April 2019
What’s the difference between a person and an animal?
As a snarky biomedical engineer, I’d say that this is a poor attempt at artificial categorization; humans are animals. They’re made of the same things (meat), they came about as a result of the same processes (evolution).
But there’s a real question here, one that’s been articulated in an imprecise manner. Animals live in burrows and nests and so forth. Humans live in apartments and houses and buildings erected under rules of structure and aesthetic so complex that there are multiple university degrees devoted to describing them.
Descriptively, here are some possible contributing factors. The list is by no means precise, because evolutionary psychology is by nature imprecise.
The brain is everyone’s favorite starting point because, yes, humans have a disproportionately large brain to our size, it uses a stupidly high amount of energy, it lets us understand things like math and football scores. Gorillas have smaller brains; they can use sticks and learn sign language if they’re particularly bright. Flatworms have almost no brain; they can flinch if you shine a light on them, especially if you electrocute them at the same time.
The problem is that evolution doesn’t provide any explanation for why it does what it does. Presently the large brain produces skyscrapers and cell phones; it did not evolve to produce cell phones, it evolved to serve some other need and some side effect – the ability to produce technology, maybe, - was beneficial enough it increased reproductive success. To show you how tricky this is take a look at the following:
The human brain was developed to control and direct movement, but humanity then developed a tribal social structure. The tribal leader was afforded the highest calorie meals and had unrestricted breeding access to the tribal females; therefore this was a reproductively advantageous position. Larger and more effective brains were more capable of navigating the tribal social dynamics, which conferred higher reproductive success.
Or:
The human brain was developed to control and direct movement, but humanity then developed language. The ability to connect disparate ideas is indicative of adaptive thinking, which increases communication among tribe members and aids in the survivability of the tribe as a whole. This connection ability is considered “witty” and humans are incentivized to choose mates with this outward indicator of flexible thinking, therefore making it a reproductive benefit.
Or:
The human brain developed to control and direct movement. Humans have particularly articulate fingers, which require complex motor circuitry and brainpower to direct. Furthermore, the use indications for delicate digits like fingers are so broad that there are an infinite combination of motions that would be biologically relevant and useful (as opposed to feet, which need to be able to walk forward, back, side to side, run, jump, climb, and not much else more). This, coupled with the wide variety of prey animals, means that a larger brain capable of inventing more and more interesting ways to move the fingers was a survival advantage.
All of the above is probably wrong; look how many assumptions we made about the nature of the ancestral environment! We know that humans were social because we have archeological digs that show groups of humans living together – but this doesn’t tell us how they were organized or what the perks were of being tribe leader. We can infer a bit about human organization from our closest living relatives – chimpanzees and bonobos – but these aren’t humans, and behaviorally they’re quite different even from each other.
Hands
Hands developed because fine grasping capability was a survivability strategy during life in the north African forests. There are nonhuman primates which have hands, and though these seem to be unusually clever, they’re not clever enough to make atomic bombs and pocky sticks.
Seriously. Back in the 30s or so there was a man who attempted to raise a chimp as though it were a human, in an attempt to prove that our society was self-perpetuating – we are smart because we learned to be from our parents. This failed rather hilariously and the chimp performed worse than the equivalent-age human baby along every axis aside from physical development.
But I don’t think the development of hands was worthless. If we hadn’t had hands it would have been very difficult to produce any technological development, which may or may not have aided in the development of our large brains, but it certainly allowed us the physical capability to apply our large intellects to making useful things, and our society is built on the back of this capability. Hands are not enough, but they were probably part of the process.
Consider: dolphins are quite clever on their own, but their environment incentivizes simplistic limbs that are streamlined rather than capable of fine manipulation. Dolphins, usually, do not use tools.
Apex Predator Status
This is probably part of the puzzle, coupled with tools. But gorillas are apex predators with complex social structures and hands, and this hasn’t produced any large societies.
But it could be argued that humanity would never have achieved its progress in 2019 without apex predator status. As with most of this stuff, there’s no way to prove or disprove this without a time machine and a terrible disregard for the existence of the species or the integrity of the spacetime continuum.
Speech
Speech notably evolved later. As far as we can tell, it arrived after clothes, cooking, fire, and stone tools (though, notably, even crows can use stone tools). But it may have been an important coordination element allowing for the development of larger societies.
Development of Voluntary Speech
Animals vocalize, but do not speak. When I first heard of Koko the gorilla, I found it very interesting that she was intelligent enough to learn sign language, but not enough to learn vocal English.
