What makes homo sapiens "human"?

As a child I read a text-book that proclaimed that the differences between humans and all other animals were "language and tool-use".It seems now that we have evidence of language and tool-use in various other species, as well as evidence of other potentially human-distinguishing traits like self-awareness, culture, art, society, ethics, and face-to-face sexual intercourse.Are Biblical proclamation and religion the only characteristics that are left to distinguish homo sapiens from other species? Are they valid as identifiers, or simply ego-boosting cultural constructs?

I'm not sure that you are saying this, but I just wanted to clarify - I am not talking about the ability to learn human language.Just because we do not understand the complexity of whale songs and dolphin whistle-clicks or the subtleties of gestures and pant-hoots in apes, does not mean that they are not communicating by language as I conceive it. The idea that individual animals have "names" is strong evidence to me for both language use and individual awareness.Perhaps a definition is needed here. As a general clarification: In my initial post, though perhaps not clear, I was thinking of traits as binary - a species either has them or they don't. (Since I obviously know a computer is a far more sophisticated tool than a hammer and anvil...)

How would humans accomplish those things (expressing emotion, organizing a hunting party) without "language"? I'm guessing you mean through such things as facial expressions and gestures - which is language. Just ask anyone whose first language is American Sign Language (considered by many to be far more expressive than spoken English).I feel like you are also contradicting yourself by commenting that animals have "a short vocabulary," since you can't have vocabulary without language; and again, that is only the vocabulary that humans have deciphered.Your definition of language seems more like a definition of rudimentary literature to me.

This may be a case of we haven't figured it out yet, as opposed to 'never.' I also don't know that we've "seen" animals communicating, "you go there, I'll stay here, you scare prey," although it appears that it is happening... In captivity, unguided apes paint objects that are not around them, such as birds or flowers, then use signs to "name" their paintings as such - I'm not sure if this fits the bill of abstract thinking in your mind.In the wild, at least one chimp group is known to regularly wear "necklaces" made out of vines, a practice that has been passed through generations. The concept of ornamentation seems abstract to me, as well.

Custard, here is part of one of my earlier posts:
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Perhaps a definition is needed here. As a general clarification: In my initial post, though perhaps not clear, I was thinking of traits as binary - a species either has them or they don't. (Since I obviously know a computer is a far more sophisticated tool than a hammer and anvil...)
___________________________________________I think many of your arguments against language in chimps have to do with degree (you want to see a chimp pen a haiku), animals using human language, and concerns (not invalid) of anthropomorphism.Early field biologists dismissed the idea that chimps had language given their relatively limited vocal expression. Only more recently has the enormous range of gestures and extremely low vocalizations begun to be appreciated (quiet vocalizations and subtle gestures may have evolved as a safety mechanism in the wild). [I think that was in Marc Hauser's "Wild Minds" - but I don't have a copy right now...]In "Next of Kin" (if you choose to trust that particular group of researchers) - the chimps of the study colony had holiday parties as enrichment (I won't disagree that this is problematic). But what was interesting is that the chimps would spontaneously ask about the next appropriate holiday shortly after a current holiday was over, and in an appropriately sequential way. (Like three year old humans and Santa Claus? I don't know.) I don't understand Vietnamese, so it must not be a language? Wasn't that a similar point of yours earlier?If you took the average American, played them a recording of the click language of the East African Bushmen, I'm sure most would say that it wasn't a language.Are whale songs simply mating calls, abstract communication, or jazz music? I'm not sure why an absence of evidence is leading to your conclusion that language does not exist in animals. Wouldn't Jesus have shown his face 'round here if he really existed?Wouldn't an ape have given birth to a human if evolution really occurred?

I wonder if chimps consider humans disturbed when we speak - since chimps rarely vocalize above a murmur except during extreme emotionality.

Apes taught ASL have demonstrated this name recognition - some regularly (and emotionally) sign about deceased colony members and their attributes, years after their death. Fairly abstract, methinks.

No offense taken, since I'm not sure what article you are referring to here (and doubt that I read it once). Right, but cats and dogs don't produce sign language to spontaneously discuss their deceased acquaintances. I would like to state for the record that I never have, and never will, read a Chicken Soup for the Soul book. (I did cite "Wild Minds" and "Next of Kin", both written by PhDs, the first an animal behaviorist, the second a primatologist - I'm not sure if you relegate those to Chicken Soup city or not...)Anyway, here's a peer-reviewed article on child vs. chimp language: Basically the apes are capable of conversation, though they repeat themselves much like two-year olds. Also, the study states that the length of ape statements are about half as long as human statements in the conversation.

Apparently, since apes do have opposable thumbs, as do other animals. Not only do we not have a monopoly, we pale in comparison to the koala, which has six opposable digits: Perhaps the more important question is, why don't we have opposable toes? Likely because we don't hang out in trees anymore; since the opposable thumb/toe appears to have been initially an adaptation to arboreal life and the branch-grasping it entails.So if an ape gives you an (opposable) thumbs-up, is that an abstraction worthy of language?

Forget Every Which Way But Loose, check out this evidence: Now custard, how can you continue to deny that apes have language (not to mention tool use) in the face of such indisputable proof?

