issue (as Bert pointed out) of how we humans occupy the earth. Selecting a few species here and there for protection only works for a short time and is more of a feel good measure for us than anything that does the species we have chosen to protect much good as a whole.
The underlying cause of this whole mess we have gotten ourselves in to is the disconnect between our actions, our lifestyle choices and its overall effect on our environment. The one greatest act you could all do to save not only chimps and their habitat, but your own own, give up your cars. Stop driving. Ride a bike, take public transportation, buy a horse, take a cab, and when all else fails, walk.
I love the sentiment of this. Lord knows, I'm all for getting along with our animal friends. I prefer to be a green man.
But what do you suggest? As the human population continues to grow we clean out natural areas to support us and our habits, then move houses and industry into the vacuums. No one is going to enforce population control on us. We've even short circuited Mother Nature's attempts at maintaining a balance.
It's a shame that this garden isn't big enough for all of us. We need to get off-planet. There's plenty of available space out there.
300 words is a good start. Thinking grows. I bet that, after time, their vocabulary will expand.
I need to eat breakfast and I'll be back to respond to the rest.
After submitting the problem to my gray drive for overnight processing, I would suggest looking for the persons doing the hunting and logging in ape habitat and provide them with opportunities that are more profitable than those that are currently doing the harm. I believe former poachers have been hired as guards in some areas. This would be a good investment of our wealth, much down the lines of what the Nature Conservancy does - they protect land the old fashioned way - they buy it.
Bill, you completed my thought. If we taught wild chipmanzees 300 words and they started to sign to one another in those words, how long would it be before they had a vocabulary of 8,000? How long would it be before they developed a system where one could pose an abstract question and the other could answer that question? Of course, for all we know, dolphins are doing that now!
Thank you all. This is a great discussion.
I believe all animals should be protected. As should be the earth. Man has trampled this planet to with in a inch of it's life.
Now about animals:
Elephants grieve and have photographic memories..the saying "An elephant never forgets" is very true. We also know that elephants are highly intelligent and understand the human language.
Dolphins, understand human speech, can do tasks and missions preciously.
they also rape and murder their own kind(not a good example but they do!)
Dogs... my favorite mammal along with wolves.. all dog people know dogs understand tons of human words(some more than others!) heck some dogs can even speak human words. Who hasn't seen Funniest animals? I have 2 dogs..I love them like family. They both saved my life... but even if they didn't they are still family.
Even if an animal can not understand a darn word we say, or do math or work a banana out of a maze, it deserves protection and understanding. All animals live on the same planet we do..the difference is we have a voice to scream out with and they don't. We have a moral obligation to protect every animal and it's home. I think humans have done enough damage and it is time to stop and take this planet back!
Who's with me??
I don't see myself out waving signs or pulling up survey stakes at a zoo construction site, but I certainly could go back to being vegetarian. I already walk to work, and the most effective means I have for making change is in writing words and music. I can also *give money*, but I think environmental groups should become more businesslike. Competence is not selling out, and getting junk mail from an environmental group sends me up the wall. The Nature Conservancy gets my vote for support, and I think other groups should subvert the business world from the inside out, and they do just that by taking land "out of production".
"How close do they have to be to being "us" before we consider certain actions against them slavery or genocide?"
Hell there are people here on gather who think moslems aren't quite human and should be "bombed out of existence." What chance does a poor chimpanzee stand?
I think that may depend on how they tend to vote.
Nontheless, I have ask, Why do we need to extend the line of what is considered 'human' to consider that organism's life worth preserving? Or rather, the interests of that animal?
It all comes down to speciesism. I will probably post something in the near future on that topic, stay tuned.
Beaver, I can see lions drinking next to zebras, because a zebra can probably hold its own. Elvis(?) . . . perhaps. I think the cat and dog example is one we can follow. There was a time when some said sheep and cattle wouldn't graze together, but that had more to do with the cattlemen . . .
Thomas, bribes get votes. And promising to bribe everyone is a great strategy, even if the candidate is lying.
Liz, thank you for adding another read recommendation. My least favorite human arrogance is the one by which we own God (oh yes that's what we think). No way does the universe revolve around us.