Let me dig into the neurology for a little here. There are two sorts of movements – voluntary and involuntary. Involuntary movements include things like yanking your hand back from a hot stove (reflex), breathing (which can be affected voluntarily, but for the most part occurs without you having to consciously remember to do so – imagine having to consciously remember to take every breath – how would you sleep?), and walking.
Walking may seem voluntary, but think about it – you really just think about which direction to move. You don’t have to think about clenching every muscle in sequence to produce locomotion. Babies have a difficult time walking because they don’t have the learned circuitry you do – they do have to think about every single movement. You’d be that bad at it too if walking was fully voluntary.
Most finger movements are voluntary. Lip movements also. Many human vocalizations are voluntary, so that we can form the phonemes of speech. But some motions of the face or vocal cords are involuntary – genuine smiles come from the limbic system, the emotional parts of your brain. That’s why it’s hard to fake a smile. Good photographers will say something funny just before they take the shot, so the smile is real.
Most animal vocalizations also come from the limbic system. You have that machinery too – the grunts, the sighs, little squeaks of happiness – these are the animal vocalizations. At some point in human evolutionary history the muscles necessary to produce sound were put under direct voluntary control. From this, language, communication, and possibly the teamwork necessary to build structures, control large groups of other humans, produce new and interesting tools.
Speech didn’t cause human intelligence, but along with our position on the food chain, our grasping limbs well-suited to tool use, and probably some other elements (bipedalism, anyone?) they acted over millions of years to produce modern humans and modern human society.
But here’s the most beautiful part of this – Koko the gorilla cannot learn English because she does not have full volitional control of her vocal organs. She has voluntary control of her fingers, so she learns sign language instead (which is beautiful, but not the really beautiful thing about this).
When she grunts or sighs, it’s because her limbic system told her to do so. When your cat meows at you, it’s because it feels like meowing.
Every morning at 7AM or so, I hear the birds just off Bizzell singing, and I know that they sing because they are overcome with the desire to do so.
See it here first! https://appliedmeatsciences.wordpress.com/2019/03/19/speech-and-other-musings-on-human-intelligence/
--- Elizabeth Broadwell
Elizabeth Broadwell is a Masters student in the College of Arts and Sciences
As a snarky biomedical engineer, I’d say that this is a poor attempt at artificial categorization; humans are animals. They’re made of the same things (meat), they came about as a result of the same processes (evolution).
But there’s a real question here, one that’s been articulated in an imprecise manner. Animals live in burrows and nests and so forth. Humans live in apartments and houses and buildings erected under rules of structure and aesthetic so complex that there are multiple university degrees devoted to describing them.
Descriptively, here are some possible contributing factors. The list is by no means precise, because evolutionary psychology is by nature imprecise.
- Large brains
- Hands
- Speech
- Apex predator status
The brain is everyone’s favorite starting point because, yes, humans have a disproportionately large brain to our size, it uses a stupidly high amount of energy, it lets us understand things like math and football scores. Gorillas have smaller brains; they can use sticks and learn sign language if they’re particularly bright. Flatworms have almost no brain; they can flinch if you shine a light on them, especially if you electrocute them at the same time.
The problem is that evolution doesn’t provide any explanation for why it does what it does. Presently the large brain produces skyscrapers and cell phones; it did not evolve to produce cell phones, it evolved to serve some other need and some side effect – the ability to produce technology, maybe, - was beneficial enough it increased reproductive success. To show you how tricky this is take a look at the following:
The human brain was developed to control and direct movement, but humanity then developed a tribal social structure. The tribal leader was afforded the highest calorie meals and had unrestricted breeding access to the tribal females; therefore this was a reproductively advantageous position. Larger and more effective brains were more capable of navigating the tribal social dynamics, which conferred higher reproductive success.
Or:
The human brain was developed to control and direct movement, but humanity then developed language. The ability to connect disparate ideas is indicative of adaptive thinking, which increases communication among tribe members and aids in the survivability of the tribe as a whole. This connection ability is considered “witty” and humans are incentivized to choose mates with this outward indicator of flexible thinking, therefore making it a reproductive benefit.
Or:
The human brain developed to control and direct movement. Humans have particularly articulate fingers, which require complex motor circuitry and brainpower to direct. Furthermore, the use indications for delicate digits like fingers are so broad that there are an infinite combination of motions that would be biologically relevant and useful (as opposed to feet, which need to be able to walk forward, back, side to side, run, jump, climb, and not much else more). This, coupled with the wide variety of prey animals, means that a larger brain capable of inventing more and more interesting ways to move the fingers was a survival advantage.
