Helene Guldberg a managing editor of spike online believes humans are superior to animals (he doesn't seem to classify humans as an animal) because of our abilities.

http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA40E.htm



J. Neil Schulman also makes the same argument (novelist, screenwriter, journalist, radio personality, filmmaker and actor / winner of the Libertarian Futurist Society's annual Prometheus Award for best libertarian novel).

http://www.pulpless.com/jneil/aniright.html



Both of whom view animal rights activist as "the Human Defamation League".

On the other hand some people do not believe humans are a superior species.

http://www.cultureandanimals.org/animalrights.htm#rational



Are humans superior to other species?

Are humans animals?

Are humans animals?

Yes. Scientifically we are animals. any living being that is not a plant or bacteria is an animal.

Are humans superior to other species?

Yes. We have intelligence, technology and an advanced social structure. Therefore we are superior than other creatures.

Ahhh...but what good have we done with that supposed intelligence, technology, and advanced social structure. What other species on the planet has done as much damage to the planet as we have? In fact, what other species on the planet does as much damage to itself? Given the supposed capabilities and advantages we have, we have a spectacularly unremarkable ability to do the one thing all animals (which we are) should do...coexist in nature. So, either we're not as intelligent as we think we are, or we're not really that superior. Hmmmm....which of the deadly sins would that be...oh, ya: Pride! At least we have that over the other animals.

I would add that there are all sorts of animals out there with advanced social structures, many of which we attribute little intelligence to. Ants come to mind. There are also other animals that use technology and tools...beavers, for example. Intelligence is a very nebulous concept, as we have no good idea how to measure it in other species. The tools we use come from our perspective, not theirs, bringing with them an inherent bias (see the article below). Consider that dogs (and other animals) learn to communicate with us much better than we learn to communicate with them. Almost every dog learns several words in our language, yet I have yet to meet or hear of a single person on earth that has learned to say anything in dog. That would seem to indicate the intelligence differential is in the opposite direction than we assume it is, wouldn't it?

As pointed out in an article in The Onion, these supposed tests we perform on animals to measure their intelligence are fairly ludicrous.



I am also reminded of a study discussed by my psychology teacher back in college. A group of researchers were trying to determine the problem solving ability of chimpanzees. They put a series of large blocks of varying sizes in a room, with a bunch of bananas suspended from the ceiling. The object was to see if the chimps would figure out you needed to use the blocks to get the food, and also then that the bigger blocks needed to be stacked on the bottom. The chimps looked at the scenario for a few seconds, and then started signaling for the researchers to come back into the room. After a few minutes of this, the researchers gave up, assuming the task was just too difficult for the chimpts to grasp, and went in. One of the chimps grabbed the researcher by the hand, and led him to the spot under the bananas (at which point the researcher assumed it wanted him to get the banana for them). But, no....another chimp then climbed up his back, grabbed the bananas, and they all went off to eat. Why stack blocks when a perfectly self-movable device was readily available? I'm quite sure the chimp's dinner discussion while eating the bananas centered on the absurdity of humans (but, of course, since no human has ever learned their language, we'll never know for sure, will we?)

Oddly enough, we were discussing this very subject over breakfast this morning.

Are humans superior to other species?

In some ways yes, in other ways very inferior.

Hobbes has already pointed out our species' tendency to destroy the world upon which we live. That ain't cool. But consider other things:

We have to wear clothing or suffer early deaths. We are pretty deaf and blind, not to mention zero sense of smell in comparison to many other mammals (bat, cat, dog).

In terms of survival, a single human is relatively weak in the world. However, we get our dominance through social structures, so a bunch of us makes up a formidable force. As a result, we are dominant in the world. This does not necessarily equate to being superior.

Are humans animals?

I think that's pretty obvious. It was very striking to me how similar we are when I field-dressed and later butchered my first whitetail deer. The similarity to a human being was so much that I gave up deer hunting.

During the breakfast discussion, it was brought up that when we talk about animals, we use the term instinct, but when talking about ourselves, we use tendency, as in human tendencies. This was in reference to a young female jungle cat that had killed a baboon, then discovered the baboon's youngster. The cat protected the little baboon as if it were one of her cubs.

