Delineating Humans And Apes

[ladsin]

So a lady on here recently asked how I dilineate humans from apes and I wrote a rather long response which I’m decently proud of and don’t want to waste. As such I’m going to share it as a myTake to see what y’all think, and for easier access in the future if I need it.

*Before I go further I should state that I’m not a biologist of any stripe. I’m just a curious guy who reads on my own, so if there are any biologists out there who note I got something wrong I apologize and please correct me*

We’re in this family because we’re all large tailless primates with enlarged craniums, prognathous (projected) jaws (although reduced in humans we still have them), we all have the same dental formula, none of us have ischial callocites (think of a baboons butt), and we’ve got opposable digits (although humans lost that in our toe-thumbs). Another shared characteristic of the other three is that all have baculum (penis bones) which humans normally do not although we sometimes get them in atavism.

The common ancestor of all hominidae is believed to have existed ~14 million years ago (mya).

After hominids we split from our orangutan friends to make hominine ~12mya.

Then we split with our Gorilla friends ~6mya and from our chimp friends in homininan ~4mya.

So enough of the cool science stuff and back to the question. “Were the first humans apes or something between apes and humans.” I already answered the first that yes they were apes just as were still apes. All creatures are taxonomically classified in the same group as their parent species because they retain traits indicative of that taxon whether or not they form a new species. So we’re still apes for the same reason that we’re still bilateral deuterostomes and vertebrate mammals. To your second question, yes, the first “humans” (genus homo) were something between our common ancestor and us. Other species of homo (humans) included rudolfensis, erectus, habilis, sapiens, and us Homo Sapien Sapiens. Not all were as complex as us and all others died off for one reason or another.

Lastly you ask, “Where do you draw the line between ape and human?” As I said we are ape, but I think what you’re actually asking here is a moral rather than scientific question about how I dilineate the difference in value between humans and other apes. To that I would firstly say tribalism plays a part. I’m human and thus humans are obviously more important to me than other apes. Secondly humans are far more complex and as a result have a greater capacity for pain and pleasure. This means that doing something bad to an innocent human is worse than doing something bad to an innocent orangutan because the harm caused is greater.

Hope that helped a bit.”

Thanks for reading, any clarifications are appreciated.

[goaded]

Here's something I wrote on the subject nine months ago...

I'm not religious, but even the Catholic Church is accepting of evolution.

There has been 150 years worth of biologists, any of whom would have become instantly famous if they found anything that really disproves evolution. Instead, scientific and technological advances have reinforced the evidence for evolution every step of the way since Wallace and Darwin proposed it.

Humans are related to dogs, birds, and whales, and insects and jellyfish, for that matter, you just have to keep going further back in time to find a common ancestor.

The common ancestors of chimps and humans lived about 7 million years ago, the common ancestors of chimps, humans and gorillas lived about 10 million years ago. You can keep going back, the common ancestors of all four-legged animals (including all mammals, lizards, dinosaurs and birds) were around 395 million years ago, vertebrates (anything with a backbone) 500+ million years ago, back to single celled creatures 2100+ million years ago.

You are descended from your great-great-great grandparents, right? They're not still around, but there's a good chance you have fourth or fifth cousins also descended from the same couple. They probably don't look as much like you as your siblings or first cousins do.

Now, try imagining your 50th cousins, descended from a couple who lived in about the year 1000 (I could be one of them!), you wouldn't recognise them as family.

Your 500th cousins would have had a common ancestor living about 9000 years BC and be spread all over the world.

Keep going back, and imagine your 5000th cousins, or your 50000th cousins. Some of them might be quite a bit hairier than us and live in trees.

The common ancestors and their peers have long ago turned to dust, or (very rarely) fossils, but their descendants, who all looked very much like their parents, now look very different from their distant ancestors and very different to each other.

[ladsin]

Cool stuff. Thanks.
Although when I was a Protestant I’d’ve said it only made sense those Catholic sacrilegious heathens accepted evolution.

