What is biologically/evolutionarily special (i include not only things that are unique, but also just things that are somewhat unusual) about humans?
- language (and hence, culture)
- theory of other
- tool use
- eyes with big whites so that you can see where someone is looking
- funerals (apparently some other intelligent animals, such as elephants, have funerals too)
- (social) monogamy (lots of birds are monogamous but few mammals)
- large brain size ( Principles of brain evolution. - Striedter )
- so large that it causes significant birth complications, suggesting that we are at a point of compromise between maternal mortality and large head size
- and the baby's brain grows and develops after birth in some ways that in other species would happen before birth, suggesting again that large head size is a critical bottleneck
- adaptations for long distance/marathon running (different distribution of sweat glands; we can chase fast-running animals for hours or days until they collapse from heat exhaustion) ( http://edge.org/conversation/how-culture-drove-human-evolution )
- manual dexterity
- ability to track other animals when hunting using intellect
Other great apes share many of these.
![[Home]](http://www.bayleshanks.com/cartoonbayle.png)
