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HUMANS AREN’T AS SPECIAL AS WE ONCE THOUGHT  
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Kate Wong
August 19, 2025
Scientific American
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_ Darwin opined that differences between humans and other animals
were a matter of degree. New findings show that a wide variety of
other species exhibit capabilities that were once thought to be
exclusive to Homo sapiens. _

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It was the telegram exchange that sparked an identity crisis for
humankind. In 1960 a young Jane Goodall working in a remote forest in
Tanzania observed a chimpanzee she named David Greybeard using blades
of grass and twigs to fish nutritious termites out of their nest. The
primatologist wrote to her mentor, Kenyan paleoanthropologist Louis
Leakey, to tell him about her observation, which flew in the face of
the conventional wisdom that held that only humans made tools. Leakey
replied: “Now we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept
chimpanzees as human.”

For decades—centuries, even—scholars have attempted to draw a hard
line between our kind and the other organisms with whom we share the
planet. They have argued that only humans have culture—sets of
learned behaviors, such as toolmaking, that are passed down from
generation to generation. They have proposed that only humans think
symbolically, using signs to represent objects or ideas. That our
species alone is self-aware, capable of planning for the future and
experiencing emotions such as joy and fear, love and grief. That only
humans are _conscious_, possessed of an inner world of subjective
experience.

For his part, Charles Darwin, writing in the late 1800s, opined that
nonhuman animals have the same cognitive abilities and emotions that
humans have and that any differences were a matter of degree and not
kind. In the absence of any way to reliably read animal minds,
however, scientists who studied animal behavior and cognition took the
position that ascribing human thoughts, feelings and motivations to
animals—anthropomorphism—was a cardinal sin. But in recent decades
examples of other species demonstrating these capabilities have
emerged from across the tree of life. The findings have spurred fresh
thinking about what, exactly, distinguishes _Homo sapiens_, with our
vaunted intellect, from every other species on Earth.

Let’s look first at our evolutionary nearest and dearest. We _H.
sapiens_ possess much larger brains than our closest living
relatives, the chimps and bonobos, do—around three times as large.
The brain requires 20 percent of our energy budget despite making up
only 2 percent of our body mass. Naturally, anthropologists have
wondered why we evolved such energetically expensive brains. At the
same time, we know that _H. sapiens_ is the sole surviving member of
what was once a diverse group of humanoids. Surely our big brains and
all the clever things they allow us to do were a major reason for our
success as a species, a vital factor in why we alone went on to spread
across the globe and thrive in every ecosystem we set our sights on,
outcompeting other branches of humanity until we were the last hominin
standing.

Yet virtually every trait that anthropologists have identified as one
that might have set our kind apart has subsequently been found in
another member of the family. Our closest evolutionary cousins, the
Neandertals, left behind decorations that suggest they used symbols,
which may indicate a capacity for language. The same goes for our
smaller-brained relative _Homo erectus_. And some 3.3 million years
ago, long before brain size began to expand in our lineage, an unknown
hominin—possibly _Australopithecus afarensis_—shaped basalt
cobbles into cutting tools, demonstrating an understanding of the
material properties of stone and a vision for how to transform a lump
of rock into a useful implement.

It’s not just our closest hominin and great ape relatives that share
our powers of cognition. Humans were long thought to be the only moral
animals, uniquely equipped with a sense of right and wrong. But we now
know that is not the case. The late primatologist Frans de Waal and
Sarah F. Brosnan found in laboratory experiments that brown capuchin
monkeys would decline a reward of a slice of cucumber if they observed
another monkey receiving a better treat (a grape) for the same task.
The monkeys’ rejection of unequal payment for equivalent work
demonstrated that they have a sense of fairness and experience moral
outrage when they get a raw deal.