The comentary was that the cat's maternal instinct must have been triggered. Okay, but maybe the cat wanted a pet? How can we tell if it was an instinct or a tendency?

Anyway, I've seen this in domestic cats too. One made buddies with a mouse, napped with it in the crook of her arm. Another tried to adopt a ground squirrel. Both were female, so maybe it is maternal instinct, but the more I get to know animals, the more I can see their humanity.

Which is a strange but interesting feeling.

Are humans superior to other species?

Yes, our biology allows for things, such as building a rocket ship that other species biology does not allow for. Though in every environmental instance no, we are not always superior over other living things simply because of biological difference, such as some animals have a better sense of smell, hundreds if not thousands of times better then any humans currently is. As far as I know on land, I don’t know if its all types of bears, but bears in general have I think the most sensitive nose overall, don’t quote me on that one though. So can every human be a rocket scientist barring serious handicap, I would say yes, but on that note though I don’t think society pushes for such or really can have that exist.

Are humans animals?

Yes, the homology is to great to dispute scientifically anymore, this homology also exists when it comes to biochemistry, probably the most powerful version of the truth to date. So what does it mean, I really don’t know or look at it that way past that in all reality just like other living things that are classified as an animal or in the realm of the metazoan that yes we do belong there.

Humans have the ability to evolve, change and adapt. We can deny our most basic instincts if we so choose. We are generally a more 'civilized' (I use the term loosely) species than those currently walking the earth. As a species, humans are capable of learning, applying their knowledge for advanced means and benefitting from it. Not to say that other species cannot, but the scale to which we have accomplished ambitious undertakings greatly outweighs any competition for this title.

Yes. Humans eat. We feel, bleed and die. From basic to complex, Humans are the most dangerous animal.

By any reasonable definition of the word, human beings are indeed animals. This is not meant in any way to contradict the opinions of those who would suggest that human beings are, in some way, the result of supernatural intervention. If human beings have souls (a question I certainly do not wish to debate), then they are animals with souls.

The question of "superiority" is a tricky one. If we mean more adapted to survival, well, I think that bacteria and insects beat us by a mile. If we mean that human beings have more intellectual capacity than other animals, that we have more self-consciousness, that we are capable of more profound suffering, that we are worthy of more ethical consideration, than I agree totally that human beings are superior to other animals. If we mean morally superior, it's half-and-half. We are capable of far greater good, but we are also capable of far greater evil.

What the authors of these articles fail to notice is the fact that it is a huge leap of bad logic to go from "Human beings are worthy of more ethical consideration than other animals" to "Other animals are worthy of zero ethical consideration." Both authors seem to equate anyone who speaks about animal rights with the tiny number of fanatics would would claim that all animals are worthy of exactly the same degree of ethical consideration. If there is somebody out there who would equate the eradication of a flea with the murder of a human being, that person is a fool, unworthy of notice.

If there is somebody out there who would equate the killing of a primate with the killing of a flea -- who would claim that the two actions are exactly the same -- that person is also a fool.

Of the two authors, Guldberg seems like someone with whom one could have a reasonable discussion. Schulman's essay, on the other hand, despite the fact that it keeps talking about rationality, is clearly a purely emotional outpouring of rage at the animal rights movement. He's probably right to feel rage at those few extremists who see no ethical difference between human beings and other animals. However, to describe anyone who promotes animal rights of "human defamation" is untrue. I want to elevate humans into taking the rights of other species into greater consideration.

Recognizing the rights of other animals does not lessen our ethical superiority to them; it heightens it.

Are humans superior to other species?
As the other posters pointed out, Humans are smart but we are one of the few species that kill each other over petty things like drug money or oil. Here's some food for thought though. Raw intellegence alone doesn't necessarily enable anyone to build a space rocket or do surgery. After all, some animals such as Elephants and Dolphins are extremely intellegent. But they don't have actual hands to work with their ideas. What that means is that a Dolphin, with its senses and intellegence, could easily figure out how to design a building. But the Dolphin would not be able to lift the lumber and hammer in the nails.