[goaded]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0zIv2I37UU

[Hurdleez-Swampede]

There is much evidences that humans and apes did not come from each other but that we were wonderfully created by God.

johnhawks.net/.../humans-arent-apes-2012.html

https://creation.com/did-humans-evolve-from-apes

https://creation.com/chimp-human-similarity

answersingenesis.org/.../

You may say but 3 of these 4 are creation sources and you're right but the source doesn't matter if they provide the evidences showing we aren't the same nor came from them.

[ladsin]

Well. I’m game to talk it out, but first you have tot ell me whether or not you read the myTake.

[Hurdleez-Swampede]

Read about 50 to 60% of it but I don't hold an evolutionists' perception as towards our existence. I think there is greater reasons to believe evidences lead to God creating creatures differently.

[ladsin]

Ok. I’ve been trying this question out on a few people, but I haven’t determined whether it yields any results or not yet.

Do you accept that you’re a vertebrate mammal?

[Hurdleez-Swampede]

Sure but many evidences leads to humans not coming from apes.

[ladsin]

Like what?

[ladsin]

Also why wouldn’t your response be that there’s evidence that we didn’t come from vertebrate mammals? I’m saying you’re a great ape in the exact same manner in which I’m saying you’re a vertebrate mammal.

[Hurdleez-Swampede]

Because I was home schooled and science illiterate. I'm not sure if a mammal is in the kingdom class or what. I assume mammal means land creature and not sea creature. I live on land, so I'm a mammal, right?

I was taught earth and creation science my entire life.

[ladsin]

No. You’re a mammal because you’re a vertebrate animal with hair/ fur; are warm-blooded; fed milk produced by mother's mammary glands; and women have placentas.

[Pink2000]

We did not come from monkeys 😐😒

[TacocaT6969]

Monkeys and apes are not the same thing. 🙃

[Pink2000]

@TacocaT6969 monkeys apes you know wtf I meant. We didn’t come from monkeys , apes, fish , nothin

[admles]

Evolution doesn't even say that.

It says that Humans and Apes descended from a common ancestor. Apes went one way, we went another.

[TacocaT6969]

^what he said.

[Pink2000]

@admles there’s no such thing as evolution

[ladsin]

Chimps aren’t monkeys.

[Pink2000]

Like I said no such thing as evolution

[ladsin]

Like I said, chimps aren’t monkeys. That said we see evolution all the time. Even hardcore creationists have to admit this. They just use the separate terms of micro-macro evolution. They say their can be change within a kind but not outside of a kind. This is more obfuscation as “kind” has no scientific definition. Sometimes they mean species, but then scientists point out that we’ve seen speciation events both in the lab and in the field. Then they say a kind is something else until we have to say it’s true that we didn’t witness a million years of evolution in the lab.

[admles]

And who told you this? At the age of 19 you already know this as a fact? You must be quite a remarkable scientist.

[ladsin]

Actually let’s try it this way Pinky.

Do you agree that you’re a vertebrate mammal?

[Pink2000]

I was created by GOD

[ladsin]

That’s fine. Do you also agree that you’re a vertebrate mammal?

[Pink2000]

I’m a human being who came from Adam and Eve.

[ladsin]

You still didn’t answer the question. Are you saying you’re not a vertebrate?

[TacocaT6969]

If all humans came from adam and eve we would all look the same.

Actually, we would all be deformed from the incest...

[Pink2000]

@TacocaT6969 we would not all look the same god created each and everyone of us in his image

[TacocaT6969]

That’s not the way reproduction works.

The bible says that god created adam and eve, all of the humans that came after were the result of adam and eve making babies.

For that to continue, their babies would have to make babies and so on.

[Pink2000]

@TacocaT6969 okay so what’s your point?

[TacocaT6969]

If that were true then there would not be different races.

Also, again, we would all be hideously mutated from incest.

[Pink2000]

@TacocaT6969 oh lord 😂

[TacocaT6969]

Oh lord yourself there.

You people always fascinate me.

It’s intriguing speaking to people who were raised in a cult and brainwashed so diligently.

(This is the part where she gets angry and mentions hell or satan.)

[Pink2000]

@TacocaT6969 I wasn’t raised in a cult babe ❤️ You shouldn’t judge me when you know nothing about me

[TacocaT6969]

I know that you refuse to open your mind to possibilities beyond the teachings of the bible.

[Pink2000]

@TacocaT6969 I know what I believe and I don’t believe in evolution. Is that a problem for you?

