Humans acquire the accomplished IQ; but animals acquire awfully added commonsense. How so? Let's accede assorted settings, starting with one we all allotment - time and space.
TIME & SPACE
Wake Up: Animals will deathwatch up if their biological clocks acquaint them it's time to deathwatch up. Bodies deathwatch up if the anxiety alarm rings!
Going to Sleep: Animals go to beddy-bye if their biological clocks acquaint them to go to beddy-bye (including catnaps). Bodies go to beddy-bye afterwards their favourite TV diplomacy finishes, like the late, backward show! Bodies advance the boundaries and generally debris to blow even if their bodies acquaint them it's desirable. An afternoon catnap ultimately increases productivity, but how abounding workplaces animate comatose (even briefly) on the job?
Time: All animals acquire a faculty of time, a biological clock. However, clashing humans, one cannot advance that animals are anywhere abreast as bedeviled with time as are humans. Humans, like animals, adapt their activities by the 'clock', alone with bodies it tends to be not a ambiguous time, like with animals - just ancient anon as continued as the Sun's up - but timed to not alone the minute, but generally the second. The annex whistle; the timing (start and stop) of a sports event; the alpha of your TV program, are all programmed down to the second. New Years Day isn't New Years Day until absolutely the atomic breach added column midnight. Scientific abstracts are down to the nanosecond; that buzz alarm is accepted at absolutely 9:15 a.m., etc. You'd be hard-pressed to brainstorm an beastly defective to abrasion a wristwatch or accomplish a stopwatch!
Holidays & Anniversaries; Animals attach aught accent to holidays and anniversaries. Bodies are bedeviled with them, an attraction which generally takes a financial, social, concrete and brainy toll.
Vacations & Weekends: Animals don't charge a breach from their circadian routine. Bodies crave (or at atomic anticipate they do) anniversary (or added frequent) time off and abroad from the routine, not to acknowledgment the "thank god it's Friday" syndrome. What does that absolutely say about avant-garde beastly society?
Territory: Animals will absorb and avert as abundant area as is all-important for their adaptation and the assiduity of their species. Bodies about will generally try to access and aphorism over as abundant territory, property, as possible, sometimes for bread-and-butter (investment) reasons; generally for arduous ability for the account of power. Bodies are rarely annoyed with what they ascendancy - they consistently wish added and Added and MORE. [See also: Domination]
MATTER & ENERGY
Possessions: Animals acquire no appetite to access things, added than that appropriate for adaptation (like architecture a backup or autumn abroad aliment for the winter). Bodies - well, what's the expression, "keeping up with the Jones family" or "shop till you drop"!
FILL WHAT'S EMPTY
Eating #1: Agrarian animals, who don't apperceive if and area their next meal ability appear from, will accomplish hay while the sun shines. Humans, even if they apperceive area and if their next meal comes from, will still over indulge, abnormally on assertive blithe or appropriate occasions. [See also: Obesity]
Eating #2: An animal, bold aliment is available, will eat if it is athirst - a accustomed accompaniment of affairs. A beastly will eat according to a schedule, at anchored times, if the dining allowance is open, if the appointment alarm and the bang-up says "go to cafeteria now", behindhand of charge - an bogus (phoney) accompaniment of affairs.
Eating #3: A agrarian beastly eats accustomed foods, as Mother Attributes (natural alternative & evolution) advised it should. Bodies tend to eat candy foods, abounding of preservatives and added bogus chemicals (all to after-the-fact begin to be harmful, maybe even carcinogenic), generally burdened with added salts, sugars, fats, and added appetizing $.25 that don't usually accord the beastly any added comestible benefits.
Obesity: A few accompaniment animals are accustomed to charge and put on too abundant weight, because their owners, out of 'kindness' augment them. However, a lot of bodies and dogs, etc. are appealing adequate at automated their assimilation and adage "enough" if it's enough, even if presented with an absolute aliment supply. In humans, the blubber catching in the developed world, like the USA, Australia and agnate countries is absolutely out of ascendancy admitting bags of diet books, articles, DVDs, websites and exercise gyms acutely on every artery corner. Now I acquire a accustomed allocation of blowing hormones, but a adequate third of all females amid 15 and 35 don't amount a aboriginal glance, far beneath a added because they are absolute unpleasingly beefy (and that's getting kind).
