The Uniqueness of a Human Being: Part One

There’s just something really special about Homo sapiens relative to all the other animal and plant life forms we share Planet Earth with. Well actually every life form is special in one way or another*, but still humans stand out from the crowd. Many people will attribute that to the alleged ‘fact’ that we were created in God’s image, although IMHO the concept of a supreme, supernatural creator being carries so much dead (philosophical baggage) weight as to have as close to zero credibility as makes no odds. Therefore, I suggest something’s screwy somewhere.

For a few quick examples of human uniqueness, of all the true mammals, humans alone walk exclusively upright – we’re bipedal critters. Why is that so? If the trait of bipedal walking had real survival-of-the-fittest evolutionary significance, I’d expect the walking-on-two-feet trait to be way more common than it is.

We’re also top of the pops when it comes to IQ, and by a very wide margin relative to our primate ancestors, or even the dolphins and whales, not to mention the crow family (like magpies). Again, if extreme intellectuality abilities had some sort of paramount importance in terms of Darwinian natural selection, you’d expect we’d have some animal rivals in whose species will compete with us to be grand master in chess. Alas, no species, other than the human one, will ever lay claim to that title. Artificial intelligence is another issue, but not overly relevant here and now in context.

Now extreme exceptions to the bipedal and IQ rule require some sort of detailed explanation. I’ve dealt with those traits in a separate essay. (Hint: Extraterrestrial intelligence and artificial selection could account for these.)

Humans come in breeds – well we call our breeds’ ‘races’. There are lots of other animals that come in breeds too. The commonality between all our animal (and plant) kin that come in breeds is that we humans were responsible for their creation – our artificial selection versus natural selection. That at first glance doesn’t make us unique, until you stop and wonder who applied artificial selection on us? (Hint: think extraterrestrials again.)

Facial features: How do you help finger and identify the suspect in a crime? Well you try to provide an identikit profile – facial features. Of course you could say the criminal was white – that fits a lot of people; the criminal was male – that fits a lot of people; the criminal was short – that fits a lot of people; the criminal was fat – that fits a lot of people; the criminal was bald – that fits a lot of people. You could say the criminal was white, male, short, fat and bald – that still fits a lot of people. But, match the face to the perpetrator – you’ve got your man! Apply that to an animal – say a man-eating tiger or a crocodile. How do you finger which tiger or crock is the man-eater? By facial features – I think not.

However, I received a comment from a friend who said: “About crocodile individuality; tour guides get to know individual crocodiles and give them names!  I actually made the comment last year on a boat cruise, “don’t all crocs look the same?” and I was told no, they are as unique in their body marks, bumps, etc. as people!”

However, my reply was along the lines that obviously people who work closely with animals day after day can tell them apart via their bumps and scars and size, etc. but rarely by their facial features. I can tell my cats apart that way too. But here’s a test: In one folder are the photos of ten crocodile faces each with a name; in a second folder are photographs of the faces of ten human Caucasian males all the same age, each with an associated name. You get five minutes to study the ten crocodile faces with their associated names and five minutes to study the ten human male faces and their names. One crocodile is named Fred; one human male is named Fred. Ten minutes later you get one minute to identify the facial photo of Fred the crocodile; one minute to identify the facial photograph of Fred the human male. Care to take bets as to which identification of Fred (crocodile or human) will be way easier?

Speaking of facial features, I understand humans, and humans alone have ear lobes!

Here are a few other anomalies.

Physical anthropologists are pretty much in agreement that the modern human evolved in and migrated out of roughly equatorial Africa and from there colonized the planet (minus Antarctica). Now all our primate kin in Africa (gorillas, etc.) have fur. For some reason we lost our massive cover of fur. That suggests that humans were going to be relatively unsuited to colder climates because we lost our fur covering. Why? Okay, it’s hot in equatorial Africa, we don’t need fur there, but yet our kissing cousins in Africa have fur but they don’t really need it either - Something’s screwy somewhere.

Question: Why did we lose our fur?

For that matter we have primate ancestors that live, survive and thrive in cold climates – because they have fur. This time, in these geographies, fur is required. If we migrated to colder climates, why didn’t we keep our fur?

Okay, naked (no furry) humans migrated out of Africa and drifted into colder climates too. Firstly, why would we migrate into cooler geographies when presumably our population was low enough way back then that there was more than enough hot (or at least very warm) geography to go around? Again, I think that there’s something’s screwy somewhere. Well obviously we did migrate towards the Arctic, and points south as well, but we needed to invent, unlike our furry primate cold climate cousins – clothing. 

Okay, so at some point clothing served a very practical purpose. However, humans today live in some parts of the world where it’s hot enough that clothing isn’t required for all or some of the year. Take say, Adelaide, South Australia. For much of Adelaide’s summer, the population could save on the wear and tear and cost of their clothes and exist in just their birthday suits. The same could be said about various other geographic regions throughout the world. What prevents humans from clothing themselves in just their birthday suits when the climate is right? Even in tropical regions, primitive tribal societies still tend to wear some form of covering over selected areas of the body.

One obvious answer is protection of the private parts, although the rest of the animal kingdom seems to get along nicely with exposed private parts. Even so, be it primitive societies, or cultured societies, the actually amount of protection offered isn’t really that great. It’s not all that difficult to do yourself a private parts injury even when fully dressed – unless you’re a knight in shining armour of course, but that subspecies has gone extinct.

Well, the other obvious answer is, in public at least, it tends to be against the law – that’s what society wants and expects. Though shall wear clothes when in public. Well, something’s screwy somewhere because no other animal society has any such equivalent ban on nakedness. 

Translated, if our animal kin don’t worry about it, why don’t you take your furless body out in public minus clothing when the temperature’s hot; even hotter; and absolutely at its hottest?

Well the standard answer, apart from being arrested of course for alleged indecency, is that you’d probably be embarrassed to; having others seeing your birthday suit is an invasion of your privacy, so to avoid that, you don’t allow the great unwashed to see same and thus, heatwave be damned, you go out in public fully dressed. Comfort is not the issue.

To be continued…

*All animals are unique or different in their own way. Felines can purr; bats have radar and dolphins have sonar; some animals can see into the infra-red or ultraviolet part of the EM spectrum; some animals can hear higher or lower frequencies than us humans.