[TacocaT6969]

It’s a problem for our species as a whole.

Luckily the cults of mainstream religion are slowly but surely losing their influence.

[Pink2000]

@TacocaT6969 okay ☺️

[rjroy3]

All you guys took the joke way too seriously lol. Just read between the lines. Not like she could have pulled up a picture of a common ancestor

[CocoBat]

Oh yay another one of these zealots... gotta love those guys, yes

[bioscientist]

Did Adam and Eve's children fuck each other? Yes or no.

[AD240pCharlie]

@bioscientist It's very difficult for two people to fuck if they never existed.

[Pink2000]

@bioscientist did your mom’s children fuck each other?

[TacocaT6969]

There’s that god loving friendliness.

[Pink2000]

@TacocaT6969 it’s a simple question that doesn’t even involve you?

[Ad_Quid_Orator]

Good take. Also we know how humans evolved from apes; a process called neoteny where juvenile traits are retained into adulthood. In this case it's the shape of the skull; the cranium remains large relative to the total size in adulthood. Unfortunately this also means that our face doesn't protrude so there isn't enough room for our wisdom teeth.

Many people think evolution means member of one clade evolving into another (like cats evolving into dogs). Instead it consists of speciation events each giving rise to a new clade. Going back to cats and dogs, they don't look too much alike but a member of the fox family has many traits in common with the house cat. That's because the cat and dog families belong to a larger clade (the carnivorans) which shared a common ancestor 40 million years ago called miacis. This animal would have looked like a modern genet (which has features of both cats and foxes) which would then have evolved into the first member of the dog and cat families (who would have looked like a fox and cat respectively) who then diversified into all the members of the cat and dog families.

[ladsin]

Mm. If I recall correctly the gene that regulates our mandible size (giving us our small jaw) increased our cranial capacity. That in tandem with a dysfunctional tumor supressor gene and possibly some dietary changes our brains grew significantly larger.

[Curmudgeon]

Is that second picture of the late Koko, with her handler Francine "Penny" Patterson?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francine_Patterson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(gorilla)

[ladsin]

I knew it was Coco, but just assumed it was some branch project of Goodall’s I hadn’t heard of. Patterson looks strikingly like a young Goodall doesn’t she?

[ladsin]

At least in that photo.

[Curmudgeon]

She's about a decade younger than Ms. Goodall, but she is old by now too. IIRC, Penny and her assistants taught Koko to signal with sign language, but no, they could never have a sustained sign language conversation with her about what it's like to be a gorilla

[ladsin]

Yeah theory of mind and whatnot. Other pictures of Patterson didn’t look like Goodall, but that one of just the side of her face with the blonde hair made me think of a young Goodall.

[Grond21]

So even though you said you're not a biologist, why did you only focus on the biological history? In order to delineate humans and apes, you need to say what makes us different now, not just that we differentiated at one point historically.
For example, our ability to reason, our ability to imagine the future, our ability to ask the question why, our ability to think about thinking, etc.

[ladsin]

Ah, well I was just more narrowly focused on one aspect of the question because I could obviously spend forever tackiling it from different angles. For example high fidelity copying in humans that leads to redundancies that other hominids don’t have. Increased cranial capacity due to decreased jaw size. Theory of mind. Greatly improved cognitive functioning and social organization. Etc

[Grond21]

What is high fidelity copying?

[ladsin]

As children especially we copy what we see our parents and other community members doing exactly. So I believe the study was, “Push or Pull: Imitation vs. Emulation in Great Apes and Human Children” by Claudio Tennie Josep Call Michael Tomasello, but there are several others demonstrating similar findings so it might not be the original. Essentially they gave kids of each of the 4 great apes a box which they had to solve to open. Humans and non-human apes were able to solve the boxes on their own (emulation), but only the human kids learned through imitation of the researcher. This actually leads to some quirky things. For example if the kid (of any) is given a box once they are able to figure out how to open it on their own (ie pull a lever and it opens). If they’re repeatedly given the box they start to immediately pull the lever because they learned that action opens the box. The researcher will then attempt to demonstrate how to open the box with a false move (ie knock three times before pulling lever). The other three great apes ignore the knocking and pull the lever. Humans though copy the knocking even though it’s useless.

