Are Humans Animals?

Every species of animal is unique in some way. Humans are pretty amazing, though. I will also openly admit my bias on this one.

As an olive branch to creationists, the classification of humans as animals is independent of the theory of evolution. Linnaeus classified humans as animals a century before Darwin, and Linnaeus was a creationist. In fact, Linnaeus wanted to put humans in the same genus with the rest of the apes, but didn't because of the uproar it might cause. So we were classified as animals, vertebrates, mammals, and primates well before Darwin came along.

Darwin is famous for discovering two things in biology: natural selection and common descent.In his own notebook, Darwin drew this diagram and the words "I think".That's a pretty cool moment, the moment when Darwin realized that the nested pattern in life was due to common descent. When he shared his discovery with the world it instantly clicked in the minds of other biologists. Like all great discoveries, they are obvious once discovered. From George Romanes in 1882:

quote:

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Now, since the days of Linnæus this principle has been carefully followed, and it is by its aid that the tree-like system of classification has been established. No one, even long before Darwin's days, ever dreamed of doubting that this system is in reality, what it always has been in name, a natural system. What, then, is the inference we are to draw from it? An evolutionist answers, that it is just such a system as his theory of descent would lead him to expect as a natural system. For this tree-like system is as clear an expression as anything could be of the fact that all species are bound together by the ties of genetic relationship. If all species were separately created, it is almost incredible that we should everywhere observe this progressive shading off of characters common to larger groups, into more and more specialized characters distinctive only of smaller and smaller groups. At any rate, to say the least, the law of parsimony forbids us to ascribe such effects to a supernatural cause, acting in so whimsical a manner, when the effects are precisely what we should expect to follow from the action of a highly probable natural cause.
--George Romanes, "Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution", 1882

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In my opinion, the nested hierarchy is still the number one piece of evidence for evolution. Almost all of the evidence for evolution comes back to this basic concept. This is also why I am shocked and not shocked when online creationist warriors say they have no idea what a nested hierarchy is. It's like claiming the theory of relativity is wrong and not knowing what spacetime is.

Humans anthropomorphize just about anything, be it weather or our vehicles. We all experience this from time to time. If our car breaks down we actually get mad at it, as if it has some malice towards us.Of course, this human trait is also very, very useful in the right circumstances. Our ability to empathize and interpret the actions of other humans allows our species to work together and achieve pretty spectacular things. Gua the chimp is another great example. A pair of scientist parents had the idea of raising an infant chimp alongside their infant son. At one point the chimp was not learning to talk, but their son was starting to talk. They stopped the experiment soon afterwards because their son started grunting and copying ape sounds instead of learning human language. It turns out humans are better at aping than other apes.Gua - Wikipedia(chimpanzee)