Are animals superior to humans?

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Are animals superior to humans? Animals don't mess up the environment. Animals never kill except for food and protection.

Sorry, that's nowhere close to the truth. Chimpanzees kill each other in tribal wars, farrets kill for fun and for sport. I'm not a zoologist but I'm sure the list of animals with what we formerly thought were strictly human vices goes on and on.

This also seems to be the kind of thing we do when we imagine that we're still somehow separated from nature by such a punctuation that our instincts aren't correlated with those of the animal kingdoms, ie. still having a sort of 'Adam and Eve' mythos rattling around the back of our heads like an empty can.

Humans are animals.

Yes, nearly all of the other animals are morally superior to humans.

Someone said:

"Chimpanzees kill each other in tribal wars."

They fight, and sometimes some die, but they don't massacre, as some "humans" do.

Of course not even all humans massacre when they fight. That's a relatively recent habit of some human societies (You know who you are), not usually including "primitive" ones.

Someone said that ferrets kill for fun (maybe for practice or practical how-to information). They do so naively. Humans (supposedly) have the capacity to know better, and that makes them capable of genuine full guilt.

By the way, of course our species is genetically nearly entirely Chimpanzee. We're direct descendants of Chimpanzees (by which I mean Chimpanzees or some very similar ancestor of theirs). We could almost be called ground-adapted Chimpanzees who have adapted to language and technology.

...almost, but maybe not quite:

There's convincing evidence and argument that we aren't entirely Chimpanzee in our ancestry. ..evidence that we aren't entirely Primates, or the order Primata.

There evidently is another order of mammals in our family-tree. The order Artiodactyla.

...the Even-Toed Hoofed Mammals.

,,,of the family Suidae (or a closely-related one).

Old World Swine.

It seems that, at some time in our ancestral past, a pig and a chimpanzee had a romance, an affair, or at least an intimate encounter.

The evidence and argument are described by a geneticist, a specialist in hybridization. ...a foremost authority on hybridization. His name is Eugene McCarthy (not to be confused with the 60s politician by that name).

Check his website. Google "Humans a pig-chimpanzee hybrid? Eugene McCarthy."

In the resulting google website-list, you'll surely find McCarthy's own website, at which he explains and justifies his theory much better than i could.

But let me just answer a few possible objections, and then roughly introduce some evidence:

Yes, our genetic material nearly identical to the Chimpanzee, and no Pig genetic material is in evidence.

But that's the usual expected thing, with "back-hybridization". How does back-hybridization work?:

The Pig-Chimpanzee hybrid was born to a female Chimpanzee. Obviously often or usually such a hybrid wouldn't survive. But once is all it takes. That hybrid offspring was then, of course, raised by the female Chimpanzee mother, and therefore was raised among the Chimpanzees, identifying as a Chimpanzee.

Of course the hybrid would likely not be as attractive as a mate to a Chimpanzee, as would the other Chimpanzees. If the hybrid were a male, then a female Chimpanzee of course wouldn't be well-advised to commit herself to a pregnancy that would produce another not-very-survivable hybrid. But a male has nothing to lose by propagating his genes widely. There'd be less competition for a female hybrid, and it's to be expected that the female hybrid would become the mother of another hybrid.

This next-generation hybrid would of course be a bit more Chimpanzee-like than the first one, and would have a larger proportion of Chimpanzee genetic material.

...and so on, with each successive hybridization-generation. ...hybridization between a female hybrid and a male Chimpanzee.

Additionally, a female Chimpanzee is physically better adapted to care for a delicate, difficulty-protected and reared infant than a female Pig would be.

That's called back-hybridization. It happens, and its sometimes done intentionally by breeders. It eventually results in individuals who more closely resemble one of the hybridizing species, and don't carry genetic evidence of the other hybridizing species.

Some people object that there couldn't be a hybrid between two different orders of animals. (Primates and Even-Toed-Hoofed-Mammals).

Sure there can be, and are. Cross-ordinal hybridization isn't unheard of at all, even among animals.

