satt, Except some times a cat thinks they're human.
c.i.
c.i. ..
A human individual knows the fact.
A dog often regards a human as a fellow dog.
The whole "concept" of "human" is seductive, missleading, and open to flagrant missuse as a denominator for specy differenciation; it would be better to always use the more accurate term "ape", or at least "hominid".
cicerone imposter wrote:satt, Except some times a cat thinks they're human.
c.i.
Only when they are being charitable -- or when they are trying to make a human feel good.
Otherwise they realize that they've got it all over humans.
BoGoWo..
If you do not favor "human" you can talk about "anthropic."
or better yet "miss"anthropic!!
Frank A, Sometimes a cat is smarter than a human. That, we can't help. c.i.
BoGoWo wrote:The whole "concept" of "human" is seductive, missleading, and open to flagrant missuse as a denominator for specy differenciation; it would be better to always use the more accurate term "ape", or at least "hominid".
I don't really understand your point ... there are important differences between humans and the existing hominid apes: orangutan, gorilla, chimpanzee, bonobo.
Pifka;
You missed one: apes: orangutan, gorilla, chimpanzee, bonobo. BoGoWo!
I didn't mean we are all the same, just same family.
The chimp's DNA is so close to homo sapiens, one must wonder if we're related.
c.i.
We are animals, mammals, hominids, humans..
A superset A contains a subset B, B contains subset C, ..
A > B > C .. > Z
If x belongs to Z then, x belongs to .. C, B, A.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzz .... snort snuffle YAWWWWWWWN ... huh?
I've been told that comparing the human and chimpanzee DNA is quite misleading and found an article which explains this pretty well. Here's a little bit of it...
Quote:There are, as everyone knows, only 4 bases in DNA. And this places an odd statistical constraint on the comparison of sequences. No DNA similarity at all - that is to say, two random sequences that share no common ancestry - are still going to match at one out of four sites. In other words, the zero mark of a DNA comparison is not zero percent similar, but 25% similar.
...DNA comparison requires context to be meaningful. Granted that a human and ape are over 98% genetically identical, a human and any earthly DNA-based life form must be at least 25% identical. A human and a daffodil share common ancestry and their DNA is thus obliged to match more than 25% of the time. For the sake of argument let's say 33%.
The point is that to say we are one-third daffodils because our DNA matches that of a daffodil 33% of the time, is not profound, it's ridiculous. There is hardly any biological comparison you can make which will find us to be one-third daffodil, except perhaps the DNA.
The genetic comparison is exceptional, not at all transcendent. DNA comparisons overestimate biological similarity at the low end and underestimate it at the high end - in context, humans are biologically less than 25% daffodils and more than 98% chimpanzees.
If humans and chimpanzees are over 98% identical base-for-base, how do you make sense of the fact that chimpanzees have 10% more DNA than humans? That they have more alpha-hemoglobin genes and more Rh bloodgroup genes, and fewer Alu repeats, in their genome than humans? Or that the tips of their chromosomes contain DNA not present at the tips of human chromosomes?
Obviously there is a lot more to genomic evolution than just nucleotide substitution. But the percentage comparison renders that fact invisible, and thus obscures some of the most interesting evolutionary genetic questions.
Once you recognize that there are easily identifiable differences genetically between humans and chimpanzees - the presence of terminal heterochromatin is 100% diagnostic - you can begin to see that the pattern of relationships between the species is actually the same genetically as anatomically. Humans and chimps are simply very similar to, yet diagnosably different from, one another. (and it goes on... :wink: )
What it Really Means to be 99% Chimpanzee
humans
I would only suggest, Satt, that we members of the class we call humans can easily discern other members of that class and see that they do not belong to the class of things called cats. But we do see that we and cats are members of the larger class we call mammals. And we can distinguish all things mammalian from things called plants....yada yada.
Piffka, That's excellent info; it's the first time I seen anything explained so well on the likeness of DNA.
Thx, c.i.
Piffka, regarding your post of Tue Apr 15, 2003 8:34 pm:
Your link to Jonathan Marks November 20, 1999 presentation was quite interesting especially where he discusses linear one dimensional comparisons of DNA sequences to that of phenotypic four dimensional comparisons. He is right to point out these comparisons as interesting but meaningless without context.
He also mentions that other apes look similar to us but asks if that same likeness might be apparent to a species much further removed from a common ancestor, such as a frog. One might also speculate as to other apes recognizing humans as something akin to their own species or not.
The somewhat misleading fact that humans and apes share 98% of their DNA allows two misleading statements to be propagated:
Apes are 98% human. Or conversely, Humans are 98% ape.
Due to the above reason the fact that 98% of both species DNA being identical does not support either one of these statements. In addition, if one ignores the similar DNA one is left with only two percent of "difference". This sounds like a very small difference until we remember 2 percent is not an absolute number, it is a ratio that only has true value when applied to absolute numbers which may be of varyingly different magnitudes. Thus 2 percent of 100 genes is a much smaller number than, say, 2 percent of one billion.
Also, once we focus only on the 2 percent of non-similar genes we also must take into account the possible different combinations possible. These different combinations obviously account for the biodiversity that is seen between the two species. The more sequences allowed of the four amino acids that make up the DNA the more possible combinations are possible. As an example, given 2 places on a strand of DNA that can be filled with 10 possible genes there are 100 possible unique combinations. If we increase the number of places to 3 the resultant possible combo jumps a factor of 10 to 1000 combinations. This coupled with the fact that in real life that 2% difference in DNA sequencing is a large number, one can numerically appreciate the fact that we all inherently know: Chimps are not just small humans.
Obviously, the fact that humans and apes' DNA is 98% similar is suggestive of a relatively common ancestor but little else.
JM
JamesMorrison wrote:Obviously, the fact that humans and apes' DNA is 98% similar is suggestive of a relatively common ancestor but little else.
A couple of comments are in order here, James.
I suspect that your statement might be more correctly stated: "...is suggestive of a relatively recent common ancestor..."
There is a good possibility that ALL life shares a common ancestor far enough back.
And if you statement is altered to read as I suggested, that hardly is something that should include the statement "...but little else."
That relaitvely recent common ancestor is a rather important feature in and of itself.
Frank, That's the reason I like my "religion" best; I treat all living things with respect and dignity. No dogma, just simple rules for life. c.i.
chimps
I imagine that if a chimp could read the interpretation that minimizes the significance of the 2% of shared genes with humans, his response would (also) be "Phew!"
