What separates humans from monkeys?

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Language. We can't get into the mind of a monkey, so we don't know for sure if they can plan ahead or have emotions or wonder how things work and all that. But we do know for sure that no other species than humans has language. And this isn't something where we cut off the line just before where humans are to make humans seem special, like tool-using ability or intelligence; there is a clear and obvious gap between even those great apes who have been 'taught language' and human language.

Monkeys have tails. We no longer have tails.

There are all sorts of communication between animals that may not be as elaborate as human language but it does communicate. Whales and dolphins are doing something rather sophisticated with sound.

I think I'll expand a bit on my earlier comments...

I had agreed with the ability to control our emotions.... But upon thinking more on the issue, that isn't the most accurate way to say it.

We have the ability, which no other species has, to replicate ideas and concepts.
Language plays a very large part in it, but it isn't necessary.
We can copy what other people do. We can also modify the idea and copy the modified version too. We can remember the ideas that we've learned to copy by storing them into our brains, just as we and other animals can store other behaviors and ideas.

Because we can learn by copying, and not just experience in trial and error, our idea base grows faster.

It is this growing store of ideas that manifests, as a property the "self-aware" nature of humans. Something, that if present in other animals, is not nearly as strong. It is this concept of being "self-aware" that many people fall back upon when defining the term human without specific reference to the species homo sapiens sapeins.

Early superstitious people, and people still today take this property of ideas and call it a soul, so as to differentiate humans from "lower" animals... And often to put us above and outside the world of "animals" altogether.

This ability to be self-aware is what allows us to reject primal urges, wants, desires, emotions on grounds of rational information. Regardless of whether this self awareness actually has the power to exert control on our actions, it DOES allow us to have two conflicting ideas simultaneously. This is something called cognitive dissonance. We have to decide, every time two conflicting ideas arise, which one to do. Whether this is done by some "pilot" or by computerized algorithms in our brains is irrelevent.

It is this concept of cognitive dissonance that in my opinion really separates us from not just monkeys, but ALL other forms of animals (well, some birds, domesticated animals and dolphins/whales may be exceptions in principle, however the relative extent to which it has evolved in us is so vastly greater than that which has evolved in them that I feel the term ALL is still valid)

The fence at the zoo.

I was gonna say tattoos, but I like this answer more.

Recently demonstrated to be untrue.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80bea ... predators/

http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2010/03 ... edium=link

While humans and monkeys do have many things in common; for instance, they both live in the same world, breathe the same air, and have hearts that pump blood; they also do have many differences in other areas, which in my opinion has always separated them. For example, only mankind (since he is created in the image of God) has an eternal spirit, has the ability to communicate abstract thoughts, can create and invent things, and knows right from wrong, though sometimes that's hard to tell.

Can humans control their emotions? I hear tell NTs call us abnormal because we can.



I can't cite the study, but it seems to me some of what you have mentioned here has been observed in our primate cousins (of various species). For example the use of sticks to fish termites out of the termite nest (Chimpanzees)--one started this, the other copied his actions, and improvements were made to "the tool" as the darn thing caught on.

The (perhaps mythic) hundredth monkey effect has been widely published, claiming that once a new bit of information reaches a critical mass (one hundred monkeys), it spreads across the species. The root of the theory, where Japanese macaques learned to wash their sweet potatoes, can be documented. The adults taught their children and the behavior persisted. The second half of the 'theory' is that it spread almost simultaneously to other macaque populations once the idea hit critical mass.

I think nature rewards innovations in efficiency for all species--better/faster food procurement means healthier bodies and better survivability of offspring. I don't know that innovation makes us different--then again, maybe we aren't different.



I'm not so sure you can prove that animals don't experience cognitive dissonance. Watching nature shows, I think I have seen something like it--an animal having to choose between grabbing their lunch or running from a more threatening predator. In that instant, two survival instincts set up a fierce bit of dissonance. But I think I see what you may be saying--given dissonance between something instinctual (sex, let's say) and hmm...is there anything non-instinctual? Honestly, I'm drawing a blank here, it all leads back to survival, doesn't it? I think maybe the difference is, human instinct for survival is a convoluted and indirect set of pathways compared to other animals?

What about art? Is that the difference?

The bulk of humanity is so impressed with itself it will never concede animals have any superiorities over humans although these can be demonstrated in many ways. Humans could not survive under the many environments happily inhabited by any animals. This claim of an eternal spirit is, of course immense stupidity and total insanity.

Certain of the raptors have retinal density 4 times that of humans. That is why vultures can see small animal corpses from ten thousand feet up. The ceteceans have much better hearing than humans. Humans are physically mediocre compared to some other animals. Where we make it all up in in our brain power and our ability to communicate abstract ideas. Humans may be unique in this regard.

ruveyn

Unfortunately, although almost all raptors see better than humans rather few humans think better than raptors. The possibilities may exist but they are seldom realized.

Yet we find ways to climb the highest mountains, visit the Marianas Trench, cross the poles and make a run to the moon. I think we can say that humans have survived far more environments than any other single species (except maybe some lowly bacteria).

Lowly? Considering they face the roughest conditions with no artificial mechanisms it seems to me they do better than us.

Yes, lowly: invisible to the naked eye and clinging to someone else's intestinal tract seems to make it an apt description, humble and unassuming would serve just as well. I don't believe in the superiority of any creature, but if survivability makes one "better" than the other, I suppose humans would rank right up there with cockroaches and bacteria.

The question is, what makes us different?

Starfish are different, whales are different, jellyfish are different. So what?