EMPTY WHAT'S FULL
Bathroom/Toilet: Animals go absurd if the charge arises. Bodies go afterwards the affair or during intermissions, whatever. Such restrictions are generally unpleasant, but bodies appoint such restrictions on themselves. Animals acquire no accord for us.
Greenhouse Gases: My bodies can absolutely canyon wind. Cows and methane are a able-bodied apperceive duo. Bodies are accepted to burden from abounding greenhouses in the attendance of others added than exhaled carbon dioxide and baptize vapour.
SCRATCH WHERE IT ITCHES
Itches & Twitches: If an beastly itches, it scratches and doesn't accord a abuse if annihilation or anybody is observing. Humans, in the aggregation of affable association at least, usually burden from scratching, abnormally in assertive places. They ache the itchy/twitchy consequences!
PHYSICAL ACTIONS
Good vs. Evil: Animals are neither adequate nor angry - those are beastly inventions or concepts. There are no beastly equivalents of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There's no point in adage "good doggie" or "bad bobcat cat" aback they acquire no abstraction of "good" or "bad". They may acquire abstruse what is and is not adequate behaviour (what does and does not piss you off) but they do not acquire why. While not every beastly transforms from adequate to angry and aback again, and again, every human, clashing an animal, is allegedly able of accepting a bifold good/evil personality. Individuals' aside, if searching at any ample sample of humans, the bifold attributes becomes obvious.
Revenge & Justice: No beastly advisedly plots and executes atrocious accomplishments or has hidden agendas. What you see is what you get. Animals don't fly planes into skyscrapers. Animals couldn't even acquire of such a book in their wildest dreams. Bodies on the added duke - charge I say more?
Law & Order: All beastly societies acquire some array of centralized adjustment arrangement which about seems to be built-in or hardwired. Such adjustment usually doesn't go abundant above the parents befitting the cubs in band and ensuring they don't put themselves in harms way. Bodies on the added duke acquire formalized their adjustment of themselves to such an acute amount that comparing the adjustment of beastly association to say self-regulation of massive ant, termite or bee antecedents societies (which does just accomplished after cops and lawyers), is comparing not so abundant apples and oranges as the artlessness of a individual electron with the complication of the all-around acclimate system. How is it that an beastly association can adapt itself after the charge for a massive administrative basement and claim for awful specialized acknowledged eagles and law enforcers?
Killing #1: Animals annihilate alone as all-important for their own survival, both in defence as able-bodied as accepting aliment for themselves and conceivably offspring. Bodies annihilate out of arduous barbarous pleasure, for alleged 'sport', generally just because they can. My cats, if they capital to, annihilate garden snails - the weight of one paw would do it. However, snails are not aliment and affectation no blackmail to them, so it's reside and let live. That's clashing abounding bodies who if they see a snail, a snail accomplishing no abuse to them or annihilation else, just contentment in stomping on them - an 80 kg beastly vs. an 8 gm snail is no contest. Now that's if the snail is lucky. All too generally the barbarous beastly will just footfall on the beastly agilely abundant to able the shell, abrogation the snail abandoned to either dry out in the sun or be at the benevolence of the ants. It's a absolute sad accompaniment of diplomacy that such examples can be broadcast on by abounding orders of consequence over a absolute advanced ambit of species.
Killing #2: If an beastly wants to annihilate a beastly it has to get up abutting and personal. The about-face isn't of alarm true. I admiration how adventurous our alleged 'sportsmen' hunters would be if the animals they bolter could shoot back. The abstraction of 'sport' is about according contests and the aforementioned rules for all. Hunting animals accordingly is not action and it is top time the account of action was afar from hunting, which is annihilation but a august activity. The barring ability be if the hunter is putting aliment on the table, but again, that's not a 'sport'.
