Beyond the Horizon (making monkeys out of men)

Many of you may of seen last nights episode of Horizon ‘Chimps are humans too’ which prodictably drove (‘I woke up this morning and decided’) along a predetermined path towards 'proving' (not) in any way possible (regardless of common sense, let alone science) that Chimps should be classed as human. Comparing fully grown Chimps to babies, mentally disabled and the clinically insane is not a good benchmark. Nor is throwing around %’s through the whole programme, like saying that they have a 99.4% DNA match. I found that it there are differnt results - ‘Dr Wildman's team found that chimps and humans are 99.4% similar, other researchers last year put the similarity at around 95%; the figure you get depends on precisely which genetic differences you look at’. There was even a scientist in that programme that said "well all this shows is what a huge difference a tiny amount of DNA can make" and something like: "some DNA controls what other DNA does, may be the different DNA is control DNA?"
Did you now we have 46 chromosomes and chimps have 48, sound pretty close I make it 95.8%. That’s pretty close until I tell you a Potato has 48 chromosomes does that make us 95.8% Potato? Cannibal!
Other examples they use to justify so called Humanness included:
‘They are anatomically similar’ – didn’t say much about the differences like there feet
‘They use tools’ – Sea Otters use stones to break through shells open shells, Dolphins use sea sponges to protect there snouts when foraging for food on the sea bed, load of birds use tools including South American Macaw that actually fashions pieces of wood and hold them in there beak to open pine nuts. Elephants break off branches and use them to swat flies.
‘They have culture’ – ‘while it's difficult to study dolphins and whales closely in the wild, some biologists suspect that cetaceans rival chimpanzees when it comes to culture’.
They can perform human tasks – mimicking human behaviour doesn’t make you human I can mimic a dog. You can teach a dog to fetch, speech (bark), sniff drugs out, attack, guide you around (guide dog) ect.
‘They have language’ Do they though? (not to be confused with communication) - You can teach a parrot to speak any words. Most animals have some form of communication. Bees have a very complex communication so do Marine Mammals. But non have ‘language’
The following properties of human language have been argued to separate it from animal communication:
'Arbitrariness:' There is no rational relationship between a sound or sign and its meaning (There is nothing "housy" about a house.) 'Cultural transmission:' Language is passed from one language user to the next, consciously or unconsciously.
'Discreteness:' Language is composed of discrete units that are used in combination to create meaning.
'Displacement:' Languages can be used to communicate ideas about things that are not in the immediate vicinity either spatially or temporally.
'Duality:' Language works on two levels at once, a surface level and a semantic (meaningful) level.
'Metalinguistics:' Ability to discuss language itself.
'Productivity:' A finite number of units can be used to create an infinite number of utterances.

The programme simply proves that Chimp and Human bodies share some ‘design’ characteristics and that many animals are far cleverer than people think. The thing that really peeves me is that this sort of programme yet again reinforces the ‘mater-to-man’ theory that 99.4% (do you like the irony) of people outside the scientific community take as fact.

Sources include: BBC, Natonal Geographic, Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

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