Are humans, animals?

[omega 616]

My immediate reaction to my own question is "of course, fuck knuckle" but I can't decide when I think about it.

We have removed ourselves from the food chain, since we have weapons we can fuck up anything that looks at us funny. It's actually really easy for us to just genocide every species. (of course in a one on one fight, loads of things would fuck us up!)
We don't really hunt, we can but it's more for sport than need to survive.
We have extended our lives far beyond what I think we were meant to. If a wild animal lost a leg, it's dead but humans can have prosthetic. Serious diseases can be managed etc.
We have claimed just about every piece of land worth a fuck and live on it.
We have all kinds of crazy tech that we just take for granted.

On the other hand, we came from animals, we breathe, eat, mate etc.

Just kind of can't make up my mind on the issue and I thought it would be a nice topic to discuss, as I haven't seen it here before and I never want to tread on old ground.

Captcha: "I mustache you why" ... best, most sentient captcha ever!

Edit: I should add, if you think we are still animals, what would make us not animals?

 

[FalloutJack]

Humans only get called animals in the proverbial sense. Strictly speaking, we're advanced mammals, but the term 'animal' is reserved for something a bit more primal, namely ruled by instinct over intellect.

Except for me, because I am a humanoid reptile.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Yes.

Next question, good job Escapist Off Topic.

¬__________¬

A hairless monkey that can do calculus is still a hairless monkey.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

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Yeah, big fucking deal ... a monkey doing high level calculus, except this isn't futurama and Guenter had hair.

Thanks for adding nothing to the discussion.

You asked a ridiculously open ended question, I gave you a ridiculously open ended answer.

Of course humans are animals, and it implies a certain level of arrogance on our part to suggest we're not.

It's 2014 and we still kill people over skin colour, sexuality, and religion. Humans are still very much jumpy, panicky, stupid animals.

 

[Able Seacat]

By definition humans are animals. I'm not sure what else to add really.

 

[JoJo]

By definition humans are animals. I'm not sure what else to add really.

Pretty much this. We're biologically part of the Kingdom Animalia (sometimes called Metazoa), though that itself is only an approximation created by humans as a convenient way to classify a large group of related organisms. We do a lot of fancy tricks and at-least in the short-term we're hugely successful as a species, but ultimately we're no more than a very unique and well adapted species of animals. Maybe in a century we'll all be data on supercomputers and free from the restraints of biology, perhaps that will be the day we can declare ourselves no-longer animals, until then we're as animal as a chimp or a worm.

 

[ClockworkPenguin]

We haven't removed ourselves from the food chain. We still eat other living things, or their by-products (this may not be true in 100 years, but it is now)

Many creatures can kill us.

We are not the only creatures to farm (ants do).

medicine I'll give you, although we are not the only creatures to care for the sick. That is shared by many social animals.

Territorialism is definitely not unique to us. As far as cats are concerned, the Tom who sprayed your bushes has a greater claim to your garden than you.

We do have the best tech. We aren't unique in being tool users though. Even corvids manage it.


So, we're the best out of all the animals at several things, and we certainly dominate the world, but there is pretty much no attribute people have that hasn't been observed in other species, albeit to a lesser extent.

We're pretty awesome animals, but we're still animals.

 

[Heronblade]

Oh please, you speak as if the members of homo sapiens are different in base nature from our ancestors. We are not, and it will be a very long time, if ever, before we could consider ourselves significantly different in that respect.

Yes, modern mankind is indeed doing things our instincts never programmed us for, but the simple and stark truth of the matter is that the vast majority of us are just adapting. Less than 1% of us are really doing anything to change the way we live away from the base cruelty found in nature, and the rest of us are just along for the ride.

 

[TehCookie]

Yes, what else would we be? Unless we can overcome biology we'll always be animals. I disagree with us being removed from the food chain. We are at the top but we still need to depend on other organisms for energy because we can't produce our own.

Technology may be unique to us, but a lot of animals have their own unique survival mechanisms. It may separate them into more specific classifications, but they're still under the animal umbrella.

 

[omega 616]

we're hugely successful as a species, but ultimately we're no more than a very unique and well adapted species of animals.

