The difference between Humans and Animals

I am not sure if I should have made a different thread but what are the differences between man and animal? I know there is a difference but what is it?

The ability to reason.

theres only one differnece and that is animals dont talk back like kids or teenagers or even spouses do. human and animals only have that one difference wile they share pretty much everything else like companionship intelligence ect

Humans- The animals that won the race to the top of the food chain.

We have a superiority complex.

'--'

Also the ability to think about the differences between man and animals.

WE laugh at our farts.

@potatoofdoom: To be fair we did kind of earn it. Think about it, by animal standards human beings are pretty much physically pathetic. We're relatively slow and weak, we heal slower, aside from our vision our senses are dull, and our natural instincts suck but by sheer brain power we made it to the top of the food chain and became the dominant species on this planet.

Human's ARE animals.

Then what type of animals are we? There is a reason why we don't have dog and cat run civilizations.

@tohoma: We are technically primates.

As Josmightbe said, primates. We're just smarter than the other animals on this planet, so we naturally try to make it seem like there is more of a difference between us (other than our intelligence of course).

the difference is i can eat one and wont go to jail

@joshmightbe said:

I see your point, but, I some times think that humans got on the top of the food chain by sheer luck (Or evolution?); yes, our brain is awesome, but "it only can do so much."

I mean, if they were any smarter, insects could take over the world and we couln't do **** about it. >_<

(I'm using a phone, sorry for the tyops )

We evidently are superior.

Pesticides?

Actually evolution is the result of certain groups surviving, not the other way around.

Pesticides...nukes.

(istheresuchathing?)

@potatoofdoom: I guess, lol

@dctv3363 said:

Yeah.

We are alive as far I can tell.

(I'll rephrase my posts when I get home.)

Not sure what you're saying but you said you'd rephrase it so... yeah.

@dctv3363: I will.

I didn't expect any replies, that's why I "rushed." to post :P

I like animals, but humans write better comics.

Sex for enjoyment and not for procreation. :p

There's your answer. Humans are animals. Maybe you mean what is the difference between humans and OTHER animals?

If that's the question, then the answer is that a small percentage of our genome is different from the "closest" animals such as chimpanzees. I'm not sure what other answer to give. There are animals that can do pretty much whatever we can do, but simply to different extents. Some animals can make tools, communicate with language, use reason, have emotions, have morality, have abstract thought, can recognize themselves in mirrors, etc, etc.

Animals can do that.

Animals can do that.

There are other animals who are at the top of the food chain. Go jump in the ocean and see how far you live against some hungry sharks.

What gives you the impression that animals cant think???

I disagree.

Humans can sweat, so we rose to the top.

Dogs, Dolphins, Chimps, Lions, Bonobos, Giraffes and many other animals have sex just for the hell of it.

@willpayton: Okay on land we're on top

There's definitely something terrible about the fact that I can recognize Rob Liefeld.

Based on what criteria?

There's something like 7 billion humans on Earth. If we look at ants, there's somewhere between 10^15 to 10^18 ants. So, at least a million billion ants. Who's on top?

Sentience.

There are animals other than humans who are sentient.

There is no difference.End of story.

Like?

We can understand each other, but we can't understand animals.

Based on the criteria that a large amount of our species can go to sleep with no fear of being eaten by a predator.

Well I suppose it depends on how you define "sentient", but if we're going with "able to perceive and feel things", then there's many animals such as chimpanzees, whales, elephants, dolphins, dogs... and really too many to name, that would qualify. There are animals that can feel pain, have a sense of self, have a sense of community, have a sense of morality. There are even some birds (including magpies and pigeons) that can recognize themselves in a mirror... a sign of self-awareness.

What part of sentience do you think that no animal has?

That applies to ants much more than humans. So, by your own definition of "being on top", ants are above humans.

@willpayton: With the exception of spiders, birds, frogs, ant-eaters, aardvarks and the thousand other things that regularly eat ants and the nothing other than bacterium that regularly feed on humans.

The ability to question their own existence. Also not being able to be a animalrocket.