Unusual? Sure. Humans are an unusual species in other regards too.

What's the evidence?:

Humans differ from all the other primates in a number of ways. These differences have puzzled primatologists for a long time.

McCarthy, of course, is the one qualified to discuss this, but let me just mention a few things.

Skin-thickness, subcutaneous fat, lips, cartilaginous nose, the shape of the eyes, the teeth, reproductive anatomy, and maybe head-size, and their terrestrial-ness, are some of the similarities. There are many more, some of then noticeable only to anatomists. All those differences have been puzzling to anatomists.

The hybrids may have had a greater affinity for and easier adaption to, terrestrial (as opposed to arboreal) living.

Though Pigs walk of four feet, their pelvic structure is actually better suited to bipedal-ness than that of Chimpanzees, and may have contributed to our bipedal-ness.

When an animal is so different from its main ancestor, then the usual practice is to look for what species they're similar to.

All of characteristics by which we differ from all the other primates, are characteristics that we have in common with Pigs. That's remarkable. If it were a coincidence, then it would be an amazing and highly improbable coincidence.

But of course McCarthy, at his website, is the one who is qualified to explain it.

Check it out.

If we're part Pig, and it really does look as if we are, then I suggest that the porcine side of our family tree comprises our better side,when it comes to such things as wars and aggressiveness in general.

Michael Ossipoff

Last edited by Michael829 on 05 Nov 2017, 2:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It was the ancient aliens. They drugged us with the diseases of evil and gave a certain portion of the population, ie. the 13 families of the 'black nobility', an extra-special dose to rule over the rest.


Maybe one days we'll just get our heads around the concept that a) 'evil' is as much a relative byproduct of universal activity as good and b) some special exotic or extraterrestrial force didn't inject it into us. Until then Mani and Zoroaster will be alive and well, whether among Illuminati conspiracy theorists or 'te patriarchy'.

Pigs making babies with chimps is perhaps a milder approach along this gradient but we're doing pretty poorly at this rate to find evidence of deeply divergent breeds being able to procreate anything that can itself procreate. Not sure what we're trying to make true in this regard unless there's some desire of cat ladies or dog men to believe that their pets are innocent angels and people are terrible. The map of Darwinian evolution doesn't seem to include much morality and even then it tends to survive as an in-group civility, particularly with animals that have mobility whereas plants might have a bit more civility if for no other reason that they aren't fighting tribes and they're stuck with their neighbors.

No. There's no evidence for a belief that aliens have ever visited Earth.

Evidently Techstepgenr8tion has been reading Von Daniken. I've read that some of Von Daniken's "evidence" was simply made up by him. If you believe Von Daniken, then you might as well believe every UFO book too.

One difference between Eugene McCarthy and Von Daniken is that McCarthy is a recognized and distinguished university authority in his specialty.

And I would remind techstepgenr8thion that he believes some things that are less well-supported than Pig-Chimp hybridization.



Very good, techstepgenr8thion. It's just an evolved attribute of our species.




Incorrect. Hybridization between animals belonging to different orders is quite well-known and well-established, as is hybridization resulting in reproductively-viable individuals.

One thing that has puzzled scientists is humans' lower fertility, as compared to other animals. Lowered fertility is a characteristic that goes with hybridization.

It's not surprising that, even after all the back-hybridization generations, and millions of years of further evolution, humans remain relatively less fertile--given the inter-ordinal hybridization, which typically significantly lowers fertility.

I would remind techstepgenr8tion that McCarthy is a recognized distinguished authority on hybridization.




No, it's just an observable fact. Most, or nearly all, non-human species are relatively innocent, in comparison to humans. ...as I described in my other post here.

...including dogs and cats. Yes, some dog-breeds, such as Pit-Bulls, and various attack-dog breeds, are bred for aggressiveness and inclination to attack. Arguably, of course, their aggression (but only in individuals that have it) could be regarded as a bad, human-reminiscent, attribute. It's hardly surprising that humans could intentionally breed some of their bad attributes into other animals whose breeding they manage.

