Chimpanzees are forcing us to redefine what it means to be human

[FarCenter]

Primatologist Frans de Waal says chimpanzees can do almost everything that was once considered a distinctively human trait.

The idea that only humans make tools is today "an unsustainable position," de Waal writes by email. "Then we also got the apes-have-no-theory-of-mind claims, which now have been seriously weakened, the culture claims, the idea that only humans are great at cooperation, and so on, none of which really holds up."

The only unique trait of humans, he says, might be that we have symbolic language.

De Waal’s latest book—"Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?"—describes a monumental shift in our understanding of animal intelligence in recent decades. In one fascinating part, he takes on a theory about tools by pointing to new observations of chimps, a species that shares 99% of the same DNA as humans.

http://www.businessinsider.com/chimp-intelligence-vs-humans-2017-1

[UTUSN]

1. Here's my problem: I know too many humans who are total a-holes, so...

[JudyM]

2. We're not smart enough to know how smart dolphins are.

[HassleCat]

3. Chimps. How smart can they be?

After all, they elected Trump president. Oh, yeah... That was us.

[Chellee]

4. Symbolic language is what separates us from the apes.

Oh dear....

Koko, a gorilla that knew American Sign Language, named her tailless kitten, All Ball.



Hmmm... maybe we're not as special as we'd like to think.

[Bucky]

5. Chimpanzees were the Bush Administration. This new one is orangutangs

[Warren DeMontague]

6. why is it so vitally important for us to imagine that we're "special"?

I mean, we are, certainly- we're the only species with a space program, for instance.

But we're not all that significantly, genetically, different from our primate cousins, nor even from other mammals. Why is it so hard to imagine that they're running around with a fairly similar consciousness in their heads?