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Jul 6, 2015 · This is part of a two-part feature series looking at whether humans are really unique. Part one looks at the similarities between us and our closest relatives.
Sep 1, 2014 · What Makes Humans Different Than Any Other Species. The capacity to engage in shared tasks such as hunting large game and building cities may be what separated modern humans from our primate...
- Gary Stix
- Speech. No one enjoys a good gab session like humans. But why can't apes, our closest living relatives, talk like us? After all, the shape and function of the larynx and vocal tract are fairly similar across primates, comparative studies have found.
- Upright posture. Humans are unique among primates because our chief mode of locomotion is walking fully upright. This way of moving frees our hands up for using tools.
- Nakedness. We look naked compared with our hairier ape cousins. Surprisingly, however, a square inch of human skin, on average, possesses as many hair-producing follicles as a chimpanzee's (Pan troglodytes) skin, a 2018 study in the Journal of Human Evolution found.
- Clothing. Humans may be called "naked apes," but most of us wear clothing, a characteristic that makes us unique in the animal kingdom. Chimpanzees have been documented adorning themselves with items — one wild chimp wore a knotted skin "necklace" made from the leftovers of a slain red colobus monkey, a 1998 report found, while a captive chimp in Zambia started wearing grass "earrings" that she had draped over her ears, a fashion trend that spread to her fellow chimps — but these adornments didn't protect or insulate the chimps from the elements like human clothes do.
- What’s Not Unique
- What Is Unique
- Where Does This Leave Us?
In his intellectually stimulating book, Human Purpose and Transhuman Potential, Ted Chu points out that many differences between us and other mammals are differences of degree. In other words, many of our seemingly unique traits are just exaggerated versions of traits that are already identified in other mammals and animals. For instance, chimps ki...
In his book, Chu identifies three “revolutionary” traits that make us unique. Naturally, there is a decent amount of debate on this topic, but many other biologists and scientists agree with him. Symbolic abstract thinking: Very simply, this is our ability to think about objects, principles, and ideas that are not physically present. It gives us th...
Our revolutionary traits stand out even more when we take a cosmic perspective. Everything in our world, including us, is made up of stardust, clumps of matter that originated in the crucibles of stars. We are not only in the universe, but the universe is also within us. Our brains, as an extension of the universe, are now being used to understand ...
- Raya Bidshahri
Oct 7, 2015 · If many of the hallmarks of humankind can no longer be claimed as exclusive, what does this leave for our species to claim as unique, and to explain the differences between us and other life?
Nov 24, 2015 · The human brain is unique: Our remarkable cognitive capacity has allowed us to invent the wheel, build the pyramids and land on the moon. In fact, scientists sometimes refer to the human brain as...
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Gazzaniga opens the book by challenging the notion that more nerves is sufficient to explain more brain power, showing that the human brain differs from nonhuman brains in more fundamental ways...