Of course, even in those attack-breeds of dogs, many individuals aren't aggressive. ..as can be said for the human species as well.

Well, evidently, at least for part of our prehistory, gullibility and obedience to leaders were adaptive, and selected-for by natural-selection. ...explaining the near-universality of those attributes in humans.

As P.T. Barnum so eloquently expressed it, there's a sucker born every minute.

And W.C. Fields added: "Never give a sucker an even break."

Those two great social scientists have explained the nature of human society, and why it is as it is, and will always remain so.



Humans have become aberrant in various ways. Their capacities for language and inter-individual organization have had some distinctly unfavorable evolutionary results.

Michael Ossipoff

Something in this topic mutated and went completely off the beaten track.

Are animals morally superior to humans? The suggestion of 'no' was met with something about pig-chimps, which even in the long-shot odds that it were true isn't even a rebuttal. I know I'm right about the 'no' part because I had a HotHeads burrito for lunch.

The only point I see made above that's worth really walking out much farther is the idea that everything 'evil' is exaggerated in us. One could say we have exaggerated brain power and faculties of a variety, an exaggerated capacity for all kinds of complex nuance of pleasure and pain, and both the love we can heap on those we care about and the inhumanity that we can set against another if we've been 'black-pilled' enough or experienced enough anguish at that group's hands is somewhat accelerated. There are also paragon examples of love and dedication in humanity that would bring us to weep for a very different set of reasons.

It doesn't make sense to suggest that any of this says that animals are morally better, or for that matter than plants are morally better than animals. The requirements and capacities of our containers generally set the frame for this. By our capacities we might be an exaggeration of what nature already is. That's pretty much it though, aside from that I would agree with Steven Pinker that as time goes on and as we find ingenious ways to deal with pain, toxic drives, etc. and funnel our reactions to them into either productive means or at least find harmless ways to burn them off we're able to further solve those problems and have fewer agitations to call on the darker side of our potential.

Aside from that 'humans are worse than animals' as a bald claim sounds about as nuanced or helpful a tool for measuring the world around us as is 'white men are bad'.

Getting off the opinion stump for a minute:

https://www.livescience.com/60431-do-an ... other.html
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/201 ... e-science/

Sounds like the moral of the story here:

1) The response to the OP of 'no', animals do have homicide, is correct when held up against the claim that 'Animals never kill except for food and protection.'
2) To say that animals are far more violent than people is incorrect also - these articles cite about 60% of mammals that don't kill their own, they cite that at least adult homicide is indeed much higher among primates and we likely receive this impulse from that line. Other species in that 40% may kill their own far more than we do but it's mostly infanticide.

None of that says that animals are morally superior or inferior, but we're a logical extension of our ancestry and its a stretch to consider humanity demonic when compared to the rest of nature.

Plenty of non-human beings have trashed the environment. Invasive species (including native invasives) are a major problem in conservation. If we want to go back even further, photosynthesis completely destroyed the environment for existing species which were adapted for a low-oxygen environment...

McCarthy's pig hybridisation theory is obvious hokum which deserves as much respect as the Ancient Alien hypothesis. It has no academic traction and I've only ever seen it perpetuated by users on here for some reason.

Michael says that the reason we don't seem to be more closely related to the pig than the gorilla is because there's been so much back-hybridisation that there's now no pig DNA left. If that were the case then all these "pig traits" that humans have would not be present.

Furthermore, there are no recorded fertile hybridisations between different orders of mammal.

Article on this hypothesis specifically (including a link to another article on it which uses slightly fouler language)
Article on the bonkers stuff McCarthy says and believes more generally, which shed light on why he'd keep saying this stuff.

Chimps are nasty as hell.

Animals kill for fun and pleasure all the time.

At least humans invented beer.

Yes they do.

Jane Goodall observed as much.

