Are we humans simply remodelled apes? Chimps with a tweak? Is the difference between our genomes so minuscule it justifies the argument that our cognition and behaviour must also differ from chimps by barely a whisker? If “chimps are us” should we grant them human rights? Or is this one of the biggest fallacies in the study of evolution? NOT A CHIMP argues that these similarities have been grossly over-exaggerated - we should keep chimps at arm’s length. Are humans cognitively unique after all?
Thursday, 13 August 2009
Why Humans Talk And Chimps Don't
It's a fertile time, at the moment, for interesting comparative functional neuroscience! Here an article reports on recent work on Broca's Area, by Chet Sherwood and team. They sectioned and examined Broca's Area from a dozen chimps and discovered that there is no left-right asymmetry in terms of number of neurons and that there were a lot of individual differences in the size, location and symmetry of Broca's Area, rather than a pan-species norm - as exists in humans. Neither was the handedness of the chimps in any way related to symmetry of Broca's (Broca's Area in chimps has been related to the use of hand gestures and tool use). Furthermore, they notice that, while the human brain in total is some 3.6 times larger than the chimp brain, Broca's Area in the human is 6 times larger than in the chimp. It has ballooned in the human lineage.
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