What Makes Humans Human?

@Fido,

Quote:

We have stopped human evolution in its tracks....

How do you figure? I see us as ever evolving just as nature predicts we do.

@littlek,

littlek wrote:

Something so simple as a fruit fly can show "emotion-like behavior"....

Quote:
The flies showed a primitive emotion-like behavior. Prompted by a series of brisk air puffs delivered in rapid succession, the flies ran around their test chambers in a frantic manner, and kept it up for several minutes. Even after the flies had calmed down, they remained hypersensitive to a single air puff.

The research showed that Drosophila produces a pheromone — a chemical messenger — that promotes aggression, and directly linked it to specific neurons in the fly's antenna.

http://www.livescience.com/animals/fly-agression-bts-100115.html

No doubt when they are feeling fruity from eating fermented fruit.... And I can see it all in microscopia: I love you, Man!

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@Intrepid,

Intrepid wrote:

Are you sure? No you are not. There is no proof either way, yet you take the high road that you know something for certain when that is not possible.

Perhaps you could explain your eating crap line.

I identify with dogs more than humans... But working for a living I found I was eating a lot of crap for the money I made... When the crap to wages ratio gets too high, you either die or move on...

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@mark noble,

mark noble wrote:

Hi Fido!

Are you saying that animals have no emotional qualities?
Or that they have less emotions than us apes?

I'm going to start a thread on animal emotions.

Kind regards!
Mark...

I think that like most apes, mammels at least, live in their emotions full time, having no sense of past and future, they live in the moment..

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@littlek,

littlek wrote:

Quote:
We have stopped human evolution in its tracks....

How do you figure? I see us as ever evolving just as nature predicts we do.

We have not evolved to live in every climate, but have adapted... And no matter where you go, people are human, able to breed with strangers to produce viable offspring.... If we had been eveolving during all our years of separation we would have taken different paths; but our paths have remained essentially the same because we do not allow incests, and even try to prevent over breeding among close relatives...Yet, we are brittle, taking very little of inbreeding to produce anomalies... Look at ungulates for an example... Zebras can hardly breed with horses, and donkeys almost always produce a mule which is stronger than either parent, but sterile in mating with a horse... We do not hybredize our offspring..

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We are in the process of doing away with our appendixes, our mouths have become too small for our wisdom teeth, our brains continue to grow (as do our heads, hence more and more c-sections), etc. We are also evolving due to our scientific tinkering. We are more prone to genetic disorders because our lives are artificially extended to allow us longer reproductive years.

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@littlek,

So true, we are adapting to artificiality which could spell trouble when the natural environment takes over such as after an asteroid hits the planet or after the nuclear holocaust. We live in a pampered universe. Most will not survive in a jungle environment. The human environment is a high maintenance and energy intensive environment.

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@talk72000,

Hi Talk!

I am counting on the inability of the common man to survive in such (should the occassion arise) alien environments. It will save me the energy, resources and prescious time eliminating them to preserve my own.

Kind regards!
Mark...

1 Reply

@mark noble,

How do you know you will survive unless you go down with the UK Prime Minister Cameron in the bunker beneath 10 Downing Street in the event of an asteroid hit?

1 Reply

@talk72000,

Hi Talk!

The ministerial bunker is not below Downing street. It is beneath Biggin Hill. There is a high speed underground link beneath Whitehall though.

I won't be with Cameron, we don't see eye to eye on things.

I will be in wales, on a mountain called Carmarthen Fan watching the impact in awe.

In the event of society collapsing, I am well equipped, if I can get out in time - Other events are probably not worth trying to evade.

Kind regards!
Mark...

1 Reply

@mark noble,

Get a motorized gliding parachute. It is the cheapest and may be the fastest for countryside travel. However, there will be months of preparation if a killer asteroid is spotted. For a national preparation it will not be enough but for private citizens with foresight and means it is doable.

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In reading about migraines, the book turned to a more psychological chapter. It discusses all emotion and emotional reaction in evolutionary terms (being scared is a defense mechanism, being enraged is a hunting mechanism). They extrapolated those basic emotions into migraines. So, while migraines are only suffered by humans (they happen in our fore brain), they evolved from early ancestors.

Having migraines may not make us human, but if you do suffer it is because you are human.

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@talk72000,

talk72000 wrote:

So true, we are adapting to artificiality which could spell trouble when the natural environment takes over such as after an asteroid hits the planet or after the nuclear holocaust. We live in a pampered universe. Most will not survive in a jungle environment. The human environment is a high maintenance and energy intensive environment.

Well, yeah, but all mammals are higher maintenance than cold blooded reptiles. Turtle even carries his house around on his back. Which would you choose, if the choice were yours?

Sorry lilk, but I think we've come to the natural point of digression.

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No worries here.

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@roger,

We are running out of oil, water and arable land as we are destroying habitat of wild animals and thus wiping out species and our human population is still increasing. We are using so much resources that there will be a wall at some point here we cannot climb over or break thru.

So I see you would buy a Rolls Royce, Masarati like Mel Gibson, Ferrari or Lamborghini rather than a run-of-the-mill Ford.

1 Reply

@talk72000,

Hey, Ford quality is one of the tops according to JD Powers.

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@cicerone imposter,

Seems likely. My '03 Ford Focus is still doing fine. It might make a difference that it is still a one owner vehicle.

Talk, effectiveness does not mean conspicuous consumption.

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Having finished Jared Diamond's excellent book Why Is Sex Fun?, I would argue that our sex lives are an important part of what makes us human. They stand out as eccentric among the thousands of mammal species, of which we are just one.

Only humans have sex for recreation, with the one exception of bonobos. As it happens, bonobos are our closest surviving relatives in nature, together with chimpanzees.
Humans are among the very few social mammals who organize themselves into stable couples who jointly raise the offspring they produce. Again, the exceptions to this rule tend to be close evolutionary relatives of ours, such as gorillas, gibbons, or saddleback tamarin monkeys. The only more remote relative Diamond mentions are zebras.
Humans are the only social animals who don't have sex in public.
Human females are the only animals that go through menopause.

Remember how theologians sometimes circumscribe homosexuality as a "crime against nature"? That's bunk. If nature was into criminalizing deviance, the true criminals of nature would be people having straight sex without fertilizing eggs, prudes who don't have sex in public, men who care for their children, and women who don't just die when their fertility declines. If your sex life conforms to the standards of nature, you're not truly human.

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@ABYA,

we are animals though. I doubt any one of us has desires that any other mammal doesn't have.

pleasure, sex, children, food, housing..social acceptance. elephants have funeral rites, monkeys use tools.

we're merely top of the food chain.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Only humans have sex for recreation, with the one exception of bonobos. As it happens, bonobos are our closest surviving relatives in nature, together with chimpanzees.

Humans are among the very few social mammals who organize themselves into stable couples who jointly raise the offspring they produce. Again, the exceptions to this rule tend to be close evolutionary relatives of ours, such as gorillas, gibbons, or saddleback tamarin monkeys. The only more remote relative Diamond mentions are zebras.

Humans are the only social animals who don't have sex in public.

How do we know what recreation is for another animal? More anthromorphism. Dolphins and porpoises sure look like they are recreating a good portion of their day.

Generally, my thought is this: why is that being human is considered a plus? We seem destined to make the whole planet go away in the next 100 yrs. As a species (just like our own infernal nationalism), we have a distorted view of our own importance.

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What Makes Humans Human?

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