Are humans, animals?

[demoman_chaos]

-snip-

We aren't plants. Though there is an argument for us being among the fungus category, there really is only one place for us. We are classified as great apes. Just because we have all sorts of tools at our disposal does not change what we are. To think we are something more is just plain arrogant.

 

[blazearmoru]

snip

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.

10/10 answer

Also, what does snip mean?

 

[Dragonpit]

snip

You can call it arrogance all you like, you can even use all kinds of long words all you like. To me it's not arrogance, it's just an objective view point, I wouldn't say any animal is less than a human ... a human is just on a different level.

It's not like I am a king saying the peasants are less or a KKK member saying people with different skin are lesser. I am saying humans have some significant advantages over animals ... You say something like "an ape uses a stick to get ants, see they use tools" ... we make huge, metal tubes that fly! We can launch into space or delve the depths, sure a monkey could put a bucket on it's head and walk along the bottom of a pond but it's not even close to a submarine!

You know when something is out of reach but you reach for it and your finger tips are nudging it? I feel like your doing that with my point. If you sat down Noah style with each animal and asked it what it thought we should do with the planet, how can all the other animals help them ... you'd have a fucking massacre, the carnivores and omnivores would be eating the herbivores etc.

Sure, if you got everyone in a room and asked what we could do to improve the world it would be an endless argument but nobody would be eating anybody, might get the odd cannibal actually.

Okay, yeah, this has gone on long enough.

It sounds to me like you don't question the fact that we're animals, but rather are looking to STOP being an animal. If that's the case, I have an unfortunate truth for you: it's not going to happen.

Yes, we have a few unique talents of our own that has resulted in a number of advantages, including the ability to defend ourselves against things that would normally result in our slaughter. But when you get right down to it, these are just cheap tricks on our part; they don't guarantee survival. In fact, we've also managed to turn these same advantages against ourselves.

What makes us animals is simple: we are, for better or for worse, connected to nature like every other living thing. It's as simple as that. You could bury yourself as far underground as you would like, you could put yourself as far up into the sky as you would like (even into space if it suits you), but so long as you breathe air, you are still very much connected to nature, and are thus still very much an animal. (I'm sorry if I sound condescending; I'm trying to be as polite as possible, given the circumstances.)

Changing our classification in the world won't change this; it certainly won't change us. The only ways I could think to do that would be able to somehow exist as a soul or spiritual entity, or to somehow put yourself into a robotic body, but none of that is really feasible, and if it were, it may still not change anything. At the end of the day we are still what we are. Who we are. I don't really understand why you would feel the need to do far more to separate ourselves for the rest of the world like this, but to be perfectly honest, this doesn't really sound like a healthy choice.

 

[Jadak]

Also, what does snip mean?

It means they quoted a bunch of text, wanted to show the fact that they were quoting something, but didn't actually want to show all that text, so the text is 'snipped' from the post.

 

[Mooboo Magoo]

"Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa."

By definition we are animals as we are classified as being part of the Animalia kingdom.

 

[EclipseoftheDarkSun]

Of course we're animals, unless you think we're vegetables or minerals. We just happen to have traded off certain things for heightened intelligence, tool-using/making and cooperation (despite people sometimes whining about how we're a virus on planet earth and rubbish like that). Maybe if we create true artificial intelligence, we'll be able to create non-animal, non-human "descendants", legacy "lifeforms" like the machines that ran the matrix in "The Matrix" movie. But even if you can somehow digitally copy the structure of your brain into "cyberspace" in the distant future, that's just a copy.

Here's a picture to remind you of where you came from, even if you're sitting in a fancy restaurant amused by the differences between you and other animals: http://www.ucsd.tv/evolutionmatters/lesson2/images/embryo4.gif

If you need something a little more graphic to drive the point home, do a google image search for "Human congenital abnormalities".

 

[Geoffrey Francis]

why do you think intelligent life capable of making it to our planet would see us as anything other than the digital watch wearing hairless apes we are?

I really should re-read Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers guide.

The way I see it, Yes we are animals. Everytime I want to feel special about our place on the earth, I always remember that there are other animals just as cool, if not cooler then us. We weren't even the first animals into space! Dogs, and chimps (I think, maybe monkeys...) beat us to it. Using our technology, admittedly.

