As I argued at a dopefest a few months back, I think humans have a unique ability to recognize abstract qualities.
The example I gave was that a dog could recognize that there is a difference between a white ball and a white dish and a blue toy. But he wouldn’t come up with the idea that a quality of being white exists independent of the objects and that the ball and the dish share this quality while the toy does not.
My ex-girlfriend didn’t.
Bada-bing!
Um, yes she did.
Hate to break it to you, she knew.
We know that we think with our brains, which are in our heads. As an aside, I’ve always wondered when in history humans figured this out.
Some animals can certainly recognize the concepts of color. Alex, the famous bird, once looked at himself in the mirror and asked, “What color?” That’s when he learned the term “gray”.
There are also animals that make up songs. Some chimps and bonobos use spears to hunt small animals in holes. Don’t dolphins play catch?
I’d say: use of fire, complex tool creation, complex language.
You sure about that?
Damn. Guess I got shafted.
I’m not so sure about this one, I seem to remember reading about a species that has been observed playing catch. I have it my head that it was a bird, possibly a member of the crow family and they would do this with twigs in the air. However I may have misremembered it.
That’s not hubris, any more than it’d be hubris for elephants to think they’re the only ones with an organ that functions like a trunk. Either we’re unique in our ability to communicate an infinite number of concepts via syntactic speech, or we’re not, but it’s absurd to decide that one position is hubristic: that cuts off discussion instead of encouraging it.
Forgive me. I didn’t mean “hubris” to apply to you or any others in this thread. What I meant was that humans in general are guilty of hubris in thinking ourselves unique in certain behaviors. We are just fascinated when we see another species do something that is similar to us. We are even surprised by it. That’s where the hubris comes in. We shouldn’t be surprised, nor should we think that we know how other animals think. There are too many animals with too much neural tissue in their skulls (or squid! they don’t even have skulls!) for me to write off anything that deals with the brain as uniquely human.
That said, we have had some good answers to the OP’s question. My favorite is still fire. No other animal knows that.
How about the idea of combining different types of food to make them taste better?
I don’t mean actual cooking here (which I’ll grant not everyone seems to have the knack for), just simple notions like adding salt & pepper to potatoes, or squirting lemon juice on a piece of fish.
Barring certain brain injuries, recognizing other human faces. Other species like sheep recognize other sheep by face. Our talent lies in human faces.
Nope! Not unique.
I suspect that humans are the only animals that willingly do long-term things that hurt like hell in order to achieve a future goal. Examples: dieting, athletic training, medical treatments (surgery, chemotherapy).
No other animals use money or its equivalent to foster the exchange of goods.
They do. Macaque monkeys have even set up their own pricing structure when it comes to the worlds oldest profession.
Teleportation.
What? You DON’T know how?
Ah I see what you’re saying. At the same time, I think it’s equally possible that we’d ignore some way we’re unique out of a false sense of modesty. If we’re the only creatures with syntactic language, then we are, and it’s an interesting question whether we are; I see no philosophical reason why that’s impossible, so I’d rather approach it from the evidence at hand rather than from any axiom, if that makes sense.
Great post / user name combo.
And thanks for the info. That eliminates prostitution as being uniquely human.