That's just plain silly, which perhaps does go to advance one of your other points.

Simply put, humans kill one another over resources, out of fear, and over sex. Drug money? Resource. Oil? Resource. Losing face? Fear and/or sex.

Animals kill one another, including within their own species, over exactly the same three things. Fear, resources, sex.

Are humans superior to other species?
Yes, because we're the only ones we know of who can make such an evaluation.

Are humans animals?
Hmmm, animals kill over resources, fear and sex, we kill over resources, fear and sex. Yup, we're animals. As Austin Powers would say, "grrr baby, grrrrr".

I believe that 1/3 of humans is entirely animal. And this is how far science has gotten today; it can penetrate the mysteries of this physical world we inhabit, and those of our own bodies. The remaining two thirds are entirely un-scientific as yet, and still only lies in the domains of religions, where it maybe sometimes not is being examined properly.
I`ve just finished watching the movie "Phenomena", with J. Travolta. Yeah I know it`s all hollywood, and that some has called it an advertisement for scientology, but it still makes you ponder on exactly the topic of this thread.
(It´s about a guy who, because he has a braintumor, develops incredible abilities and intelligence).
In the end of the movie they want to open his brain and study it, while he is still alive, and he say´s: " there is nothing in the human brain, if I am not there, all the ideas, all the abilities, all is in the human spirit".
Some thing like that.
It sometimes seems to me, like the world is totally upside down, and we see things in an dizzily ackward angle.
It sometimes seems to me, that all the microscopes in the world, and all the onesided experiments only based on what our five normal physical senses can conduct , never will tell me what we humans really are.
It´s exactly like Aristoteles´s story about; " the people who lived all their lifes in a cave, but sometimes they spotted some vage shadows on the walls, coming from above, and they mistook these shadows for being real entities". Or as R. Steiner put it; " if a normal seeing man comes to a community of colorblind people, and starts talking about colors, they are most likely to kill him or lock him up, as a crazy person ". Or as a russian scientist (forgot his name) put it in story-form as well; "if an alien from another planet landed on this earth, but arrived at a very deserted place, and there found an old cottage, and in this cottage an old radio, still operating. If He (allegory: the human race at present) then was intelligent enough to take the radio apart, and put it back together again, and discover exactly how it worked, he`d still remain ignorant of the fact, that the sound he was hearing, was being transmitted directly from a symphony hall in Austria".
Of course we only know what we know at present, but there is a strong tendency towards pride in modern science, which rules out any other possibilities. Like men (and women) in the last thousand and thousand of years haven´t asked "why". Like we in this modern age have all the answers in our microscopes and our labs, and the science of the people who came before us, thousands of generations, don´t matter none. This is the ultimate pride, exactly like the scholars of the medevil, who loudly proclaimed; "the world is flat".
The genius is the the guy who keeps all options open, and rules nothing out.

Self awareness, the ability to plan and execute plans, and a concept of the future all would indicate that homo sapiens is the superior species on earth. The fact that the estrus cycle was reversed also sets the human species apart from other species, but we remain animals, particularly mammals.

I take exception, however, to those who describe other human beings as "animals" who commit heinous acts, especially against fellow humans. In this sense other animals would appear to be "superior," because most do not kill just for pleasure or torture their victims first.

It just means that we need to act according to another quality that is supposed to separate us from other species--conscience.

I hate to play devils advocate here (The user can probably do a much better job anyway).

But what makes "Self-awareness," "intelligence," and "civilization" qualities that necessitate superiority?

In other words, what is it about, take, for instance, self-awareness that automatically makes me superior to something that is not self-aware, like a tree. Who's to say (including human beings) that self-awareness is actually a desirable quality. Maybe the tree would think otherwise, if it could think.

Which leads us to Bikerdads astute observation, that, while incorrect, gives insight behind our opinions of superiority:


While this seems like an easy way to assure ourselves of "superiority," we can quickly find instances were similar logic does not work. For instance:
"Which is faster, a cheetah, or me. Because I am the only one who can evaluate "fast", I am faster than the cheetah."