@willpayton: Huh, cool. I was under the impression sentience meant something along the lines of ability to reason.

I just want to briefly mention tools. Very few animals in the world create and use tools to effectively (that word is key here) accomplish tasks. The ones that do we typically consider to be highly intelligent, these are your dolphins, chimps (and a handful of other primates), otters, octopi, etc.

But mostly the difference between humans and other animals is we have language, and no, not all animals have their own language. Most animals have a call system, which is a basic set of noises or gestures designed to communicate one members' reaction to another, informing them of something that is happening at the moment. What remains of the human call system is laughing, crying (sadness), crying out in pain, sighing, groaning, and screaming in anger. From what we can of studying other primates they have anywhere from 15-40 calls which can be used to relay a good amount of information, but not even close to the extent of a language with interchangeable words. Their call systems also don't relate to past or future, they only provide information about something that is happening at the time the call is made, and they're entirely subjective, meaning each call is only the animal's personal reaction to what's happening. That's opposed to language, which is defined by it's infinite interchangeability; you can combine whatever words needed to mean whatever you need, or create new words to describe new concepts. We've been able to teach animals both verbal and non-verbal language, but with the possible exception of whales we don't know of any animals that have developed an actual language on their own.

If you're interested, here are some results from a very in depth study reported by the Dolphin Communication Project, about . . . you know, dolphin communication. I know most of you don't want to read the whole thing (though it is really interesting) so here's the take away:

So the question remains, ‘do dolphins have anything like human language’? The simple answer to that is: as far as science has been able to determine, no they don’t.

Appreciate your ability to take in this information and express your own views in whatever words you like, no animal we know of can do that.

Oh yikes. Okay as aforementioned humans are animals. What are the differences between humans and other animals? Well there are lots of differences, there are a lot of animals and a lot of animals are very different from each other even among their own populations. We can look at our ability to reason. In terms of our intelligence and critical thinking and reasoning we are the blue whales of animals. That also being said there are many animals with the ability to think and reason. A few animals have even demonstrated superior memory ability to use in certain contexts. Another big important 'human' thing is how long our children take to mature and this is important because it relates to our brains and growth. Our young are very vulnerable for a long time but we manage because of group behavior. Stuff like our softer bones/skull that can be pushed out pelvis's but grow and strengthen once outside and all sorts of other stuff you can read in a biology book probably.

This is a relatively temporary thing of course. Once other animals get thumbs, walk upright, and have longer incubation periods and other stuff like that, their species intelligence will start to increase too. That being said intelligence may be overrated as far as a survival tool or it might be relatively rare.

Dolphins are rapists, I hear. Though if they can't understand "no", who can fault them?

Regardless of what can eat ants, they're hardly afraid of it, which was your own criteria. In fact I've seen no evidence whatsoever that ants feel any kind of fear. Also, when there are at least a million billion ants around, and they mostly live underground, even if they did feel fear, I doubt they'd be too afraid of a few birds and spiders and anteaters.

So, I really dont see your point... which is probably to do with you not being sure what your point even is. Many things can kill or eat ants, but many things can kill humans. How many ants die of car accidents or airplane crashes, or gun shots, or bombs, or heart disease?

If we define it like that, then still there's plenty of animals that can reason. Even many birds are good at solving problems. Many animals can use tools. Some animals can even be taught sign language to communicate with humans. I even remember an article saying that dolphins can do math.

It's just really difficult to distinguish which animal sounds are a language and which are non-language vocalizations like you mention. But, a big clue would be if you take an animal from one area and put him in another. I mean, a human laugh is a laugh anywhere on Earth. So, we know that laughing isnt a part of language. But, do some animals have unique languages or even unique dialects? The answer seems to be yes.

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/questions/question/2428/

This paper concludes that differences in regional chimp "language" may be due to learning... so, in other words, a true language instead of just innate vocalizations.

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/38427/1350270402_ftp.pdf?sequence=1

@willpayton: Hm, that's true. I remember reading that crows can problem-solve.

Yeah crows are very smart.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/11/crow-intelligence-mind_n_2457181.html