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.
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.
That brings up some interesting observations. Privacy (which is not the same thing as having your own personal space or your own territory) and embarrassment seems to have no obvious evolutionary advantage. That's obviously the case because such concepts are not shared by any other animal life form currently on Earth, and that probably equates to past animal life forms as well. Did T-Rex care about being naked before doing battle with an equally naked Triceratops? - Probably not. Did T-Rex hide behind a tree before doing a pee? - Probably not.
Question: Why do we feel the need for privacy and feel a sense of embarrassment? Where did these concepts come from if they have no obvious survival (evolutionary) advantage?
Privacy and embarrassment tends to be associated with restroom and mating activities. Yet, from firsthand observations, my cats can go to about their litter box business in full sight of me, and of each other, without the slightest qualm. When animals mate, they don't give a tinker's damn if the whole darn world is watching. An animal's gotta do what an animal's gotta do. Further, each and every animal is in a sense strutting around in their birthday suit. Do they look the slightest bit uptight about this? Hell no.
When it comes to embarrassment, if you look at things logically and objectively, the skin around your private parts isn't any different from the skin on your face and hands, so what's the big deal? You don't tend to be embarrassed over your ear lobes or your knees or which toe on your foot is longest; so why, in theory should your sex organs be singled out for cultural attention, actually inattention since they tend to be covered up?
So, there are a few more bits and pieces that make humans stand apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. But, there still has got to be a logical reason why. If embarrassment is a cultural trait as it appears to be (it's certainly not biological) how did it ever get its start?
Sense of humour: Nearly all of the higher animals play - it's preparation for the serious work of making a living. But play itself isn't humour. Humans of course tell jokes, make puns - we've all seen people laugh in a conversation when someone says something amusing -all that's a function of our higher intellect and our language capabilities. You wouldn't expect animals without that sort of language ability and comprehension to connect the dots and laugh. I can tell jokes to my cats for hours on end; they'll never understand the punch lines. However, part of our sense of humour isn't based on language. There are the physical jokes and pranks we pull. Now some animals do have the physical ability to pull practical jokes on their peers, but I'm not aware that that happens in actual fact. My cats could if they wanted to, pick up in their teeth and hide my house keys from me as their version of a feline practical joke. Cats don't play practical jokes. Overall however, when examining the human sense of humour, I have to ask what possible link can there be with regards to a natural evolution of a sense of humour and survival-of-the-fittest?
Blood types: To the best of my knowledge, humans are pretty unique in having about twenty different blood groups or types. That makes medical blood transfusions somewhat risky unless checks are carried out beforehand for compatibility. Not every human can receive blood from every other human. I checked with my vet, and apparently any Dog can give a transfusion to any other Dog; any domestic feline's (cat's) blood can be transfused into any other domestic feline. I suspect much the same applies throughout the animal kingdom.
Blood types might make a bit of sense if each type of human breed had their own unique type. Maybe they once did but breeding between the races has distorted and diluted that so that now all races have all types of blood. Even so, if other animals can get by with just plain blood, just one blood type, albeit a blood type unique to that species, I don't see why humans evolved a large variety of blood types.
Emotions: Nearly all animals show emotions, even many of the 'lower' invertebrates. However, though other animals can weep - shed water from their eyes (my cats are examples here), only one animal, man, actually cries apparently as a response to an emotional state. I'm not sure what the evolutionary survival-of-the-fittest bit is about crying. I mean if you're about to be pounced on by a sabre-tooth cat, will crying make the predator feel sorry for you; put the cat off it's game and save you? Crying might promote bonding between humans, but there's lots of bonding in the animal kingdom without the need for tears. So, why should there be crying in response to an emotional state. It's a mystery to me.
Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC): The number of documented cases of humans, for some totally unknown, maybe unexplainable reason, bursting into flame which quickly kills and consumes the victim, has reached such numbers as to no longer reside in the realm of the paranormal/pseudoscience. What's really unexplainable is that, relative to humans, to the best of my knowledge, no other life form has ever been witnessed and documented as having had their demise via spontaneous combustion. SHC certainly confers no advantage vis-à-vis passing on your genes. You've been handed a Darwin Award through no fault of your own.
Here's a weird one - our signs of aging. All life forms age; all complex life forms can die from old age, that's obvious and a given (however, elementary particles, like electrons, don't age). Humans show obvious signs of aging - greying hair (or losing our hair) and wrinkles and liver spots. It's easy to tell a 20 year old human from a 40 year old from a 60 year old from someone 80 years old. In most of the rest of the animal kingdom, visible signs of age and aging aren't obvious. In some life forms, the only visible sign of age is size - trees, fish, and reptiles - organisms that continue to grow throughout their lifespan. Frogs don't seem to get wrinkles as they grow older! How do you tell a 10 year old elephant apart from a 30 year old elephant? My 12 year old cat looks identical to what it looked like as a two year old. No grey hairs; no pussy cat wrinkles. Yet a 12 year old domestic cat is getting on towards pensioner status given a human analogy. Why should evolution seemingly single us out for acquiring grey hair and wrinkles?
In conclusion, if these traits can not b adequately explained by good old fashioned Darwinian natural selection and evolution, then its back to the drawing board and proposing either a supernatural deity or accepting an explanation of artificial selection. The only real candidate for applying artificial selection to humans to would be an extraterrestrial intelligence. Exactly what their motive(s) might be in most of the above cases isn't clear cut, but the 'why' in terms of Darwinian selection is equally unclear.
*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.
Science librarian; retired.
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