Humans are animals
Let's not quibble over details. Humans are clearly animals.
Note that humans are members of the Animal Kingdom, that is, like sponges, they ingest food for energy and for protein, the building blocks of their structure. In addition, they have an alimentary canal, where food passes from one end, the mouth, to the other, just like earthworms. They are also vertebrates, that is, like fish, they have a bony spine 
which protects a nerve cord, and a head at one end which has an array of sense organs. They have four limbs like frogs and iguanas. They are mammals, so like mice, they nurse their young with a proteinous secretion produced by special glands. They are placentals, and bear their young live.
Indeed, humans ARE animals, specifically mammals. They ingest, digest, defecate, copulate, nurse. They love and they hate. They are prideful and compassionate. They have hair, eyes, three ear-bones and two gonads. They are composed of blood and bones, livers and brains, synapses and cell-membranes. These are all features of life found in many other animals.
Labels: Science
posted by Zachriel @ 11/01/2005
6 Comments
6 Comments:
We can be sort of thankful for those things we do that animals do, eh?
So, of course it is true that we are animals. So, then we have to ask, what's all the debate about. Is there actually something that seperates humans from other animals, or is it only our insecurities that make us need to believe in our superiority over other animals? People get so defensive when you say humans are just animals. So then we have to question what's wrong with being an animal? We feel less for being an animal- why do don't we feel more?
of course we are primates, mammals, tetrapods, vertebrates, chordates, deuterostomes, bilaterians, and animals.
Amoebas, though, are not animals. Unicellular eukaryotes (with a couple of exceptions, like yeast, which are fungi) are usually classified as Kingdom Protista, though that is a araphyletic taxon.
ccp: "Amoebas, though, are not animals."
Amoebas are often considered "animals", though the modern taxa Animal Kingdom is limited to metazoans with the amoeba thrown in the catch-all Protists. Even "Amoeba" is just an adaptive form and wildly polyphyletic.
I agree that I really should change this to avoid confusion. Any suggestions? Perhaps sponges?
Non-human animals laugh!
Humans are animals? Well, that's just about the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen come off a keyboard. Just another example of why there should be minimum age limits on the Internet. For bloggers, I'd suggest 21.
But what I wonder is if the blogger can appreciate the irony here. The very thing that enables him to make his ridiculous statement is what separates us.
Animals aren't sentient beings.
The very fact that you can read and understand those words is what separates us. The fact that you're aware of even the concept of death is what separates us.
Reducing the entire argument down to nothing but basic biology is both silly and amateurish.
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