Mate, that's nothing special. We aren't the only species in the world to make tools. The only ones to make tools of such complexity, sure, but at one point in our evolution we too used tools at the same basic level as other species. There's nothing stopping those same species developing to the same point as we have except time. Give them time, and I'm sure other simians will eventually reach the point where they can build rockets as well. Other species beyond that suffer from the issue of having bodies shaped in such a way that they can't effectively manipulate objects to the same extent that we do. That, there, is your reason why other animals haven't reached the same technological level as ourselves. In the whole of the history of life on this Earth, humans are arguably the most intelligent species to develop with the means to capitalise on that intelligence in the form of tools. That is the only difference between a human and any other animal.TestECull said:Here's some proof for you:
Why are we the ones that did that? We're by no means the first creatures on this planet with opposable thumbs, not by several million years. We're not the only species on this planet physically capable of designing, building and operating that, nor are we the first.
You want more proof? Watch the Apollo 11 launch. There's your proof. Don't want to accept that? Look at the computer you're using to post this. Look at your car. Look out your window...fuck, look at the blooming window itself. EVERYTHING you see around you exists because of human creativity. Not animal creativity. Everything around you, everything from the Saturn V rocket I posted to the clothes on your back, all of it exists because humans are more creative than any other species on this planet. The proof is literally draped over your shoulders waiting for you to accept it.
All these signs of human progress that you're throwing at me, none of these big examples existed a century ago. Human history is a lot longer than a century. Homo Sapiens is supposedly, what, 250,000 years old? The smallest fraction of a percentage of our history has been spent with your proof. Go back more than ten thousand years (still less than 1% of our species' history), and we're only marginally more developed than our closest relatives amongst the apes. By your reasoning, it seems as if humans would have had nothing to differentiate themselves from animals then, but genetically speaking we're still the same species.
I'm not trying to argue that humans aren't intelligent. Clearly, we are one of the smartest species living on this planet (hard to tell if we're the smartest, since only a tiny fraction of the Earth's living creatures have had the ability to create tools, which seems to be how you judge intelligence). This doesn't make us any more than particularly smart beasts. We're lucky as a species that we hit a perfect storm, so to speak, of intelligence and the ability to capitalise upon it. But that doesn't change us in any way from being animals, and honestly, I can't see why we wouldn't want to be animals. All the things humans prize, loyalty, intelligence, strength, can be seen in most of the more advanced animals on this planet. All the things humans despise can likewise be seen. We're not different. We've just had a spot of luck when it came to our evolution.