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Oct 19, 2023 · There are a number of things that make us human and separate us from animals. One is our ability to self-analyze and engage in mental time travel. We can also imagine different scenarios and reason abstractly. Additionally, we have established cultures with rules and moral codes. Finally, our brain functions allow us to learn rapidly and make ...
- Timeline of Human Evolution
Sahelanthropus tchadensis (Image Credit: Flickr) Orrorin...
- Does Brain Size Matter
ScienceABC.com has been started with the sole objective of...
- Timeline of Human Evolution
Sep 1, 2014 · For years the prevailing view was that only humans make and use tools and are capable of reasoning using numbers and other symbols. But that idea fell by the wayside as we learned more about what ...
- 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.
- Using Tools to make tools. Because it can be so variable and must be meticulously defined, tool use in animals is a subject in this article that is the most likely to be challenged in the future.
- Cooking. Humans are the only extant animals that cook their food with fire (our ancestors, Homo erectus, did too), and even incidences of animals modifying food creatively (making a salad with vegetables, using dipping sauce, tenderize meat, ect.)
- Clothes. Humans are the only animals to wear clothes, or engage in self-ornamentation. One might say, “well animals don’t need clothes”, but human fashions exist for more complex cultural reasons other than protection from the cold.
- Variant Reproductive Behavior. Sexual selection in humans is greatly modified by physical, societal, and cultural elements that strongly impact mating strategies, sexual desire and variable social constructs such as marriage.
Jul 6, 2015 · Thinkstock. Humans have a unique ability to understand the beliefs of another person (Credit: Thinkstock) These cooperative skills are closely tied to our incredible mind reading skills. We ...
Sep 1, 2018 · It also turns out that animal and human cognition, though similar in many respects, differ in two profound dimensions. One is the ability to form nested scenarios, an inner theater of the mind ...
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Nov 18, 2014 · Yes, and to argue otherwise is to underestimate other species. “Humans are special indeed in their capacities. But so are all other animals — a cat, a mole, a mouse. If the target of your ...
