What Do Animals And People Have In
Common?
WE'VE ALREADY LOOKED at the many common structures that exist in an ape's body and a human's. Clearly, it is not an anatomical or physiological difference that makes man "man," and distinguishes him from an animal — at least, not on the surface. Although there are certain anatomical differences, basically they are quite similar.
The many similarities between the body of a man and an ape have led many to falsely believe that human life is simply an extension of the animal kingdom. These beliefs arise from three basic assumptions: (1) Man is only his fossil; (2) fossils show all that's different; (3) nature produces change.
But the fossil record demonstrates difference — not change. Although no one knows how dissimilar biological structures arose, the present belief that one species issued from another is a working hypothesis that offers a basis for asking questions. In like manner, astronomy was fueled by the belief that the earth was at the center of the world. This was the basis for asking questions for over fourteen hundred years until Copernicus showed it false in 1543. The evolution of species is a working hypothesis that is unproven, and different fossils with common features can be understood in terms of common descent or common design. In the case of man, the situation is more complicated because the fossil skulls are a physical shadow of a deeper behavioral dimension.
Of course, all of us acknowledge that the behavior of people differs from that of animals; but the differences are regarded as a separation in degree, not in kind. In other words, human life and animal life are seen to be separated in terms of gradual differences, but not in terms of an absolute disunion.
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In this school of thought, man is regarded as a social animal living at a higher level of existence than other animals. Thus, in the last analysis, this outlook considers man to be an animal. Furthermore, when attempts are make to find fundamental differences between humans and animals, they seem to fail. This doesn't mean that differences can't be found, but rather that when they are found, they prove to be differences that are not fundamental. Let's look at some examples.
Expectation
There are those who have held that the real difference between man and animal lies in man's capacity to have hope, to look forward to better times and more favorable circumstances with expectation. But surely this can't be the fundamental thing that separates man from animals. For example, were we to sit on a park bench, would not a pigeon come along expecting (in other words, hoping) to be fed? After all, is not hope simply an expectation of sorts? Ducks expect food near the lake in a park. Likewise, seals expect food in a zoo.
Many animals exhibit clear expectation in matters of aggression, and the owners of dogs and cats will testify that their pets display hope of special favors under situations of training and reward. Years ago I had a dog named Coco that was tied nearly 150 feet from the rear door of our home. When I went out the door carrying his food, Coco couldn't see what I was carrying; but my mere presence near the back door gave him hope. He would jump up and down, wagging his tail, fully expecting to be fed — even though he was easily 150 feet from me. That dog had hope. On other occasions, Coco would be in the house when a female dog in the neighborhood came into season. He would stay at the back door with his tongue hanging out and his tail frantically wagging, his eyes pleading for me to open the door. That dog expressed anticipation.
Consider cats. When a female and a male cat are together, and an unfamiliar male cat comes on the scene, you'll see the female cat walk to one side and the two male cats square off in an obvious expectation of a fight. The point is, whereas it's true that man has expectation, we find a similar trait exhibited by animals. To be sure, it's not the same kind of expectation to which man can aspire. Nonetheless, it is expectation and, therefore, hope. Although the hope or expectation found in animals differs in degree from that of which human life is capable, it does not differ in kind.
Yet if man carries an imprint that separates him from the animal kingdom, it must be a total separation; it must be a regal distinction, a division that detaches man from animals, not in degree or graduation, but in kind. The distinction we seek is something that separates man from animals in total disunion. If we are to find such a distinction, we must look beyond the experience of expectation because this is something common to much of the animal kingdom.
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Reasoning
At this point many focus on man's superior mind as the basis of his separation from the animal world. They say, "It's obvious what separates man from the animal kingdom. It's man's ability to think!" But are they right? At first glance we might say yes. We all know that man's mental faculty is truly the distinguishing mark that sets him apart. At first this might sound reasonable, but when we take a closer look, it begins to lose its appeal.
