Is there anything more amazing than our undeniable physical relationship?
In contrast, African elephants aren’t members of a single species. There are bush elephants and forest elephants, the latter smaller than the former and showing easily recognizable (to those in the know) differences in color, size, ear shape, tusk orientation, and (for those who can count) number of toenails on the front feet. Or, take red pandas.* To me, they appear indistinguishable, the zoologist in me never having reached maturity. But they divide into two subspecies like those elephants in Africa. In contrast, there’s only one kind of human, regardless of ostensible and real differences in blood type, color, shape, and size! All the other human species are gone, maybe because of us. We represent all hominin races that ever existed, carrying as we do, some of their genes into our present, possibly also carrying in our species guilt that we might have played a role in the others’ extinctions. Apparently, over the past few millions of years we hominin species ran the experiment on diversity, and settled on unity. How that “unity” manifests itself is at no time more evident than in times of crisis.
Anyway, I find it amazing that only one species of human inhabits Earth. If I look at other organisms represented by a single species or just a few species, like members of the monotremes, I see isolation. Think platypus. Think echidna. But we are ubiquitous. And apparently our antecedent human species and those that lived contemporaneously with our species until about 35,000 or 40,000 years ago (Think Neanderthals), were nearly ubiquitous. We’ve pushed our geographic range farther than any of those species, but they, like us, also migrated across continents and oceans (just not to Antarctica, South America or the isolated islands of the Pacific—as far as we know until we discover differently).
In traveling far and wide, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans must have met Romeo-and-Juliet-like and decided to get together romantically. Yes, Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred.** Not surprised? Neither am I. Especially since I, and possibly you, have some genetic tie to the Neanderthals and to some other hominin and primate species. Obviously, our very ancient forebears found cross-species love, or, should I say, cross-variation, cross subspecies love (I’ll define a species by its inability to reproduce fertile offspring with some similar, but genetically different group, that is, another species; the connections between hominins allowed for the transmission of genes through generations). This was a purposeful crossing of species.
So, now we have evidence that Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred, either consensually or forcefully. Such is the way of hominins. Homo sapiens also bred with Homo neanderthalensis. And now there also seems to be some other group that left its genetic imprint on West African humans, a group suspected to be Homo heidelbergensis.*** All this “crossing,” as I indicated, was purposeful.
We house the crossings in our DNA. And now, we live as a single species, admittedly with variations, but nevertheless, single, capable of breeding viable fertile offspring. Amazing unity. And this biochemical unity underlies “human” behaviors. Is there anything more amazing than our undeniably similar behaviors with regard to those basic needs we all learn about in Psych 101.
Across the planet, we see cultural differences that shape some behaviors, but always similar behaviors with regard to basic human needs and in response to similar stimuli. Look, for example, at the way people have responded to threats imposed by SARS, Covid-19, and Ebola. Look at the stock market fall in 1929 and the market fall in 2020. Someone sells, and on rumor, innuendo, or fear the Market falls. Fears of both the real and imagined drive a common hysteria. Those mythical aliens who are watching from a distance must be puzzled by an organism that proclaims individuality for its members, yet also acts in unison over broad swaths of the planet during times of perceived stress. The petri dish of society belies claims of diversity and reveals our unity of behaviors. As they watch from their hovering spacecraft, aliens see humans acting like magnetotactic bacteria.**** “Look,” they say, “how they swarm.”
And is there anything more amazing than our undeniable, self-spiting foolish counterproductive swarming motivated by cultural, religious, philosophical, and political traditions. Apparently, some in the so-called mainstream media of 2020 would prefer to hype an economic disaster and a pandemic even when their own economic and physical well-being might be jeopardized. And the groups they influence follow in unison, finding in a perceived enemy someone to blame for the spread of a virus. Scapegoating is a common response of the media and opposition party members in times of uncertainty (and elections). But who is to blame? Viruses that threaten our species with pandemics are invisible to the naked eye. It’s not as though one is sitting in the stands of a baseball game, where one often hears the warning “Heads up!” for a foul ball. One needs an electron microscope to see viruses. No one can shout, “Look out” or “Duck” until after viruses begin their invasion. And those who would blame people who serve as the initial hosts of cross-species viruses—possibly, in the case of Covid-19 the bat-to-human hypothesis—fail to realize that whereas the practice of eating bats might be the hidden pathway for this 2020 pathogen, the analogous practice of eating chickens might be the pathway for another bird flu in the near future. Being part of a single species makes us vulnerable to any cross-species pathogen.