This is also why you see people copying things for no intelligible reason. I actually caught myself doing this the other day. I am selling my car and when I posted pictures of it online I put my thumb in front of my license plate. Someone interested in buying asked why I did that. I had to respond that it was high fidelity copying 😂 I don’t know why I did it, but I’ve seen other people do it and I assume they have a good reason to do it, so I copy it without knowing why. He lost interest in the car after that.

[MannySimms]

I suppose some people would rather feel special than form an opinion due to evidence. It's far easier to state the POOF!! theory than research an issue, plus you get to have a wonderful afterlife! I have fun asking creationists why males of so many species have nipples. They will NOT offer an opinion. They know they're better than you since they're in a certain social club that requires dues. That kind of thinking makes me sick

[GuidoThePizzaMaker]

I appreciate the effort you made. but evolution is to fickle a science.
Humans and apes have many similarities, however we never had a common ancestor. There is 0 empirical evidence for it.

[ladsin]

Too fickle a science? How do you mean? You realize that Evolutionary Theory is the cornerstone of modern biology. Saying that it’s a fickle science would be like saying the germ theory of disease or atomic theory are fickle sciences. Evolutionary theory for example is what makes our vaccines work, and I just presume statistically that you’re not an anti-vaxer.

As for empirical evidence... that’s not true. I mean I presume you’d consider paternity tests empirical evidence that someone is in fact the baby daddy. The same genetic tests that demonstrate lineage between immediate parent and offspring show our relatedness with other primates and in fact all extant creatures. More closely related organisms share more genes.

[ladsin]

Thanks for recognizing the effort that went in though.

[GuidoThePizzaMaker]

by fickle I mean, new data is always being found and the theory has been altered constantly.
What we know today may be irrelevant or better understood tomorrow. So i tend to stay on the side of I dont know. Rather than quote the scientists. Understanding probability makes one understand how improbable evolution is.

And yeah, all researchers, and students work hard, and you explained the delineation quite concisely

[ladsin]

Well what do you mean by change? Of course it’s the case that we improve our understanding over time. That’s the nature of science. Would you say that the theory of heliocentrism is wrong because the educated used to think the universe was geocentric, or they mapped the elipses wrong for centuries? I presume not. It is certainly the case that something I wrote may end up being wrong (ie if it turns out that there’s another yet undiscovered extant species of Homo somewhere in the world). That wouldn’t mean I was wrong to believe what I do at this time, or that I should throw out the whole thing right?

[rjroy3]

He's referring to the Common Ancestor theory not having strong backing and while it's yet to be "disproved". The way it was setup is in a way that it never could be disproven. So every stone that's turned up provides more "evidence" to prove the improvable. No matter what new finding there is people will shift the theory to include that event within the boundaries of the theory.

Comparable to how "Global Warming" as it was previous defined has now been shifted to "Climate Change". I remember in middle school people talking about basically how the world is going to be on fire in the future, because of global warming. That there's a hole in the atmosphere which is "evidence" of global warming. There was a year that was warmer than the previous year, which is "evidence" of global warming. Then when enough years went by and the major events that were predicted to happen didn't happen. Like the melting of all the polar ice caps. And we started having record cold years. All of a sudden now it's not "Global Warming" it's "Climate Change" and the new theory is that this too is a catastrophe, because of the wild shift in temperature is what will lead to our destruction. That's pretty fickle, but less fickle than the common ancestor theory. at least with Climate Change we have something to actually observe. With the common ancestor theory there is absolutely nothing.

[GuidoThePizzaMaker]

@rjroy3 thank you for your eloquence. I was having a hard time explaining myself 😂 you said it well.

[rjroy3]

#NamasteEverday my friend lol

[ladsin]

@rjroy3 descent from a common ancestor is incredibly evident. This is what lead the Christian Francis Collins (Former head of the human genome project) to say, “Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.” and “It's also now been possible to compare our DNA with that of many other species. The evidence supporting the idea that all living things are descended from a common ancestor is truly overwhelming. I would not necessarily wish that to be so, as a Bible-believing Christian. But it is so. It does not serve faith well to try to deny that.”

