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?
Friday, 22 January 2010
Is Rice Cultivation To Blame For Red-Faced Asians?
Here's a very interesting gene-culture co-evolution story from Michael Balter in Science magazine. It suggests that gene evolution of alcohol dehydrogenase follwed the widespread adoption of alcohol consumption from rice between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago, in China. As such, if true, it follows the lactase story and the NAT2 story (down regulation of acetylation in the liver following the practice ingestion of cereal proteins in the fertile crescent that accompanied the beginning of cereal cultivation).
Precarious Human Pre-History
Nice piece in physorg about the evidence of the rather narrow genetic base of extant human populations today. We know of the Toba "bottle-neck", when volcanic action reduced human populations to around 10,000 individuals some 70,000 years ago. This research shows how human populations have wobbled on the knife-edge before that - being reduced down to the population levels of gorillas and chimpanzees today, around 20,000 individuals or less, about 1 million years ago.
The Sad Tale Of Jerry - The Chimp
Here's a sad little tale that's been swishing around the blogosphere today, about the eventual demise of the highly "humanized" chimp, Jerry, the star attraction of a small private zoo set up opposite the newly-created Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Yet more evidence, not that it is surely needed, that raising chimps as humans doesn't work, it is inappropriate for chimps and often ends in tears.
Leeds and Manchester Salon Talks
I've just got back from two back-to-back talks to the Salon movement in Leeds and Manchester. In both cases I'm arguing from NOT A CHIMP that the extension of some form of human rights to chimps is not justified in terms of the way it is perennially framed these days - their genetic and cognitive proximity to humans. I argue that it is at best a diversion in the race to save chimps and their habitats, and at worst a mis-representation of science.
Interestingly, the Salon audiences, which included a number of heavyweight university types, including some neuroscientists and political scientists, seemed out of touch with the fact that organisations like The Great Ape Project framed the debate, and the political action, in biological terms, and therefore found much of NOT A CHIMP nerdy in the detail it mustered. They preferred to see the argument over granting human rights to animals framed purely in political terms, making any biological facts irrelevant.
There was, however, interesting input on the distinction between rights and protection, a wide acknowledgement of the idea that rights assume some conscious understanding of the concept of morality, and that they are a form of social contract that has to be fought for and defended by the owners or seekers of rights, and come with some form of responsibilities. All this would make the granting of some form of a charter of rights to chimps farcical.
Interestingly, the Salon audiences, which included a number of heavyweight university types, including some neuroscientists and political scientists, seemed out of touch with the fact that organisations like The Great Ape Project framed the debate, and the political action, in biological terms, and therefore found much of NOT A CHIMP nerdy in the detail it mustered. They preferred to see the argument over granting human rights to animals framed purely in political terms, making any biological facts irrelevant.
There was, however, interesting input on the distinction between rights and protection, a wide acknowledgement of the idea that rights assume some conscious understanding of the concept of morality, and that they are a form of social contract that has to be fought for and defended by the owners or seekers of rights, and come with some form of responsibilities. All this would make the granting of some form of a charter of rights to chimps farcical.