For instance, in an experiment done many years ago a chimp was put inside a cage and not fed anything for several days. Then bananas were placed outside the chimp's cage, just beyond his reach. Try as hard as he would, the chimp just could not reach those bananas. Then he was given two poles, neither of which was long enough to reach the food, but which were designed to be put together to make an extended pole long enough to reach the food. After several hours, the chimp used his mind to put the two sticks together and then used the one long pole to reach the bananas. Later, the experiment was repeated, this time with the food further from the cage so that three poles were needed to get the food. He soon figured out how to put the poles together in order to make one very long pole to get the food. This experiment confirmed what we know in several other ways, namely, that animals do think. To be sure, they don't think at the level we do; nonetheless, they do think.
Mice, for example, have been routinely trained to reason their way through very complex mazes, and many years ago the Russians taught birds to peck at certain colored lights in orbiting space ships. Several years ago I learned of work done where birds were trained to reliably differentiate between pills of different shapes and to remove one shape from a small production line. Also, I came across a report of birds being trained to align the cross hairs in the bomb release bay of an airplane. The point behind all of this is that there are experiments galore which demonstrate that animals have the capacity to think. Again, I stress that the thought activity of these animals is pale and primitive compared with human standards of thinking. The degree to which animals can think is extremely shallow when compared to the thought processes within a human being. But even so, animals can think. Therefore, the ability to think is not the fundamental thing separating human life from the animal kingdom. Although there is a difference in the degree to which animals can think, that difference is not a difference in kind.
Communication
Some have said that the basic difference between man and the animals lies in the fact that humans communicate with one another. But of course, we know today that animals do likewise. In every forest of the world we find birds festively singing, and in all the jungles chimps are squawking at one another. Mice squeak to each other in the grass of the fields and dolphins
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do likewise as they chirp to their own kind in the depths of the sea. Thus, animals do communicate with one another.
However, here we need to make an important and unusual observation. Although animals can communicate with one another, the number of distinct signals available to them when they do so is severely limited. The last time I inquired into this, I learned that the maximum number of distinct signals was only thirty-seven. This was the rhesus monkey species. The number may be larger now, but if it is larger, it is going to be pitifully small in comparison to human communication. In fact, it's going to be so small in relation to human language as to provide no logical basis for comparison.
Genetic Control
There's a very simple reason why this is so. In the absence of activity by a human intelligence, all animal communication is genetically preprogrammed. Some researchers believe that animal capabilities are much more limited than this, and that their intelligence level when compared to humans is so low as to imply that animals may not even be "conscious" nor have "intentions" in the sense that we use these terms. It is even said that animal behavior can be fully explained in terms of cause and effect mechanisms.1 While this may be an oversimplified view of animal behavior, it illustrates the low degree to which animal capabilities have been regarded. This does not mean that there cannot be environmental inputs and even learning experiences that influence the sounds that animals utter, but it does mean that if such factors are present, in the absence of human intelligence they operate in a genetically prescribed manner. This is true of the sounds made by elephants, the songs sung by birds, and even the so-called "waggle dance" performed by honeybees.
The Song and Dance of Life
Studies have been reported in which birds were brought into the laboratory at an age of between two and ten days and trained for about forty days, using song syllables characteristic of that species of bird.3 It was discovered that the songs sung by untrained birds of the same species (but raised from the time they hatched) had song syllables very similar in structure to those of the trained birds of that species. Furthermore, it was learned that the trained birds had a memory that was predisposed to retain the song material characteristic of the particular species. In other words, songs that were characteristic of the species and that had been taught the birds during their first two months of life were sung by the birds eight months later, with no rehearsal in between. Thus, the birds were not only predisposed to easily learn songs with syllables common to the species, but furthermore, the structures of
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the syllables themselves were known even by the birds of that same species without any training.