The same dna tests that we do to determine parental status (who the baby daddy is) also shows our relatedness to all other life on earth going back to a common ancestor with more proximate taxons sharing greater genetic relatedness and reducing gradually the more distal.

[rjroy3]

I perfectly understand the concept of the Common Ancestor theory. I'm saying it's incorrect and that Christian Collins got it wrong plain and simple. It's not a matter of not misunderstanding. Looking at it on it's merits we can say it's not definitive as some make it out to be.

"These are pretty strong claims, from the usual suspects. Yet there are two problems that show Darwin’s tubercles represent an example of evolutionary myth-making.

The first problem, a minor one, concerns a failed prediction. If Darwin’s tubercle were a homologue and an atavistic remnant of the pointy ears of monkeys, we should expect to find this structure in other apes, too, and especially in chimpanzees. The latter, of course, are claimed to be our closest relatives, and have rounded exterior ears similar to humans. According to personal information from British zoologist Edwin Ray Lankester, Darwin (1871:15) indeed briefly mentioned that a chimp from the Zoological Garden at Hamburg did possess this feature. Of course, such dubious hearsay does not qualify as scientific evidence. Indeed, in their recent comprehensive literature review about Darwins’s tubercle, Loh & Cohen (2016) did not mention any record from apes. Likewise, I could not find any descriptions or images anywhere in literature or online that document a chimp ear with a Darwin’s tubercle. All available images of chimp ears do not show anything like a Darwin’s tubercle. So the evolutionary prediction seems to be refuted or at least highly dubious, at least until proven otherwise."

evolutionnews.org/.../

[rjroy3]

I should say that I don't disbelieve Darwinian Evolution. I merely disbelieve the common ancestor theory that piggybacks on actual science. Like we know for a fact that cross breeding leads to different new breeds and that this can be said to be a type of mutation. We know for a fact this happens through the process of Natural Selection. Observable science that can be tested.

We don't know for a fact that this process happened to such an extent, that if we go back millions of years there was once an entirely different species that could not generate offspring if mated with modern humans today. The principle is stating that Natural Selection had enough iterations that it was an entirely separate species. That's an improvable story and honestly shouldn't even be granted theory. Because it's taking an actual theory a step outside the boundaries into a new concept that hasn't really been observed. We can't observe this happening. That's why the best bet any scientist can hope for is to find new species of bacteria to try and prove it there, because they produce far faster than any other species on earth.

I will say it is an interesting subject matter if you look at it at the epigenetic level, to see how much we actually can change just by environmental factors. Lifestyle and so on. Just working out over decades can change your genes, switching certain ones on and off and even changing your expression of said genes over time. These are the types of things that one could argue is a plausible story for the idea that this is the method in which a common ancestor COULD change into a different species. But it doesn't really lend credence to the idea that this epigenetic change is actually capable of taking it that far. That's where we dip into it being a story. We don't know and can't really know that without time. So as of right now the common ancestor story isn't really proven, but it can't be disproven. So *shrugs*. It's a matter of belief, not science in regards to that

[rjroy3]

It's like I don't believe that if you were to take every dog species on earth today and kill them except for Corgi's. That given enough millenia for the Corgi's to spread across the world to new environements, that with enough inbreeding they would become separate species due to environmental adaptations. That if you took an African Corgi who had a millenium's worth of genetic ancestry there and introduced it to a Corgi from Russia who had a millenium's worth of genetic ancestry that they would be two entirely different species and would be unable to mate. They're still fuckin Corgi's lol. They might just have some interesting differences, but they're not a different species.

[goaded]

All scientific theories have to explain the existing data and make predictions, there's so much data around after a couple of centuries of realising that, that we're now mostly tinkering at the edges to understand how things work.

I've likened the theory of evolution to a really large jigsaw puzzle, we've got most of the edges, some connected parts heading into the middle, a few blocks we're not quite sure where they fit in yet, and we can see bits of sky, cliffs, snow-covered mountain peaks, buildings with smoke coming out of the chimneys, farmers making hay in the sun...

Nothing is ever going to change it into a picture of a tomato.