The important insight is that qualitative definitions are flexible, even relative. I can say I am faster than a cheetah based around how I define fast. Notice, the definition of a fast changes, but not my speed or the cheetahs speed.

Similarly, because the qualities that define superiority are arbitrary (subjective), no one can say, with authority, that they are "Superior" to anything. The best we can do is make up a number of qualities that compose superiority, and then claim superiority based on those. That is pretty much what everyone in this thread is doing, my point is, none of your definitions are necessarily better than anyone elses, and, as such, there is no real, tangible way anyone can say they are superior to animals.

To illustrate why I'm right, try to prove me wrong. Green is better than red.

I'm still waiting...

Now, the clever AD users have probably gotten on my case about the burden of proof fallacy. That is , it is up to me to prove green is better than red. And your right, but that was my point. As I cannot prove that green is better than red; you cannot prove yourself superior to animals.

Trying to tie in subjective qualities to an ultimately subjective definition can be tricky... and downright dangerous. If I claim that civilization is the superiority I feel to animals, then, perhaps, maybe the citizens of New York are more superior than the denizens of Africa?

I agree with you in the context of traits in how they will play out in the environment or natural selection. If we pollute or overpopulate ourselves to death, we were not very superior in the end, but such is the just of natural selection, in most cases in say "lower" forms of life they do not have as much ability to adapt or manipulate or recognize the environment as humans do, so in a way maybe one of the reasons we are superior to other things is simply that, they way our brain is put together and the fact we have thumbs that can work together, now if we can get people to do that watch out world! Some other animals on the planet if i remember have brains larger then ours, but they are not wired like ours, so what have you. Language amongst some other forms of life actually changes in time, just like ours, some other animals, other primates can actually think of self in thought in more detail like us, such as a human being able to notice having a bad hair day, vs run from the larger thing with claws and teeth.

Some other primates have been taught how to communicate thought via sign language, in actually some rather complexity I might add, and as far is at goes cognitive ability for some species is roughly around a 4 year old in age. Do you know that some primate youth display various behaviors that one psychologist Freud tried to coin, like the oral stage... it can only lead to wonder. For the most part I don’t buy into most of the hype about comparison, for one reason people at some utopia of 100% understanding of the natural world does not exist, so without that its hard to claim objectivity unless its some long standing and well groomed thought coming from science, second is that well, what human being is truly going to say i wish i was as powerful as a sea sponge, look at its might, I don’t think many people think that way and of course would not trade positions in life if actually giving the opportunity.

Again in closing I do agree that these traits just for like every other living thing is still open to natural selection, and in the end one could simply that that’s what defines superior, even if only temporary. For one example just look at technology, it would be great if somehow we poured into materials science to make greener matter to build and work with that can be reused, instead we will have landfills of most everything we use because we do not live that way, which in the long run I don’t find to fit.

Are humans superior to other species?

Yes. I'm going to take the scenic route to explaining why.

Is Earth's atmosphere superior to Mars or Venus's? Why? Well, our atmosphere is 20% oxygen, which we need to live. But that wasn't the case a billion years ago. If you were alive a billion years ago, you'd have been a primitive bacteria -- maybe the first one. You'd have scratched or osmosed out a living in an oxygen-free environment. Bacteria must have lived in this anoxic environment for millions of years. Many species evolved. Then one day, a bacteria came along with a new way to make food from sunlight, with the waste product being oxygen. This innovation would cause the extinction of the majority of species on the planet, as corrosive oxygen gas slowly built up in the atmosphere. Those that survived and multiplied eventually produced a vast ecosystem that depends on sunlight for energy. We're part of it.

Was the first photosynthetic bacteria superior to what had come before? It was successful in a Darwinian sense -- certainly more successful than all of the species it polluted to death. I don't know what other criteria you could use for a bacteria. You can't blame it for polluting the atmosphere. It's incapable of being culpable, in a moral sense.