Creativity & Technology #1: Some animals can be artistic and 'manufacture' and use 'technology' like animals that cull off twigs and actualization them to stick into termite mounds in adjustment to cull out a termite snack, or authoritative use of abstracts to physique a nest. But that 'technology' never backfires and bites them on the bum. Bodies ad-lib cars, but we acquire a alley toll. We acquire electricity and accidents happen. We assemble nuclear plants afresh acquire to anguish about terrorism. We acquire created computers, and appropriately acquired the assured computer hacker and the computer virus. We accomplish all sorts of constructed chemicals afresh admiration what to do with the baneful decay (actually we don't admiration at all what to do with it - we dump it in the sea or the air aback the band-aid to abuse is dilution).
Creativity & Technology #2: Animals get forth absolutely accurately acknowledge you absolute abundant after Facebook, Twitter, iPads, email, adaptable phones, Internet bulletin boards, text-messaging, etc. Any beastly being, abnormally beneath the age of 40, and really, absolutely abnormally beneath the age of 20, beggared of such technology becomes a bassinet case in nanoseconds! Attention to all those who feel the charge to SMS 24/7: abandon is not getting angry to your adaptable phone; in acquaintance with the blow of the apple 24/7! Once aloft a time, not all that continued ago, beastly acculturation (including teenagers therein) survived and thrived via communications that depended on smoke signals, semaphore flags and the pony express. If you absolutely bare fast, there was the overland telegraph!
Domination: Bodies Rule, OK? Larboard to itself, Mother Attributes finds its own non-static, anytime alteration balance, in adequate times and bad times. Animals acutely affect that antithesis and in about-face are afflicted by it. However, no beastly breed seeks to alarm the shots and apply ultimate ascendancy over that antithesis - no breed except one of course, and no prizes for academic what that breed is. Bodies decide, via some array of all-powerful appropriate the fate and architecture of Earth's ecosystems; what lives, what dies, in what ratios, what the mural will be like, anytime manipulating to acquisition that antithesis that best apparel us, which is traveling to be as far removed from a accustomed antithesis as it is accessible to get. Yield any beastly bedeviled ecology landscape. Abolish the beastly element. Will that ecology mural or ecosystem abide as is, as bodies fabricated it, or abide a abolitionist about-face aback to Mother Nature's balance? Look no added than the archetypal backyard ecosystem/garden. It wouldn't yield continued afore accustomed change would cede it bugged if alone by the garden's occupants. If bodies went poof, Earth would anon (in almost accessory geological time frames) become appropriately as bugged as that domiciliary garden, or rather as apparent as it was afore bodies came forth with delusions of grandeur.
MENTAL CONCEPTS
Birth, Afterlife & Deities: Animals acquire no abstraction of their own death, appropriately an afterlife. They acquire no afterthought of their apperception and allegedly their bearing and of the abstraction of creation. Animals accordingly acquire no charge of adoration and deities. Animals accordingly acquire to backpack about a lot beneath abstract baggage. Bodies about are bedeviled with these concepts, absolutely all accidental abstract accoutrements IMHO.
Economics & Finance: No beastly jumped out of windows at the alpha of the Great Depression. They lose no catnap over the tax man, and bills are something on ducks.
Lifestyle: Animals don't charge to go to the 'beauty' parlour for a quick pick-me-up. The accomplished abstraction of a amusing arena - the appropriate venue, the in-crowd, getting apparent with the 'right' bodies - is absolutely adopted to them. What to abrasion is a non-issue. The accepted acquire to acquire fashions (doomed to be out of date aural months if not less) is just so abundant ho-hum. There's no charge or admiration for tattoos and physique piercing. The latest celebrity aspersion in the tabloids is a non-event. Collectables aren't. A arrant sports car or any added boy toy is boring. Animals don't ache from advice overload. Because animals don't acquirement any products, they can't be captivated amenable for any clutter that arises (of which there is plenty). Bodies about appoint in this anytime ongoing, never ending, following in adventure of the 'good life' and are usually never satisfied. Animals just adore activity as best they can one day at a time - they reside for the moment.
Drugs: Animals do not wilfully abuse themselves with substances adopted to their circadian survival. Bodies - able-bodied there's caffeine, smoking, bubbler alcohol, all sorts of recreational drugs with capricious degrees of brainy addiction and bogus 'stimulation'. Charge one say more!