Other animals exhibit other elements of morality—including empathy.
Mice, for instance, can share the emotional state of another
individual, exhibiting increased sensitivity to pain if they see a
companion showing signs of pain. Dogs recognize distress in their
owners and will offer consolation. Rats will sacrifice their own gains
to alleviate the suffering of a conspecific, forgoing a food reward if
taking the food means inflicting pain on another rat.

Empathy and other complex emotions were long considered beyond the
experience of nonhuman creatures. But mounting evidence indicates that
they are widespread among mammals. Some of the most striking examples
involve emotional responses to death. In 2018 an orca known as
Tahlequah made headlines around the world when she carried her dead
calf with her for 17 days while she swam 1,000 miles across the Salish
Sea. In 2024 Tahlequah lost another calf. This time she held on to its
corpse for at least 11 days before releasing it. Researchers
characterized the mother orca’s reaction to these losses as grief.

Apes, monkeys and elephants have been observed to mourn the loss of
bonded individuals, too. It’s not just large-brained mammals that
appear to express sorrow, however. Barbara King, who is known for her
research and writing on animal cognition and emotion, has described
compelling examples of grief in peccaries, donkeys and ferrets, among
others.

Our fellow mammals are not the only animals to show signs of thinking
and feeling as humans do. The Eurasian Magpie, a species of bird, can
recognize itself in the mirror—a sign of consciousness. Fish feel
pain, another conscious experience: when given an injection that
causes discomfort, lab zebra fish will vacate their preferred habitat,
which has been decorated with pleasing rocks and vegetation, to visit
a barren habitat whose water is infused with a pain reliever. And
studies of bees and other insects suggest that they may experience
both pain and joy. That is, these creatures, too, may be sentient.

Although the evidence for consciousness in fish, reptiles, insects,
and other invertebrates has yet to accumulate to the degree that it
has in mammals and birds, researchers are taking the possibility far
more seriously than they have in the past. In 2024 dozens of
scientists signed a declaration acknowledging that species quite
different from humans may have experiences of consciousness and that
this possibility needs to be considered in decisions that affect these
animals. The document could help shape policies governing animal
research ethics and welfare.

One more group of organisms deserves mention. In recent years
researchers have increasingly begun to explore the idea that
plants—traditionally viewed as noncognitive beings—can learn,
remember, make decisions, communicate and experience the world
uniquely. In this way, some investigators propose, they are conscious.
Consider the Venus flytrap, a carnivorous plant that catches flies,
ants, and other insects when they brush against the sensory hairlike
structures in the plant’s trap. The plant remembers when it has been
touched. After two touches, the trap closes and imprisons the insect
prey; after five touches, it produces the enzymes needed to digest its
catch. Other plants sense when they are being munched by hungry
insects and emit chemical signals that summon predators of their
attackers.

We might not be as unique as we thought we were. But we needn’t feel
demoted. There’s something marvelous about finding a common thread
between flytrap and ferret, bee and human. We’re not separate from
nature, we’re connected to it, part of the weave of life, in all its
dazzling diversity.

_Edited by Seth Fletcher
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_KATE WONG is an award-winning science writer and senior editor
at Scientific American focused on evolution, ecology, anthropology,
archaeology, paleontology and animal behavior. She is fascinated by
human origins, which she has covered for more than 25 years. Recently
she has become obsessed with birds. Her reporting has taken her to
caves in France and Croatia that Neandertals once called home, to the
shores of Kenya's Lake Turkana in search of the oldest stone tools in
the world, to Madagascar on an expedition to unearth ancient mammals
and dinosaurs, to the icy waters of Antarctica, where humpback whales
feast on krill, and on a "Big Day" race around the state of
Connecticut to find as many bird species as possible in 24 hours. Kate
is co-author, with Donald Johanson, of Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for
Human Origins. She holds a bachelor of science degree in biological
anthropology and zoology from the University of Michigan. Follow Kate
on Bluesky [[link removed]]._

_Founded 1845, Scientific American
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has published articles by more than 200 Nobel Prize winners._

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