What we know today may be better understood tomorrow, but there haven't been any major theories dropped in over a century. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsolete_scientific_theories

[ladsin]

@rjroy3 Alrighty finished reading the fellows blog article. Did you check any of it? He was making some pretty grand claims that surprised me because despite spending some decent amount of time reading about these things I’d never heard of Darwin’s Tubercle. So after googling it I found articles talking about the prevalence of it in humans and the recommendation that it not be used as an example to explain basic genetics as it was once believed to be a trait controlled by a single gene with two alleles with the Tubercle being dominant. For example the fellow you’re citing quote-mined from McDonald implying that McDonald was purporting the belief that the Tubercle was an atavism (the guy confuses atavism with vestigial) when McDonald was doing nothing of the sort, he was just saying it shouldn’t be used as an example for basic genetics. In fact, I couldn’t find anyone claiming that Darwin’s tubercle was a proof of evolution because scientists don’t use atavisms or vestiges for that matter to determine phylogeny due to their very nature of being rare. For example it wouldn’t make sense for me to say that because some humans have baculum that the presence of baculums are characteristic of humans.

That said even Darwin didn’t find this to be proof of evolution. Rather Darwin said, “On the whole, it seems to me probable that the points in question are in some cases, both in man and apes, vestiges of a former condition” and even if Darwin was wrong about something that wouldn’t have any relevance to us. No scientist is perfect or always right and Darwin is certainly no exception. The entire method of science is deliberately adversarial with scientists constantly challenging each other to prove their points.

Again, you wouldn’t think that heliocentrism is bunk because older scientists thought we lived in a geocentric universe, right?

Your last point seems to be that you don’t accept speciation occurs. Are you aware that weve witnessed it both in the lab and in field?

[rjroy3]

I'm specificially referring to the Biological Species Concept which is the one method to 100% prove true speciation. That reproductive barrier is true proof. A dog can't mate with a cat or a whale and so on.

I'm aware of the broadened definitions used to determine the parameters of what is considered speciation and that depending on the parameters you choose to use the Biological Species Concept may be considered too strict to use in everything. That's why I specified what I was referring to rather than just saying speciation. Because that depends on the parameters/definition you choose to use.

And speciation per BSC has not been observed, in part because many argue that it's impractical and expensive to run full testing with it on multiple species. Even tho it is a 100% proof positive test to determine whether or not true speciation happens.

All other testing methods have a much broader definition and doesn't refer to a reproductive barrier. Most commonly with plants, which is why every example given of alleged observable speciation has the qualifier of "may" attached to said event. Rather than truly stating this IS a new species unequivocally.

[rjroy3]

We run into the issue where when we all think of new species we think in terms of the biological species concept stabdard. But "new" species presented to us were not done so by the BSC standard. That's a very specific definition and honestly that's how we view true species. It's not a matter of whether or not they look similar enough or if they have a geographic barrier and therefore are a different species or any other variation of the definition for speciation. Different scientists use different definitions for different reasons

[ladsin]

@rjroy3 did my response to this not go through? Wow. Long story short, we have seen that sort of speciation both in laboratory setting and in the field. Ring species are a good example.

[rjroy3]

The ring species was a point of contention among biologists who argued it wasn't BSC, but that it was Parapatric speciation. They could pass their genes to one another. Kind of puts a dagger in the claim it was BSC lol. Not sure which lab testing you're referring to tho.

[purplepoppy]

It's said that bedrooms are always upstairs because apes make beds in trees. there's something buried in out psyche to climb before sleeping.

[ladsin]

That seems to be a rather wild assertion. I’ve lived in several one story houses which precluded having a room upstairs. Even when my family got a two story house all the bedrooms were downstairs.

[goaded]

It makes sense to have the living room on the floor with the best view.

[Waffles731]

@goaded my bedroom has always been on the ground floor since u was six or seven

[Adelphïné]

Or maybe we don't the neighbors peaking in our bedroom windows while we're making sweet, sweet love. ;)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
🌟 🌟 Free book: "Woman to Women" @ smashwords. com/books/view/938595 🌟 🌟

[HungLikeAHorsefly]

Science has been clear that humans are primates since like, forever ago. Is this really still a question in anybody's mind?