Well adapted is putting it mildly, we control other animals like no other that I know of ... we milk spiders, snakes and cows (plus other stuff, obviously), we ride horses, keep pets, selective breed, treat other animals like crops and we cull animals.

We have raised ourselves WAY above other animals, sure they have things on us (bats hearing, dogs senses etc) but I am not being ruled by anything other than another human.

Oh please, you speak as if the members of homo sapiens are different in base nature from our ancestors. We are not, and it will be a very long time, if ever, before we could consider ourselves significantly different in that respect.

Hypothetically, at what point do we say "we are different enough from our ancestors, that we are no longer animals"?

We haven't removed ourselves from the food chain.

What I meant is, nothing hunts us ... we might go on safari and be eaten but it's not like we always have to be on alert for anything, like a rabbit.

By definition humans are animals. I'm not sure what else to add really.

Ok, but do you think we could ever move past that?

 

[Asita]

Yes. This is not in question, this is not a moral statement, this is not an excuse, this is not a degeneration, this is not a statement on anyone's character. You, me and everyone who reads this is by definition an animal. Humans are hominids. All hominids are primates. All primates are mammals. All mammals are chordates[footnote]Ie: possessing of a backbone[/footnote]. And all chordates are animals. That is not up for debate, that's how the dang classification system works. It doesn't change just because we like to say humans are special to stoke our own egos.

 

[DoPo]

Thanks for adding nothing to the discussion.

What discussion? This is not really up to how we feel about it, nor about rhetoric, nor really about talk really - facts say we are animals. There you go. No matter how much I talk to my kettle, it won't be a gold fish.

Edit: I should add, if you think we are still animals, what would make us not animals?

If we were fungus. Or plants. Or something that is not animal.

 

[ClockworkPenguin]

We haven't removed ourselves from the food chain.

What I meant is, nothing hunts us ... we might go on safari and be eaten but it's not like we always have to be on alert for anything, like a rabbit.

That only puts us on top of the food chain. We're still part of it. By your definition polar bears and crocodiles aren't animals either.

 

[omega 616]

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How about just humoring me? How about entertaining the idea for a minute?

Look, I know I humans are fucking animals, but in the interest of having something to talk about other than sexism, we chat about maybe getting to the next level of being or something?

Know what I mean?

 

[FalloutJack]

Given how much we like to procrastinate, impulse buy and react emotionally ... aren't we still at least heavily influenced by instinct?

Instincts are fight-or-flight responses, the need to procreate, and other very basic things. Nothing living is above them, but because we're not JUST them, we're not animals in the same sense as other animals. A coyote does not muse upon the essence of the universe and his place in it. He runs through an open field or dense forest, looking for food and possibly something to mate with. Just because humans CAN do this too doesn't mean they're animals. Being human means considering more options.

 

[omega 616]

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I wish you'd have words with the rest of these guys, to quote David Haye "it's as one sided as a gang rape".

I agree, which seems odd 'cos I just said we are animals but I think humans are a much higher a form of them.

 

[TheIceQueen]

My immediate reaction to my own question is "of course, fuck knuckle" but I can't decide when I think about it.

We have removed ourselves from the food chain, since we have weapons we can fuck up anything that looks at us funny. It's actually really easy for us to just genocide every species. (of course in a one on one fight, loads of things would fuck us up!)
We don't really hunt, we can but it's more for sport than need to survive.
We have extended our lives far beyond what I think we were meant to. If a wild animal lost a leg, it's dead but humans can have prosthetic. Serious diseases can be managed etc.
We have claimed just about every piece of land worth a fuck and live on it.
We have all kinds of crazy tech that we just take for granted.

On the other hand, we came from animals, we breathe, eat, mate etc.

Just kind of can't make up my mind on the issue and I thought it would be a nice topic to discuss, as I haven't seen it here before and I never want to tread on old ground.

Captcha: "I mustache you why" ... best, most sentient captcha ever!

Edit: I should add, if you think we are still animals, what would make us not animals?

