• Question: Do animals and humans share characteristics?

    Asked by rhiannonwelham to Claire, Kate, Matt, Rob, Sam on 20 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Claire Lee

      Claire Lee answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      Interesting question! Because we don’t really know what animals are thinking 🙂

      I assume you mean “personality traits” here? Yeah, we definitely share some. Caring for our young is one of them – a lot of animals do that, and get upset or worried if something happens to them. Animals also occasionally adopt young of other species and raise them as their own. And peregrine falcons choose a partner for life, like humans do.

      We share quite a lot of our DNA with animals, so it makes sense we’d share some characteristics too.

    • Photo: Sam Geen

      Sam Geen answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      Yep! Humans and animals are very similar – like Claire said, biologically we have a lot of similarities. Humans and other mammals have the same organs, similar ways of raising their young, etc. And sure, we don’t know what other people are thinking, let alone what other animals are thinking. But we have a lot of the same instincts – fear, anger, pain, etc. The main difference between humans and other animals seems to be abstract thinking and language – i.e. we can think about ideas and tell them to other people. Not a lot of animals have this! Possibly dolphins can, too. We can also make tools, which gives us the edge because we can build cities and planes and guns and other animals can’t (although crows, for example, can make simple tools, so we’re not alone here). But sure, for the most part humans have a lot of similarities with other animals.

    • Photo: Matthew Pankhurst

      Matthew Pankhurst answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      Yes Rhiannon! We do! Humans are animals, and we are part of what biologists call the animal kingdom. Kingdoms are a part of the way scientists classify all of life, check this out for more details:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_%28biology%29
      The classification of life is worked out on how similar each living thing is to other living things. For example, we have far more in common with hamsters than an oak tree. But, we have far more in common with chimpanzees than hamsters!
      The classification makes it easier to understand how all living things are related, even though some are related very distantly!
      Each living thing is special and can do things that other can’t. Humans have complicated thoughts, but we can’t fly like birds (without a plane or something!) We can make amazing things, but we can’t make energy from sunshine like trees (without solar panels!). Humans are most different to all other life forms because what we can’t do with our bodies, we can figure out how to do with our minds. How we do this is by using our imagination and the scientific method 🙂

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