[ladsin]

Being a primate and an ape are different things, but even then it makes sense to delineate where the differences lie. For example humans are mammals, but all mammals aren’t humans. So figuring out the differences is interesting to me at least.

[HungLikeAHorsefly]

That's why I said primate and not ape. ;)

FWIW, I'm not a biologist either, but my wife was an anthropologist before she changed to her current career. From having spent many years going to various museums and watching documentaries with her, I have three comments about your post:

1. Your comment: After hominids we split from our orangutan friends to make hominine ~12mya" isn't entirely accurate because Homo Sapiens Sapiens is currently considered a species of Hominoidea (hominids).

2. Saying we "split from" various modern day primates is misleading. Remember evolution is less like a tree and more like a bush. We still share a great deal of genetics with all of these species of primates, but in another very real way we were never really related to them at all - we are related to some distant ancestor of say, a gorilla, but never an actual gorilla.

3. The last paragraph is highly subjective. That's more in the realm of philosophy than biology.

Other than that, this is a great Take. Well done.

[HungLikeAHorsefly]

Ugh, and I just realized that for #1 I totally missed the part where you said we formed hominine. Nevermind. This is why I shouldn't drink beer while I post.

[ladsin]

So it looks like 1-2 got covered and 3 I agree was rather more subjective. 😂😂

Gracias for the post and awesome for the wife.

[ladsin]

Drinking and typing is a great past time. I just watched a movie about the lovely Loretta Lynn and am now drinking and responding so life is good

[Passinggas]

But take it back even further in that we possess the lizard brain at our lowest brain functions. So is first the first picture you in your mommy's arms? You're a cute kid.

[ladsin]

I think you missed a step because I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. “Reptilian brain” is a reference to our most basal brain structures ie brainstem and cerebellum. Then comes our limbic structures or, “limbic brain” if you’d like with the hippocampus, amygdala, and hypothalamus. This portion is essentially responsible for memory formation and emotions which first developed in mammals. Lastly we get our neocortex or, “high brain” if you’d like, which is the layered curly part of your brain which only comes around in primates and is responsible for higher brain functioning like language formation, imagination, sensory perceptions etc.

Not sure what that has to do with me being an orangutan.

[Passinggas]

I like the detailed reply and all I was saying is we can be traced much further back to other creatures with equivalent basic functions. Point only being why stop with this family. It wasn't meant to be perplexing.

[ladsin]

Because I was answering a particular question 😂

Why would I answer a question about human-ape ancestry with the ancestry of all life?

Thanks for clarifying though. Have a good one

[smg99]

Wonderfully written and the logical reasoning of its psycho-social dimension is something I believe too.
Great read :)

[ladsin]

Thanks

[smg99]

You’re welcome it was inspiring:)

[taleswapper]

"This means that doing something bad to an innocent human is worse than doing something bad to an innocent orangutan because the harm caused is greater."

I think I would have said "... my empathy is less offended." There's no objective measure of harm, and you've couched it in terms of tribalism, after all. I suspect the orangutans would find the harm done weighted the other way... ;)

[ladsin]

There’s no objective definition of health either, but that doesn’t mean the term is useless. We can still relatively easily point out that by any reasonable definition the person up and jumping around is healthier than the dead guy with blood pooling under him.

In much the same way when I pointed out that the capacity of humans to experience both suffering and joy I thought my statement made it relatively evident that the metric I was using was that of suffering. Maybe not though.

[FroztyDaHoMan]

Anybody notice that the bible and science completely contradict each other? Now I know you will say well that disproves the bible but what if all of these things are contrary to the bible simply because the people pulling the strings simply want us to go against the bible?

[Nadim171]

I don't get what you mean

[ladsin]

So you think the earth really is flat?

[Nadim171]

God himself never said the earth is flat.

[ladsin]

@Nadim171 the Bible does.

[bioscientist]

Nice diagram from Wikipedia:

[zagor]

Well, at one point I would have said one of the distinctions is that humans don't fling shit at each other, but then I saw that video of that woman at 7-11...

[Anonymous]

I recently read that humans are the only animals that know that sex leads to pregnancy. Obviously, all animals have sex. But only humans know that pregnancy is a potential result.