Paladin Elspeth mentioned that most animals don't torture. I think that's true, but I've seen my cat torturing a mouse. He didn't do it for the sake of torture, of course. It was a kind of play. But that didn't make any difference to the suffering of the mouse. Which reminds me of BecomingHuman's cheetah, and its "relative" speed.

How fast is a cheetah? How fast is a gazelle? Does the way that you define "fast" affect the result of the chase? Does the gazelle have a right to life? Or does the cheetah have a right to dinner? (Does this paragraph belong in the Animal Rights thread?)

Cheetahs aren't looking too good these days -- again, in the Darwinian sense. I don't know if it's habitat encroachment, poaching, pollution or just a paucity of slow gazelles, but the cheetahs are running out of cheetahs. Human zoologists are doing their best to keep them alive and breeding -- and saving DNA samples in case they can't -- but they might yet go extinct. Do humans bear a moral responsibility if cheetahs go extinct?

I think the answer is yes, and that that moral responsibility is part of what makes humans superior. Another, related reason is that we can do something about the problems we cause. We're not the first species to cause problems, but we're the first that's capable of solving them.

Humans in a sense of our own making are superior in some ways to other species. Notice how people will give you a different answer as to what makes humans superior.

Our eyesight is advanced in comparison to many species, although some species do have better eyesight. However through telescopes, microscopes and other types of electronically enhanced lenses we have advanced our eyesight beyond any another other species. Our strength is inferior to ape's so we adapt by manipulating our surroundings to build a truck. We can't fly naturally so we observe and make ourselves fly even as far as space and live there for a time.

Humans are superior to other species because we advance our evolution through intelligence.

We have become our own gods by our self realization that everything around us will be freely manipulated if it will benefit our livelihood no matter what the cost.

We kill a tree that has lived hundreds of years for shelter and to put things in without a second thought, we kill whatever we like that tastes good for food if it's not another human (for the most part at least ), we kill animals with more fur than us to keep us warm, we dig large holes in the ground to see if there's anything we can use. We use our surroundings to do what we believe is making our life just a little easier and better and do it well through intelligence.

When we invite something that we believe is making our lives better or easier we are also making it more complicated. Is it simpler for your average bear to survive or human? Humans have to get an education, get a job and rely on the system to survive, bears have to make it to adulthood and their survival is pretty much guaranteed as long as a human doesn't kill them. They are born with all the survival tools they need on their own bodies were as to we rely on each other to a great deal. I'm sure some humans could survive lost in the woods but many would die off if our system broke down. So we are evolving at the cost of our own bodies de-evolution with the exception of the brain.

We are the one's that make the definition of superior so we are the one's who decide's what is superior.

Superior, as Galileo observed about uniform motion, is relative.

Agreed. I would add further that we are making an unproven supposition also...that being that the tree is NOT self-aware. Do we know that for sure? There have been studies indicating that this premise is false...that not only are plants self-aware, but that they are also aware of other beings. It is perhaps just our lack of knowledge that leads to this supposition...we may, in the future, discover that the wise old oak is indeed just that.



Similarly....does this point to our superiority, or to our lack of knowledge regarding the capabilities of other entities? I know that when it comes to the animal kingdom, simple observation refutes many of the common stereotypes regarding what animals can and can't do, and how we are different from them. Humor was often given as one example....only humans have the ability to do things 'just for fun'. Ever watch otters play? If you did, you couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of such a suposition.



Agreed. Ask yourself this...if we took it upon ourselves to demonstrate that [insert animal here] were superior to us, do you not think we could come up with a list of qualities? If you think I am wrong, consider this.. Sure, these lists were made up in fun....but there is truth to the statements as well.

One of the reasons this is one of my favorite debate topics, is that I think the premise is all wrong. Rather than looking for ways to demonstrate our superiority, wouldn't time be better spent seeing ways we could better ourselves....and wouldn't one way to do that be to learn from other species? Even if we assume that we are superior to them, does that imply that we are superior to them in all things? No. So, we probably have something to learn from all of them. And doing so would be the best way to demonstrate our superiority, anyway....not sitting there like a rooster crowing about it all the time. Which gets me back to my original statement regarding pride, quite possibly the one area where we are almost universally inferior.

