What makes dolphins chimpanzees and humans different

Despite being separated by 95 million years of evolution and utterly different environments, female chimpanzees and dolphins have a whole lot in common. In a study published June 22 in Evolutionary Anthropology Pearson compares the behavior of female chimpanzees and bottlenose dolphins in detail. Both species form complex societies, hunt cooperatively, solve sophisticated cognitive problems, live for decades and invest years in rearing their offspring.

But whereas young males spend the bulk of their time with a couple close compatriots, defending territory and chasing mates, females spend a lot of time on their own. By hunting or gathering away from the group, both chimpanzee and dolphin moms ensure that what they find goes to their young. Like humans, they socialize some with other moms and share kid-watching duties, but they don't have time for much fraternizing. How infinite in faculty! We are special, but we are also merely matter.

We are animals, yet we behave like gods. This is the central question in understanding our place in the scheme of evolution.

What makes us special, while we remain rooted in nature? We evolved from earlier creatures, each on a unique trajectory through time.

We share DNA with all the organisms that have ever existed; the proteins our genes encrypt utilise a code that is indistinguishable from that in an amoeba or a zebu. How did we become the beings that we are today? Precisely when these facets of our lives today arose in our species is debated.

But we do know that within the last 40, years, they were all in place, all over the world. Which facet singles us out, among other animals — which is distinctively human? Navigating this territory can be treacherous, and riven with contradictions.

We know we are animals, evolved via the same mechanisms as all life. This is comprehensively displayed in the limitless evidence of shared evolutionary histories — the fact that all living things are encoded by DNA.

Or that similar genes have similar functions in distantly related creatures the gene that defines an eye is virtually the same in all organisms that have any form of vision.

Prudent scepticism is required when we compare ourselves with other beasts. Evolution accounts for all life but not all traits are adaptations. We use animals in science every day to try to understand complex biochemical pathways in order that we might develop drugs or understand disease. Mice, rats, monkeys, even cats, newts and armadillos, provide invaluable insights into our own biochemistry, but even so, all researchers acknowledge the limitations of those molecular analogies; we shared ancestors with those beasts millions of years ago, and our evolutionary trajectories have nudged that biochemistry to suit each species as it is today.

When it comes to behaviour, though, the parallels frequently become distant, or examples of convergent evolution. The fact that a chimpanzee uses a stick to winkle out a fat grub from the bark of a tree is a trick independent of the same ability in Caledonian crows, whose skills are frequently the source of increasing wonder as we study them more. What this inevitably means is that using tools is a trick that has been acquired many times in evolution, and it is virtually impossible to assume a single evolutionary antecedent from which this behaviour sprang.

Chimps sharpen sticks with their teeth with which to kebab sleeping bush babies. There is no evidence that these similar behaviours show continuity through time. Arguments around these issues are generally the preserve of scientists. But there is a set of behaviours that are also inspected forensically and with evolution in mind whose reach extends far beyond the academy.

Most animals are sexual beings and the primary function of sex is to reproduce. The statistician David Spiegelhalter estimates that up to ,, acts of human heterosexual intercourse take place per year in Britain alone — roughly , per hour.

Around , babies are born in Britain each year, and if we include miscarriages and abortions, the number of conceptions rises to about , per year. What that means is that of those ,, British encounters, 0. Out of every 1, sexual acts that could result in a baby, only one actually does.

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