[ladsin]

Hmm. An interesting idea. I hadn’t thought about that. I’m not sure if it’s true or not, but humans obviously have the greatest capacity for forward thinking as a benefit of our enlarged frontal lobes. So it may be plausible.

That said the sex practices of other species are rather varied and I think some could be understood as a recognition of pregnancy. Ie copulatory vocalization in female chimps has been noted, among other things, to be a method of calling other males over to engage in coitus. There are three primary reasons she does this. 1) If the male is low status he’s attacked by the other chimps and this unable to finish copulating this preventing a weaker baby. 2) To get other chimps to engage in essentially an orgy ensuring that no single male knows who the father is preventing infanticide. 3) If the male is strong enough he will beat away the other chimps and finish copulating this she gets good seed. Obviously ascribing intent to non-human animals is a form of anthropomorphizing and not a great practice, so I only mention that as a possibility.

[White-American89]

I think it's wrong to project human qualities on to wild animals, an ape will beat you to death in the wild. Let apes be apes free from human interference.

[ladsin]

I’m not sure what that’s got to do with anything. Humans will beat you to death as well. Actually the rates of violent death especially in hunter gatherer societies is quite similar to the rate found in modern chimps. The biggest difference really is that humans are more likely to die when we’re the attacking party because we take greater risks.

[White-American89]

Like I said I think it's wrong to project human qualities on to wild animals, an ape will beat you to death in the wild. Let apes be apes free from human interference.
Also I dont think aboringes kill each other higher rates and I was talking about apes.
https://youtu.be/KCPjXb3wjtk

[ladsin]

Well humans are apes as I explained, and it’s just the case that hunter gatherer societies are as violent as other apes as demonstrated in Comparative Rates of Violence in Chimpanzees and Humans by Wrangham et al, “Violent mortality among chimpanzees was distributed approximately equally among two major classes: adult/ adolescent males and infants (Table 4). Among humans, by contrast, war mortality appears generally to be highest in adult males. For example in seven subsistence farming societies with data compiled by Keeley (1996: Table 6.2) the median percentage of deaths due to warfare was 28.5% for males (range 8.3–59.0) versus 6.1% for females (range 2.3–27.0). Considering only adult males, therefore, rates of mortality may be higher for humans (Fig. 2).”

[White-American89]

Mind of which means anything because apeas are so much stronger physically than humans that they can easily kill us which is why we should not project human values on apes and leave them alone.

[ladsin]

Should we leave whales, lions, bacterium, etc alone as well? I just just not be understanding you.

Anyways, thanks for the discussion.

[White-American89]

Actually we defenitley should leave whales alone, locking them up in places like sea world for people's viewing pleasure is just cruel. Much like how those swimming with dolphins places are cruel.

[ShadowofRegret]

So tell me, what is this "common ancester" you speak of?

What is it exactly and what did it look like? Tell me the details.

[ladsin]

Common ancestor of what? apes? All living things?

[Ad_Quid_Orator]

One fossil specimen name "Toumai" (species name: Sahelanthropus) may have been the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees.

[Phoenix98]

I honestly do not believe we came from apes but it's all good if you want to, diversity of opinion, makes for interesting discussion.

[ladsin]

Sure. Did you read it? Do you agree that you’re a mammal?

[Phoenix98]

I did read your post yes.

I believe I am a human with mammal characteristics.

[ladsin]

Cool, do you agree that you share more traits in common with primates than you do other mammals, if so why do you think this to be the case?

[HereIbe]

Humans ARE apes.

We are in the Hominidae, along with chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans.
Within the Hominidae, we are in the Homininae, along with chimpanzees and gorillas.

[ladsin]

Did this part
-Well humans are apes, specifically we’re a member of the great apes which are called hominidae. Extant members of this family are the Pongo, Gorilla, and the Panins-
not come through at the beginning of the myTake?

I copied and pasted from my initial answer but it looks like that part got cut somehow damnit. That said you forgot the Orangutan, although their addition to hominidae is relatively more recent due to our increasing knowledge of them.

[Nadim171]

I beleive we looked more like apes but we aren't from the same spiecy. Just like lions and tigers look similar but each comes from a different speicy

[Anonymous]

It's pretty simple. Humans build societies. Apes demand reparations.