The only way I think we could become something more then animals, is if we became the progenitors. Like the only life-form that we know of that created a better competitor species. Obviously, other species create better other species through evolution, culling the weak etc. But I think we could make a better species, like some sort of AI, that could be better then us. ie Develop tools faster, replicate faster, basically out compete us in every way and spread itself throughout the universe.
Or maybe we could develop another animal (Through amazing genetic manipulation or some other fantastical technique) into something similar in that it could be suited to life in space ie microgravity, high radiation, thinking in a 3D space. Like in the manifold series by Stephen Baxter. I still think it would need like a spacesuit/ship tool use to live out there, but maybe not. Imagine how cool a creature that could survive on sunlight in space could be, moving from asteroid to comet to assorted space debris, picking up nutrients/building supplies. Though I can see a great need for social behavior, maybe moving in colonies. Space is huge so finding a mate... wait, why would it need that? Hmmm.

Anyway, I hope you get what I'm trying to say in my ramble. We would still be an animal, but one that made another life-form, better then ourselves. It would presumably doom us to extinction, but I believe it would be worth it.

 

[SecondPrize]

Unless it's been changed there are three options: animal, vegetable and mineral. So yeah, we're animals. As far as your list goes, I don't get how you figure we've removed ourselves from the food chain. We'd have to not eat to do that.

 

[ForumSafari]

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.

We eat
We move
We reproduce sexually
We react to stimulus
We are eukaryotes (we have complex cells with specialised structures)
WE have differentiated cell types

We are animals.

Like most words with a scientific origin or usage, animal has a strict definition that may not be known to many people but that is very specific about what it involves. The colloquial use of 'animal' to either mean a less sentient animal, a human behaving with no moral qualms or someone displaying brutish characteristics is purely incidental. Humans are animals because they fit the taxonomical definition for 'animal'. It's non negotiable.

 

[Deathmageddon]

The fact that we're super-predators and the dominant species doesn't change biology. We're not plants, therefore we are animals.

 

[nepheleim]

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?

Literally everything you said about human characteristics is irrelevant to the taxonomy of human beings. Humans are in the kingdom animalia. We are animals. We are different from every other animal, but that doesn't get us our own special spot outside of animals, plants, minerals, etc.

 

[MrFalconfly]

Yes.

In every scientific meaning of the word animal.

You're alive, you respirate, you're a euchariote, a chordate, a mammal, a primate, a homonid.

Humans are animals. You can't grow out of your heritage.

 

[goodman528]

Yes. /Thread

What do animals need? Food, water, oxygen, shelter
What do humans need? Food, water, oxygen, shelter

What do animals want? space to roam, affection, social interaction, freedom, play, sex, companionship
What do humans want? Money

Sometimes I really think my dog is a lot better a creature than most human beings.

 

[MrFalconfly]

Yes. /Thread

What do animals need? Food, water, oxygen, shelter
What do humans need? Food, water, oxygen, shelter

What do animals want? space to roam, affection, social interaction, freedom, play, sex, companionship
What do humans want? Money

Sometimes I really think my dog is a lot better a creature than most human beings.

But why do we want money?

To get "space to roam, affection, social interaction, freedom, play, sex, companionship".

But this whole "can we stop being an animal?" business just shows a complete misunderstanding of the most basic evolutionary biology.

We can't grow out of our heritage. Even if humans evolve traits that superficially resemble plants, we'd still be animals.

 

[EclipseoftheDarkSun]

Exactly MrFalconfly, "money can be exchanged for goods and services", so it's just one minor step removed from all those animal necessities and "wants" (many of them actually necessary for optimal functioning). Much like us and our cognitive faculties. I think it boils down to ignorance of basic biology and toxic rhetoric fed to us by other ignorant humans. I can't imagine something much stupider than someone who believes in "the rapture", the idea that regardless of what you do to your ecosystem, an all powerful deity will personally save you from a coming apocalypse. Talk about a recipe for lack of personal responsibility.

 

[MrFalconfly]

Exactly MrFalconfly, "money can be exchanged for goods and services", so it's just one minor step removed from all those animal necessities and "wants" (many of them actually necessary for optimal functioning). Much like us and our cognitive faculties. I think it boils down to ignorance of basic biology and toxic rhetoric fed to us by other ignorant humans. I can't imagine something much stupider than someone who believes in "the rapture", the idea that regardless of what you do to your ecosystem, an all powerful deity will personally save you from a coming apocalypse. Talk about a recipe for lack of personal responsibility.

If only we, once and for all, could clear up this mixup between the philosophical "Man or Beast", and the biological "Human and Animal".

It's getting tedious with all these people misusing scientific terminology in what's clearly an argument about philosophy. People mixing up Evolution by Natural Selection with Abiogenesis (that one is beginning to give me a headache), people thinking (for some weird reason) that Evolution includes Big Bang cosmology (the fuck?!?).