But seriously, folks... The above post made me recall the following report: I'm not saying this study directly refutes the arguments above, but I think it is a strong comment that non-human primates can (abstractly?) think at least in terms of "better" and "worse", since they are able to respond to inequity.Also, although it doesn't deal with the time issue, the study suggests that monkeys can deal with cause-and-effect above simple levels, given the underlying comparison to other individuals - perhaps 'awareness' of cause-and-effect in another individual, along with awareness of their own cause-and-effect situation hints at an ability to deal with abstraction such as better/worse and me/they - and thus inequity.Of course, there's no evidence of the monkeys communicating their thoughts to others, so this doesn't deal with the language issue...I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this study.

Unfortunatly, you need to have access to Nature to get the article. I checked the de Waal lab web page but it only had the abstract. Here's my summary of the technique:The monkeys are given tokens that they can exchange with a human experimenter for food - in this case either cucumber (acceptable) or grape (preferred). In the experiment two monkeys are placed in a divided cage and given tokens. The experimental monkey first watches an exchange between the other monkey and the human before offered an exchange of its own. Rejection was scored as refusal to barter or refusal to eat after bartering. Five experimental monkeys were used (plus control monkeys).In controls both monkeys are offered the same food reward. In inequality experiments, the first monkey is offered a grape, the second (experimental) is offered a cucumber. A more drastic inequality was produced by giving the first monkey a reward without requiring a token, then requiring a token from the experimental monkey - in this latter case the experimental monkeys displayed outrage, often hurling the tokens at the humans.The difference was quite drastic - in control experiments and other experiments in the de Waal lab, bartering occurs >95% for either food reward. In the inequality experiment this dropped to ~50%; in the effort inequality experiment it dropped below 10%.Hopefully this will be helpful. The authors don't make any mention of 'abstraction' - they stick to the terms 'expectations', 'inequity', and the 'emotionality' resulting from inequity.Here is a link to a pdf of another article from the de Waal lab that does a similar experiment:
Living Links | Page not foundThis second study shows that capuchin monkeys more readily share a food reward with a cooperative partner in obtaining that food reward, relative to sharing a food reward they obtained themselves. In a way it studies 'equity' while the first study I mentioned examines 'inequity.'

If you are interested, there is a book called Good Natured by Frans de Waal (an anthropomorphism-free and agenda-free primatologist). The book focuses on animal morality, and covers some of the cooperation studies in captivity and in the wild. Some excerpts related to the subject at hand, since I don't expect anyone to run out and get the book: There are also more complex examples that are nothing short of political positioning - males using meat-distribution to specific individuals and groups to establish allies that maintain their rank when physical strength alone would not. de Waal's conclusion is that the shift from straightforward dominance to food sharing was a milestone in human evolution - "The result is the relatively equitable distribution of resources that our sense of justice and fairness requires."There is also some interesting comments on survival of the "unfit" in such social groups, and of human and neanderthal fossils of people with disabilities that lived to adulthood. An example is made of a congenitally handless macaque in a study group that was accepted and managed to live a long life, have many children, and participate in cooperation and politics. I believe (though am not postive) primates are unique in this aspect - non-primates shun or attack conspecifics with visible disabilities...

I checked out the 'peer-reviewed' journal the parrot-telepathy paper was published in - the Journal of Scientific Exploration.
http://www.scientificexploration.org/jse.htmlIt includes other astounding articles like Unexplained Weight Gain Transients at the Moment of Death, where a person (without any instituitional affiliation) places sheep on a large balance, kills them by placing a plastic bag over their heads, and measures weight changes as they die. Definitely not the most ethical or scientific study I've seen.The journal is perhaps worth checking out solely for amusement...

Hey Ifen,I would agree that it is likely that drastic, shared imaginary worlds are unique to the Homo genus.Somewhere buried early in the thread is my qualification that I'm not looking for differences in degree, but qualitative differences. In other words, "flying an airplane" may be unique to humans, but in my mind this falls under tool use and therefore is not unique to humans, though obviously more complex than a hammer and anvil.So, if you accept this qualification, we need to ask if any other animal 'shares imagination'. I personally believe animals can imagine in a simple sense, one reason for this belief is accounts of primates in captivity - one chimp in particular has been reported to paint representations of objects (such as a 'bird') not in view, and then name them using sign language. This points to the possibility that the chimp imagined the bird while painting it, then named it. Such claims/conclusions are often called anthropomorphic and anecdotal, and I concede there are problems with interpretation (for example, was the painting random, but produced something that looked like a bird, and so the chimp signed 'bird' afterwords...)There are many simple questions we simply don't have the insight to ask properly - for example, what are whales, dolphins, apes, etc. communicating? When chimps organize a hunting party with each member having a specific role, are the parameters of the hunt preconceived/hypothetical and therefore a "shared imagining"?Part of this points to our lack of ability to share in the worlds, imagined or otherwise, of other animals. Until we are able to share, I'm not sure we'll be able to realize if animals have "shared imaginings" or not.Good speculation, though; definitely along the right lines, I think...