All of the above is probably wrong; look how many assumptions we made about the nature of the ancestral environment! We know that humans were social because we have archeological digs that show groups of humans living together – but this doesn’t tell us how they were organized or what the perks were of being tribe leader. We can infer a bit about human organization from our closest living relatives – chimpanzees and bonobos – but these aren’t humans, and behaviorally they’re quite different even from each other.
Hands
Hands developed because fine grasping capability was a survivability strategy during life in the north African forests. There are nonhuman primates which have hands, and though these seem to be unusually clever, they’re not clever enough to make atomic bombs and pocky sticks.
Seriously. Back in the 30s or so there was a man who attempted to raise a chimp as though it were a human, in an attempt to prove that our society was self-perpetuating – we are smart because we learned to be from our parents. This failed rather hilariously and the chimp performed worse than the equivalent-age human baby along every axis aside from physical development.
But I don’t think the development of hands was worthless. If we hadn’t had hands it would have been very difficult to produce any technological development, which may or may not have aided in the development of our large brains, but it certainly allowed us the physical capability to apply our large intellects to making useful things, and our society is built on the back of this capability. Hands are not enough, but they were probably part of the process.
Consider: dolphins are quite clever on their own, but their environment incentivizes simplistic limbs that are streamlined rather than capable of fine manipulation. Dolphins, usually, do not use tools.
Apex Predator Status
This is probably part of the puzzle, coupled with tools. But gorillas are apex predators with complex social structures and hands, and this hasn’t produced any large societies.
But it could be argued that humanity would never have achieved its progress in 2019 without apex predator status. As with most of this stuff, there’s no way to prove or disprove this without a time machine and a terrible disregard for the existence of the species or the integrity of the spacetime continuum.
Speech
Speech notably evolved later. As far as we can tell, it arrived after clothes, cooking, fire, and stone tools (though, notably, even crows can use stone tools). But it may have been an important coordination element allowing for the development of larger societies.
Development of Voluntary Speech
Animals vocalize, but do not speak. When I first heard of Koko the gorilla, I found it very interesting that she was intelligent enough to learn sign language, but not enough to learn vocal English.
Let me dig into the neurology for a little here. There are two sorts of movements – voluntary and involuntary. Involuntary movements include things like yanking your hand back from a hot stove (reflex), breathing (which can be affected voluntarily, but for the most part occurs without you having to consciously remember to do so – imagine having to consciously remember to take every breath – how would you sleep?), and walking.
Walking may seem voluntary, but think about it – you really just think about which direction to move. You don’t have to think about clenching every muscle in sequence to produce locomotion. Babies have a difficult time walking because they don’t have the learned circuitry you do – they do have to think about every single movement. You’d be that bad at it too if walking was fully voluntary.
Most finger movements are voluntary. Lip movements also. Many human vocalizations are voluntary, so that we can form the phonemes of speech. But some motions of the face or vocal cords are involuntary – genuine smiles come from the limbic system, the emotional parts of your brain. That’s why it’s hard to fake a smile. Good photographers will say something funny just before they take the shot, so the smile is real.
Most animal vocalizations also come from the limbic system. You have that machinery too – the grunts, the sighs, little squeaks of happiness – these are the animal vocalizations. At some point in human evolutionary history the muscles necessary to produce sound were put under direct voluntary control. From this, language, communication, and possibly the teamwork necessary to build structures, control large groups of other humans, produce new and interesting tools.
Speech didn’t cause human intelligence, but along with our position on the food chain, our grasping limbs well-suited to tool use, and probably some other elements (bipedalism, anyone?) they acted over millions of years to produce modern humans and modern human society.
But here’s the most beautiful part of this – Koko the gorilla cannot learn English because she does not have full volitional control of her vocal organs. She has voluntary control of her fingers, so she learns sign language instead (which is beautiful, but not the really beautiful thing about this).
When she grunts or sighs, it’s because her limbic system told her to do so. When your cat meows at you, it’s because it feels like meowing.
Every morning at 7AM or so, I hear the birds just off Bizzell singing, and I know that they sing because they are overcome with the desire to do so.
See it here first! https://appliedmeatsciences.wordpress.com/2019/03/19/speech-and-other-musings-on-human-intelligence/
--- Elizabeth Broadwell
Elizabeth Broadwell is a Masters student in the College of Arts and Sciences