Whales also "sing," and computer analysis of their songs shows that all whales sing one "song" — but with "dialects" that differ, depending on their location.4 Although the musical content of their songs can be quite varied, a genetically preprogrammed set of laws in humpback whales dictates the same structural pattern all over the world, regardless of their location. Thus, whether it's a bird or a whale, the song is under the control of genes. Moreover, any later learning that may modify the content of these songs is likewise done under the control of these genes.
Likewise, the honeybee is genetically able to perform rapid movements known as the "waggle dance" within a beehive. A scout bee finds food outside the hive and returns and communicates the location of the food to all of the other bees in the hive. It does this by moving in a figure eight if the food is more than approximately three hundred feet away. The faster the bee moves, the farther is the food. Also, the direction of the scout bee's body with respect to gravity inside the hive reveals the direction that the bees must fly outside the hive with respect to sunlight. If the scout bee's body is pointed up, the bees fly toward the sun; if its body points down, they are to fly away from the sun. The communication system is so elaborate that on cloudy days the bees have a backup mechanism based on their memory of the sun's previous diurnal course in relation to landmarks that are local to the hive.5 Thus the shape of the pattern traced out in the dance, together with the speed of the bee and the orientation of its body with respect to gravity inside the hive, all serve to communicate information to the other bees as to the distance and direction of the flight they must take to reach the food.
The important thing to realize is that when a scout bee stumbles across flowers, the waggle dance is not something that it logically reasons out. A bee's eye has over eight thousand individual lenses through which it sees in virtually all directions. If a scout bee comes across a sugar-laden flower, it doesn't carefully think through how to tell the other bees about the flower, but instinctively flies back to the hive where it automatically does the waggle dance. Despite the many complexities of this kind of motion as a means of communicating information, the scout bee proceeds to "do its thing," because all of its actions are under the control of instructions genetically preprogrammed at birth along the DNA within its body.
Another thing to consider is that the scout bee must accurately communicate the location of the food to every other bee before they dare leave the hive. Otherwise they will die if they don't find the flower because when bees leave a hive in search of food, they take with them only enough sugar to reach the flower. The only way the bees are able to return to the hive is by using the sugar found in the flower. If you see a bee limping along in
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grass near some flowers, you're looking at a creature that didn't properly receive the message, and who is doomed unless it can reach a flower.
Despite all of its intricacies, the instructions that control the waggle dance exist in a small part of the bee's genes. If we take a very young bee, raise it outside the hive and then place it inside the hive, it knows how to interpret the waggle dance. Although this dance is the most sophisticated of all the known forms of animal communication, it nonetheless consists of a very low number of signals. There is an interesting parallel between the scout bee's message and Christ's gospel which is discussed in Appendix 7.
Instinct
The number of distinct signals available to an animal for communication is very, very small. In stark contrast, even a tiny child has the ability both to create and to understand sentences using numerous combinations of words and symbols. Furthermore, without any idea whatever of grammatical rules, the child can generate an indeterminate number of sentences. The reason for this is that mental activity within human life is not enslaved to genetic instruction. To be sure, there are instincts which are present, but man is not under compulsion of the flesh to obey them. For example, although a person may be hungry, he or she is still free to give his food to another human being. But in the absence of human intelligence, if we put two hungry animals together with only one serving of food, we know what will happen. Both in behavior and communication, animals live under the tyranny of their instincts. For the most part, man is free of these things; this freedom is the sword that divides human and animal life, and the root that grows a stairway to the stars.
Chapter Eighteen || Table of Contents
1. Some work has been done which suggests that animal behavior is mechanistically explainable in terms of stimulus-response theory.2
2. Harnack J. Language and Philosophy (1972) Linguarum.
3. Marler P. & Peters S. Science (1981) 213 Aug 14
4. Payne K. (NY Zoological Soc.) (1979) Meeting of AAAS.
5. Dyer F. & Gould J. Science (1981) 214:1041 Nov. 27.