If you wanna talk about the possible porcine roots of the human race than you should start another thread instead of hijacking this one. Not really the same topic.

No, our animal ancestry is relevant to any discussion of our attributes in comparison to those of other animals.

Michael Ossipoff

By 'superior', I suppose you mean in a moral sense?

Most animals don't have the faculties to do something wrong, knowing that it is wrong, and still do it anyway. If they had that capacity, they would be morally superior to humans, but it isn't logically consistent to talk of moral superiority in a creature that is incapable of moral reasoning.

Morality only makes sense in a human context because humans have that ethical decision-making capacity.

No just differant. I'm a lousy gambler, but I would definately put money on the fact that if animals had the same degree of intelligence, capability for abstract thought, reasoning, and long term memory, they wouldn't be much better than we, when it comes to 'inhumanity'.

…obvious to Walrus, but not to McCarthy, a PhD geneticist, and world-class recognized authority on hybridization genetics
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Walrus forgot to mention where he got his PhD in genetics.
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Maybe Walrus should write to McCarthy, to explain is errors to him.
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Walrus says:

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Again, maybe Walrus should let Dr. McCarthy know about his error.
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Gene sequencing doesn’t reveal Pig ancestry. Nor does it usually reveal back-hybridization. Lack of gene-sequencing evidence doesn’t mean that there’s nothing pig-like about the genes. …only that the sequences don’t show it.
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As McCarthy explains in the quote below, the amount of a gene can make the difference, where nucleotide-sequence wouldn’t show a difference.
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I’m not criticizing Walrus. His error is a very common one, and is completely understandable and excusable.
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Quoting from Dr. McCarthy:
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Walrus says:
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Here’s some video of a Cabbit (Cat-Rabbit hybrid):
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http://www.macroevolution.net/cat-rabbit-hybrids.html
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Or, if you prefer, just go to McCarthy’s macroevolution website, and click the search tab, and search for “Cabbit”. Or go to Mammal Hybrids, and, there, scroll down to interordinal hybrids section, and on down to the Cabbit videos.
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You’ll agree that that video would have been rather difficult to fake.
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Additionally, there’s good evidence for inter-class hybridization. Bird-Mammal.
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The Platypus and the Echidna have a bird-like beak, lay eggs, have the bird-reptile (but non-mammilian) cloaca, and various other avian features. …and some avian DNA. … a number of things about their DNA that are avian rather than mammalian.
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And yes, Platypuses and Echidnas are fertile.
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Below is a link to an article.
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Or, to find that article, and others like it, go to McCarthy’s website, click the search tab (left margin), and search for Platypus.
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Here’s the link.
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http://www.macroevolution.net/bird-mammal-hybrids.html
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There are many, many reports, photos and videos of interordinal mammalian hybrids. Some of the videos, such as the above-posted Cabbit video, are convincing.
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But suppose those other hybrids weren’t fertile.
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Walrus must have meant, “…no record of other fertile inter-ordinal hybridizations among mammals.”
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…because, whether there really are no fertile interordinal mammalian hybrids depends on whether we’re one.
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Try not to use your conclusion as part of your evidence.
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But yes, maybe there are no others. And sure, if there are others, that would support the Pig-Chimp theory.
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Lack of other established instances of fertile interordinal mammal hybridizations would mean that the theory doesn’t have that support.
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Then, any such alleged hybridization would remain in the a-priori very unlikely category. Support for the Pig-Chimp theory would then obviously have to come from another source. …such as the improbability of coincidence, of the many, many differences from all the other primates, where each one of those differences is a similarity to Pigs.
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No one denies that fertile interordinal mammal hybrids can be expected to be either rare or nonexistent. It’s just a question of which of those two it is. Anatomical evidence is helpful, and is typically the only evidence of back-hybridization over many generations.
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…besides: Humans aren’t really that fertile. As I mentioned, humans are inexplicably less fertile than the norm among animals. Humans’ unusual low fertility now, is consistent with having been barely fertile at all, after the first hybridization, before the long period of back-hybridization and the subsequent millions of years of continuing evolution improved fertility.
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An animal’s fertility isn’t simply a Yes/No matter. There can be, and is, graded variation in regards to the likelihood or frequency of pregnancy. The first Pig-Chimp hybrids were surely at least nearly infertile, and the likelihood of pregnancy was small (or none). Unlikely things happen infrequently, but sometimes do happen. Though no one denies that such a fertile hybrid is at least very unlikely, impossibility isn’t proved.
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If there really are no established instances of other fertile interordinal hybrids among mammals, then it’s a question of whether the number is zero or one. That’s a situation where statistics isn’t very helpful in that judgment.
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…and then that’s when other evidence is helpful. Such as the observational evidence of anatomical attributes—which is typically the only evidence of back-hybridization.
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Check McCarthy’s website, or elsewhere, for answers about records of fertile interordinal hybrids, either among mammals, or among other vertebrate classes.
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(If there are records of such hybridizations among other classes of vertebrates, then that would largely let the air out of a claim that it would be impossible for mammals.)
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If the first Pig-Chimp hybrid had been entirely infertile, then of course she’d have no descendants now. If the theory is correct, then she was merely nearly infertile, and something unlikely (but not necessarily impossible) happened, and Homo Sapiens is the result. Surely nearly all interordinal hybrids don’t and didn’t even survive infancy, much less have fertility. As I said, one could be all that was needed.
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Given that it would be expected to be rare, then how many fertile inter-ordinal mammal-hybridizations do you want? Scads of them would certainly help support the theory. …but wouldn’t be expected for such a distant hybridization. No one’s saying it’s common.
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And there’s convincing anatomical evidence (typically the only evidence of back-hybridization after many generations), without an explanation for how else it could occur, other than by a highly improbable coincidence.

