The willingness of our pets to adopt other animals’ offspring — relative to that of the wild chimpanzees — is an argument for human exceptionalism. The real story is a reason that humans are not just animals.
Tag: bonobos
Asked at Mind Matters News: But, in the end, did the chimpanzee really talk?
The Smithsonian article tells us a good deal about the motivations of those who, essentially, see bonobos not as apes in need of protection but, to judge from their rhetoric, as something like an oppressed people.
Researchers: Bonobos eating swamp greens help explain human brain development
Given how little substance there is to all this, they could at least have included some cute bonobo pix.
Michael Egnor: Apes can be generous. Are they just like humans then?
Reading the claims for ape generosity in The New York Times, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor offers a clarification: There is a fallacy about the human mind that regularly appears in research on animal behavior, and this fallacy is related to the pervasive misunderstanding about machine “intelligence.” It is a misunderstanding about the most basic characteristic of Read More…