You've missed my point, possibly because of a poor (though correct) analogy on my part. I most certainly did not say speed was relative. Speed can be measured. Fast, however, is something different altogether. What exactly constitutes "fast" is open to debate, and has no real, objective answer.

To illustrate more clearly, and to tie in our subjective qualitative assessment, "fast," lets look at a short distance runner (sprinter) and a long distance runner (jogger). If the jogger can beat the sprinter in a four mile marathon, but the sprinter can beat the jogger in a one lap relay, which one is "faster?"

Either way, we can measure each ones speed precisely (feet/second.. whatever), but what determines who is faster depends upon several independent variables that are not inherently obvious (and, I'm arguing, are wholly subjective). Say, for instance, someone says that the person who can reach the greatest speed at any one point and time is "faster." By this definition, the faster person loses to the slower person in the four mile race. Even worse, theoretically, if someone could only move five feet before burning out, but could do so at 2000 feet/second, this "faster" person would end up losing the one lap relay to the slower sprinter. They can only move five feet! So much for fast!

Or perhaps, maybe a definition of fast would be the speed one takes to finish a mile race. This definition of fast is equally as valid as "Greatest speed at any point and time." We could come up with one hundred definitions that would all be equally valid, because they are, inherently, based upon our personal conceptualization of the meaning of "fast."

Who is the better Baseball player? One can throw extraordinarily well, and the other can bat extraordinarily well. Does person A's throwing ability outweigh person B's ability to bat, thus making him a "superior" baseball player? Its up to you. Maybe how well a person throws, or bats, doesn't make any difference. Perhaps its the best combination of the two, or that with catching, or that with a million other things. Every definition, of course, is as trivial, and subjective, as the next. There is most certainly no way to prove it one way or the other.

My ultimate point in bringing this up is simply to point out, there is really no objective standard of superiority. When you think of the slaughterhouses, and the hundreds of cattle that are fattened for speed and taste, and butchered merciless, and take solace in the fact that you are superior to the food you eat, just remember that the qualification of superior is fabrication. It is as justly applied from us to the cattle, as white folk to black, or space alien to human.

Edit: The above maybe gave you the impression that I am against eating animals. I'm not.

I don't think I missed your point -- I was just playing with it. Hopefully not torturing it. Yes, there are many ways of defining "fast," but there's only one definition that's important to the cheetah and the gazelle. Over many generations, both cheetahs and gazelles have been forced to go faster in order to survive and multiply. It's an evolutionary arms race, a natural phenomenon that doesn't care about our definitions or rules.


I agree that there's no single, objective standard of superiority. My point was that humans have a unique and new criterion that we can use: a moral sense. Cats aren't "guilty" of torturing their prey, because cats aren't moral agents.

In American society, we have a taboo against eating dogs and horses because we sense their intelligence and empathize with them. As for the animals we do eat, Temple Grandin makes a living trying to take the cruelty out of the slaughterhouses where they're turned into food. What other species could come up with that idea? Isn't that as good a standard to judge us by as any?

Are humans superior to other species?

If you mean are we superior to members of our own genus then we must be because everyone else is extinct. Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo neandertalis and an assortment of others are nothing but old bones in our museums. It might have been better for the Pan genus (Troglogyte and pygmy chimps) since their ancestors and ours got along famously for 5 to 7 million years, now they are on the brink of extinction. That's natural selection though, we have survived members of our genus and now we are working on the whole next tier at the Family Hominidae level.

Taxonomic Classification

Are humans animals?

Yes, we are composed of animalia cells and we move (animated) which puts us in the kingdom of eukaryotes and the phylum of animalia. We have distiquished ourselves on a number of levels that has given us a dominant selective advantage. We invent things other animals would never dream of, their brains are really much too small for that sort of thing. We are the egghead mammals of the kingdom animalia and we are superior in terms of fittness to all species of our genus and family.