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McCarthy, at his website, answers the best arguments of his critics.
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One can find a website saying anything that one is looking for. And the less educated and less qualified the source, the more sure he is, and forceful his language. Consider the academic qualifications and recognized-ness of the author.
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If Walrus wants to cite sources, it would be more helpful if he could just name his best ones (established experts on hybridization-genetics who at least compare to McCarthy).
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…and summarize their arguments in a posting. Either copy and paste it here, or quote it, or say it in your own words.
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Don’t forget to name the source.
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…instead of posting links. It’s common knowledge that it’s inadvisable to click on a link unless you know and trust the person or company who put up the link. (I indicated alternative ways to reach the articles that I linked to).
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Many, most or all of McCarthy’s critics have less status and recognition in hybridization genetics than McCarthy has.
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Anyway, to expect unanimity among scientists whenever a theory is correct, is to show a misunderstanding of how science works.
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McCarthy quotes a lot of agreement with his suggestion.
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McCarthy himself doesn’t say that it’s certain that his suggestion is correct. He refers to it as a theory, and merely presents evidence, and there’s a considerable amount of it that points the same way.
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Primatologists have long been puzzled by the many ways in which we differ from all of the other primates. …and the unexplained relative infertility of humans.
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McCarthy offers an explanation, which explains both.
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And he points out the improbability of it being a coincidence that all of the many characteristic by which we differ from all other primates are characteristics that we have in common with Pigs,.
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…which combines multiplicatively with the probability of the coincidence of the unexplained human infertility, which just happens to be explained by the hybridization theory.
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It’s natural and understandable for people to have a strong negative reaction to a theory that challenges their prior beliefs about their ancestry. People are very sensitive about their ancestry. Look how long it took for general acceptance that we’re related to apes and monkeys. A lot of people still angrily reject evolution (as “obvious hokum”), so this is nothing new.
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Maybe people are again expressing the old resistance to nonhuman ancestry, with only a small script-change.
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Conclusion:
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McCarthy doesn’t claim that his theory is established fact. It’s a theory. He offers the theory as an alternative to the enormously improbable coincidence that the anatomical evidence would otherwise imply.
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Michael Ossipoff