What makes humans different from apes

Most animals are sexual beings and the primary function of sex is to reproduce. The statistician David Spiegelhalter estimates that up to ,, acts of human heterosexual intercourse take place per year in Britain alone — roughly , per hour. Around , babies are born in Britain each year, and if we include miscarriages and abortions, the number of conceptions rises to about , per year.

What that means is that of those ,, British encounters, 0. Out of every 1, sexual acts that could result in a baby, only one actually does. In statistics, this is classed as not very significant.

If we include homosexual behaviour, and sexual behaviour that cannot result in a pregnancy, including solitary acts, then the volume of sex that we enjoy magnificently dwarfs its primary purpose. Is Homo sapiens the only species that has decoupled sex from reproduction?

Enjoying sex might seem like a uniquely human experience, yet while we are reluctant to consider pleasure in other animals, we are certainly not the only animals that engage in non-reproductive sex. Zoo behaviour is often weird, as animals in captivity are far from their natural environment, but there are two male bears in Zagreb zoo who enjoy a daily act of fellatio, while simultaneously humming.

Males of some 80 species, and females of around 50 species of primates are frequent masturbators. Some behaviours reflect deviant or criminal sexual behaviours, such as sea otters who drown females and then keep their bodies to copulate with. The award for sheer ingenuity goes to the dolphins: there is one reported case of a male masturbating by wrapping an electric eel around his penis.

Some — not all — of these seemingly familiar sexual practices can be explained readily. Male Cape ground squirrels are promiscuous, and masturbate after copulation, we think, for hygiene reasons, protecting themselves from sexually transmitted diseases by flushing their tubes. Other behaviour is still mysterious to us: giraffes spend most of their time sexually segregated, and the vast majority of sexual relations appear to be male-to-male penetration.

As with the myriad examples of sexual behaviour between members of the same sex, it demonstrates that homosexuality — once, and in many places to this day, decried as a crime against nature — is widespread. Because sex and gender politics are so prominent in our lives, some look to evolution for answers to hard questions about the dynamics between men and women, and the social structures that cause us so much ire. Evolutionary psychologists strain to explain our behaviour today by speculating that it relates to an adaptation to Pleistocene life.

Briefly, issues with that idea are pretty straightforward: most fruit is not red; most skin tones are not white; and crucially, the test for evolutionary success is increased reproductive success. No, we do not. Peterson is also well known for using the existence of patriarchal dominance hierarchies in a non-specific lobster species as supporting evidence for the natural existence of male hierarchies in humans.

Why out of all creation choose the lobster? From the field. Great Apes. Our Champions. Youth Power. Work With Us. In fact, chimps are more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas. But the similarities we share go beyond our genetic makeup. Check out these 10 ways chimpanzees and humans are the same! Humans have bodies that are genetically and structurally very similar to those of the Great Apes and so we are classified in the Great Apes sub-group which is also known as the hominids Family Hominidae.

The first apes evolved about 25 million years ago and by 20 million years ago were a very diverse group. There are now only about 20 living species of apes and they are divided into two major groups. These are the:. Apes including humans possess the same general features that all primates share but they differ from other primates in a number of distinctive ways.

There are about 14 species of relatively small-bodied apes known as Lesser Apes. These are the gibbons, which live in trees, rarely descend to the ground and are active during the day. Gibbons are found in the forests of South-east Asia. The Great Apes are named for their large bodies. They also have larger brains than other primates. Like Lesser Apes, the Great Apes are active during the day. Humans may be called "naked apes," but most of us wear clothing, a fact that makes us unique in the animal kingdom, save for the clothing we make for other animals.

The development of clothing has even influenced the evolution of other species — the body louse, unlike all other kinds, clings to clothing, not hair. Without a doubt, the human trait that sets us apart the most from the animal kingdom is our extraordinary brain.

Humans don't have the largest brains in the world — those belong to sperm whales. We don't even have the largest brains relative to body size — many birds have brains that make up more than 8 percent of their body weight, compared to only 2. Yet the human brain, weighing only about 3 pounds when fully grown, give us the ability to reason and think on our feet beyond the capabilities of the rest of the animal kingdom, and provided the works of Mozart, Einstein and many other geniuses.

Contrary to popular misconceptions, humans are not the only animals to possess opposable thumbs — most primates do. Unlike the rest of the great apes, we don't have opposable big toes on our feet. What makes humans unique is how we can bring our thumbs all the way across the hand to our ring and little fingers.

We can also flex the ring and little fingers toward the base of our thumb. This gives humans a powerful grip and exceptional dexterity to hold and manipulate tools with.