Are humans apes? Are dogs wolves? Are birds dinosaurs?

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Are humans apes? Are dogs wolves? Are birds dinosaurs? Are tetrapods fish? Are apes monkeys?

The answer to all of those questions is probably yes.

It is said that humans and apes share a common ancestor, but what did that common ancestor look like? Didn't it look like a prehistoric ape? It probably wasn't the same species as any existing ape ... but it was basically an ape.

In the same way, apes and monkeys share a common ancestor ... but what did it look like? It probably looked like a prehistoric monkey. Doesn't this mean that apes are a subset of monkeys? Doesn't this mean that people are also monkeys?

Yes, birds are dinosaurs. This means that the real flying dinosaurs are birds. The real water dinosaurs are penguins. Don't you just hate it when people classify pterosaurs and plesiosaurs as dinosaurs? The word "dinosaur" does not mean "giant animal".

Yes, us tetrapods are lobe-finned fish. I guess this means that whales actually were fish this whole time!

Perhaps insects are just a sub-group within the crustaceans.

Apes are not monkeys. I don't think there's much debate there.

I don't believe humans are apes---though they are descended from ape-like creatures.

Dogs are, basically, wolves which have been domesticated.

Birds are not usually dinosaurs, though birds are probably descended from dinosaurs. There were some very bird-like dinosaurs.

Whales are mammals, and not fish.

Why should humans be excluded from the apes? That seems kinda arbitrary.

If you don't think that humans are apes, you might as well believe that we aren't primates or that we aren't mammals.

You might as well say that pandas aren't bears because pandas don't eat meat.



Probably? Birds are descendants of dinosaurs because they are still dinosaurs. That's a conformed fact.

These days, humans and apes are within the same "subfamily."

Broadly, we are apes. But in a specific sense, we are not. I wouldn't mind it if we ARE apes---but we are not. I don't think an ape would like to be called "human."

Obviously, we are primates, mammals and vertebrates. We are chordates, too. And animals.

Some apes know sign language. Perhaps you could ask one.

Perhaps I should....

If you could guide me towards one of those ape research places.

I've read extensively about apes and sign language over the years. I was obsessed with the chimps of the Gombe Stream (Jane Goodall) for a while.

In strictly scientific terms: YES, we are all apes ("Great Apes" a.k.a. Hominidae family), but not all apes are "human".

And yes, all hominids can share a lot (>95%) of DNA... but genotype is a thing, phenotype is another.

Cheers!

They can also observe humans doing things and repeat what they see. Was watching an interesting documentary that showed an Orangutan bathing herself with soap, just like a person because she had seen humans doing that in a nearby river..not sure where she got the soap(i think it was a she can't remember) I suspect she took it from one of the humans or went to the spot they were bathing and took some someone left or something. Later in the documentary it showed the same one opening a shed that had a rather complex door latch after watching a person do it. So it would seem they are pretty good visual learners.

Scientifically, we are apes. Semantically, we are not.

If an ape would acquire all the characteristics of humans, save the physical characteristics, this entity would still be an "ape."

We can't possibly be evolved from apes, they're highly intelligent and (usually) peaceful and gentle. They must have evolved from us.

Monkeys, on the other hand, can be very vicious, violent, extremely territorial little buggers that can literally tear apart a full-grown homo sapiens, so we must be more related to them than apes.

Humans are actually far more intelligent than the other apes. We are apes, but we are far more intelligent than the other apes are. That isn't a contradiction.

Notice how octopus are far more intelligent than clams even though they belong to the same phylum. It's entirely possible for animals within the same evolutionary clade to develop very differently in terms of neurological anatomy.

Non-human apes, much like humans, become violent when their children are in danger or when resources are scarce. In other words, we aren't "naturally violent".

I do believe that humans have a natural predatory instinct towards non-human animals, but I don't think that human-on-human violence is natural.

there are many problems with asserting that "humans are not apes".

One problem is that "ape" is a broad category. Almost like "mammals". It includes one Asian Great Ape (the orangutan), two Asian "lesser apes" (two kinds of gibbons), and it includes the African great apes (two kinds of gorillas, chimps, bonobos).

So if you're gonna lump all of those critters into one category then that category HAS to include humans. Gibbons are farther removed from orangutans than orangutans are from the African great apes, and from humans. So if you're gonna lump Asian apes together with each other, AND with the African apes, then you cannot exclude humans from that lump.

Okay...so you might retrench and say "humans are apes, but are not 'African apes'". But even here there would be problems because DNA testing shows that the non human ape species of Africa are no closer to each other than they are to humans. Bonobos and chimps are close to each other but together they are farther removed from gorillas than they are from humans. Its easy to draw a line around the African apes that excludes the Asian apes, but its impossible to draw a line around just the African apes that includes all of the African apes that excludes humans. So humans are a kind of "African ape". No way around that.

But that's speaking scientifically.

If you're speaking colloquially you can use "ape" the same way "animal" is used. Humans are part of the animal kingdom (strictly speaking), but its fair to use the word "animal" to mean "any animate organism that is not human" Likewise if someone were to ask "what was the common ancestor humans and apes? An ape or a human?" The short answer would be "an ape" because the last common ancestor of man, and our closest nonhuman extant living cousins (the chimps, and bonobos) would not be considered human, but would be nonhuman primate that we would lump under the rubric of "ape".

I did say that, scientifically, humans are apes.

Yes. No. Yes. No. No.

Apparently, dinosaurs, at least some of them, had feathers...
And some people call birds "living dinosaurs"...



I take that as a: "Yes. No. Yes. No. No."