Harmful Habits: Animals do not appoint in habits adverse to their wellbeing added than what's appropriate for basal survival, like say a predator demography on casualty way beyond than itself, arresting your baby from attack, or herds bridge a angry river on an anniversary migration. Afresh there are head-butting blazon contests over alliance rights, but they usually aftereffect in a back-down, not afterlife or acute injury. Of advance animals are still hardwired for the accustomed environment. Their eons ago development and change hasn't bent up with our avant-garde acculturation yet, and so dogs may hunt cars, and the alley annihilate is added affirmation of how bodies put animals in harms way - they don't do it because they are suicidal. Humans, able-bodied from tattoos to physique acute to baking in the sun for an accidental beige to acute sports, bodies like to yield on accident after any accessible absolute added benefit. Habits aside, humans, usually adolescent blowing males with way too abundant testosterone, like to put themselves in harms way - authenticate the 'right' stuff. Pity added of them didn't end up with a Darwin Award and abolish themselves from the gene pool! I'll alcohol to that aback such self-destruct contest wouldn't bother me one iota.
Mental Health: Animals, larboard to their own devices, are in no charge of a shrink. It's alone if bodies try to force a (square) accompaniment beastly into their claim of a (round) behavioural aperture that problems arise. Accompaniment animals beneath the access of their beastly associations acquire 'need' of pet psychologists, or at atomic some of them allegedly do according to the human, and absolutely it's ultimately the human's fault. Do you anticipate any agrarian animals acquire any such charge of a shrink? No? I didn't anticipate so. Bodies of advance are generally on the couch for counselling and assay of one array or another; the account way to continued to detail in a abbreviate essay.
Isms: Animals do not discriminate on the area of gender or appearance. A amber blowing cat will acquire or adios a atramentous blowing cat on area that acquire annihilation to do with fur colour. A white changeable cat ability aces and acquire amid lots of blowing bodies and adios them all - that doesn't beggarly she's sexist or prefers changeable cats. Bodies on the added hand, acquire or adios added bodies on just such distinctions, additional a accomplished host of added 'isms' that animals acquire no apperception of in the aboriginal place.
Opinions: Animals ask no questions; acquaint no lies; apperception their own business; yield aggregate at face value. Bodies - can you say the aforementioned about you and the blow of the beastly race? Let's face it; bodies do annihilation but apperception their own business. They appropriately canyon judgements on any added affairs (especially one involving sex in any appearance address or form) that doesn't accommodate to their own moral standards.
HUMAN-ANIMAL INTERACTIONS I'D LIKE TO SEE
What about jockeys accustomed the horses about on their backs as they run about the chase track! Now that would be account watching!
How about a beastly three-ring bazaar with an beastly audience!
In fact, just about any human-animal role changeabout would be interesting.
CONCLUSIONS
So what does this assay acquaint us about the differences amid bodies and 'mere' animals? We've apparent there are abounding axiological differences amid way overrated bodies (overrated by our own beastly opinions of ourselves of course) and way underrated animals (again, underrated according to the almost biased opinions of humans). If the human-animal differences are due to accustomed selection, afresh there is a abashing in why did the blow of the beastly commonwealth yield the 'smart' and commonsense alley while bodies took the intelligence road? While I'm abiding there is an evolutionary affiliation amid animals and the beastly animal, I aswell anticipate there is some hidden variable(s) that acquired the beastly annex to arch off into alien area (and go off the rails). If these differences (the hidden variables) are due to God, what does that acquaint you about what God is like? Annihilation good, that's for sure! If it's bogus selection, but not due to annihilation supernatural, afresh things get interesting.
The acclaimed astrophysicist/cosmologist Stephen Hawking, a part of abounding others, is a able apostle of bodies angrily traveling and colonizing amplitude as the alone applicable way of ensuring our continued appellation survival. The Big Question about in my apperception is should altruism affect the added catholic scene? Isn't it abundant one 'pale dejected dot' has to ache our lot? So, ET, if you are out there; be afraid, be absolute afraid!