"It is often said that Man is unique among animals. It is worth looking at this term "unique" before we discuss our subject proper. The words may in this context have two slightly different meanings. It may mean: Man is strikingly different - he is not identical with any animal. This is of course true. It is true also of all other animals: Each species, even each individual, is unique in this sense. But the term is also often used in a more absolute sense: Man is so different, so "essentially different" (whatever that means) that the gap between him and animals cannot possibly be bridged--he is something altogether new. Used in this absolute sense the term is scientifically meaningless. Its use also reveals and may reinforce conceit, and it leads to complacency and defeatism because it assumes that it will be futile even to search for animal roots. It is prejudging the issue." - Niko Tinbergen (1973, p. 161)

Tinbergen, N. (1973). The search for animal roots of human behavior. In N. Tinbergen (Ed.), The animal in its world (Vol. 2, pp. 161-174). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (1)

Edit: If we were to not be animals, there would have to be no animal roots in our behavior. Suggesting that we aren't animals, but rather something higher, is just a conceited attitude that mocks science.

 

[Voulan]

Yes we are animals, as pointed out already. The only reason this question is confusing to some people is because of the good old issue with evolution and the need to distance ourselves from other animals to feel more superior. So people bring up the usual arguments about intellectualism and society building, and even language. But other animal species have done the exact same thing. Dolphins, for example, have been found to actually have a discernible language, right down to having actual names for each other. Chickens have a surprisingly complex social structure and order that they develop themselves. Most people conveniently forget these things because they have difficulty understanding a so called 'inferior' species being capable of intelligence just like humans. It also complicates our use and abuse of them, like factory farming.

Some people even argue that they have no concept of the same things we do, like love, compassion, friendship, and other things. Of course they don't - they have their own concepts that we don't understand in turn. A book I read recently covered this quite well, with the main character, as a unique animal species, criticizing humans because "they couldn?t siuwil, they couldn?t mesnishtil, they had no concept of slan.? It was this argument that meant that she denied humans had any intelligence at all, and so her species were free to use them however they wished and could deny them any rights. Sound familiar?

In the end, animals are capable of intelligence and just about everything we can do. It's just that people don't see it or comprehend it, and so they can't see it. Think of it like when the Europeans first encountered a different culture of people that spoke a different language. They judged them purely from what they knew, rather than looking into how they understood the world, deemed them inferior and primitive, and saw this as justification for enslaving them. Exact same thing.

 

[FalloutJack]

snip

I wish you'd have words with the rest of these guys, to quote David Haye "it's as one sided as a gang rape".

I agree, which seems odd 'cos I just said we are animals but I think humans are a much higher a form of them.

Hey, it's not my responsibility when other people willingly limit themselves. If they don't wanna see themselves any higher than the beast, then that gives me all the more room to shine.

Anyway, the animal term is reserved for that which remains lower in development. We humans made the word, wrote the dictionary in fact, to define the condition. Ultimately, that makes it our declaration to differ ourselves from what animals ARE. So, though we do have...

The dolphin pods who seem quite aware of themselves and their surroundings,
The wolf packs who organize, have certain social functions, and mourn their dead,
The cat which - let's face it - has us waiting on it hand-and-foot for a laugh,
The many numerous other tool-creating animals aho CAN (depending on who) communicate...

...we are the ones who create the machines, the cities, the philosophies, and so on. We stopped being animals once we decided to adapt the environment to suit our needs, not the other way around. There's just been far too much going around to be animal around here anymore.

 

[Asita]

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How about just humoring me? How about entertaining the idea for a minute?

Look, I know I humans are fucking animals, but in the interest of having something to talk about other than sexism, we chat about maybe getting to the next level of being or something?

Know what I mean?

I am not going to humor a gross misunderstanding of the classification system and evolutionary theory. That we have additional traits beyond the requirements for being an animal does not mean that we are not animals any more than the possession of fur or scales (neither of which is required for the animal classification) make mammals or reptiles any less animals. In order to not be an animal you need to lack specific traits, not possess additional ones. To not qualify as an animal you'd have to not be heterotrophic, have rigid cell walls, lack any motile stage of life and/or not have a blastula stage of development[footnote]Not required for the classification of animal, but it is a trait exclusive to animals[/footnote]. You are treating a scientific classification system as if it were some kind of philosophical statement opposed to the validation of one's existence and I have no patience for that. Also, the idea of evolutionary levels? Pure unadulterated Hollywood poppycock based almost explicitly off of the equally erroneous idea that evolution has some kind of 'grand plan' that everything is leading up to. In truth, evolution has no direction outside of how suited a population is to a given environment.