And isn’t it amazing that viruses can jump from species to species? Doesn’t that speak to the relationships among Earth’s current animal populations? Here we are, separate, and yet tied to many life-forms. And among ourselves, claiming separation but acting as one when threats arise.
But is there anything more amazing than a species that eliminated all rival species for control of a planet now relishing its own potential destruction for the sake of culture, religion, philosophy, politics, or just plain old envy and territorialism? All that interbreeding over all those millennia has produced a species that outwardly proclaims diversity as its members, divided by self-imposed differences, behave similarly. Would we be as opposed to one another if those other hominins had survived into the present, giving all humans of our kind some competitors, some other scapegoats? If only that single Denisovan had said, “You’re not my type. Get lost,” to that Neanderthal or that West African had said something similar to that Heidelbergensian, and the Neanderthal had in turn rejected the advances of that lusting ancestor of ours, we would be more like those pandas and elephants, seemingly similar but co-habiting the planet as separate subspecies with true differences.
Instead, our singular species dominates the planet, claims diversity, and exhibits destructive and self-destructive behaviors in the face of threats and changes to our physical, religious, cultural, philosophical, or political status quo.
Like magnetotactic bacteria aggregating in an electromagnetic field, humans gather and behave similarly when threats to the status quo emerge. And one of those behaviors is scapegoating. Another is hoarding. Yet another is hiding.
Those unintentional cross-species pathogens find a way into our midst. Obsessed as we are with finding fault in one another, we fail to see the insidious crossers until they make themselves part of who we are just as we made Neanderthals, Denisovans, and possibly Heidelbergensians part of who we are. The difference between us and those pathogens that drive us to panic is that the latter have no intention in doing what they do whereas we intentionally crossed species.
*http://www.sci-news.com/biology/two-species-red-pandas-08203.html
** https://phys.org/news/2020-02-earliest-interbreeding-event-ancient-human.html
***https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5573301/Modern-day-people-West-Africa-carry-genes-unknown-species-human-ancestor.html
****https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-pty-pty_maps&hsimp=yhs-pty_maps&hspart=pty&p=video+of+magnetotacgtic+bacteria#id=3&vid=25933849b4d8aa99af725b1f116d6962&action=view
In contrast, African elephants aren’t members of a single species. There are bush elephants and forest elephants, the latter smaller than the former and showing easily recognizable (to those in the know) differences in color, size, ear shape, tusk orientation, and (for those who can count) number of toenails on the front feet. Or, take red pandas.* To me, they appear indistinguishable, the zoologist in me never having reached maturity. But they divide into two subspecies like those elephants in Africa. In contrast, there’s only one kind of human, regardless of ostensible and real differences in blood type, color, shape, and size! All the other human species are gone, maybe because of us. We represent all hominin races that ever existed, carrying as we do, some of their genes into our present, possibly also carrying in our species guilt that we might have played a role in the others’ extinctions. Apparently, over the past few millions of years we hominin species ran the experiment on diversity, and settled on unity. How that “unity” manifests itself is at no time more evident than in times of crisis.
Anyway, I find it amazing that only one species of human inhabits Earth. If I look at other organisms represented by a single species or just a few species, like members of the monotremes, I see isolation. Think platypus. Think echidna. But we are ubiquitous. And apparently our antecedent human species and those that lived contemporaneously with our species until about 35,000 or 40,000 years ago (Think Neanderthals), were nearly ubiquitous. We’ve pushed our geographic range farther than any of those species, but they, like us, also migrated across continents and oceans (just not to Antarctica, South America or the isolated islands of the Pacific—as far as we know until we discover differently).
In traveling far and wide, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans must have met Romeo-and-Juliet-like and decided to get together romantically. Yes, Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred.** Not surprised? Neither am I. Especially since I, and possibly you, have some genetic tie to the Neanderthals and to some other hominin and primate species. Obviously, our very ancient forebears found cross-species love, or, should I say, cross-variation, cross subspecies love (I’ll define a species by its inability to reproduce fertile offspring with some similar, but genetically different group, that is, another species; the connections between hominins allowed for the transmission of genes through generations). This was a purposeful crossing of species.
So, now we have evidence that Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred, either consensually or forcefully. Such is the way of hominins. Homo sapiens also bred with Homo neanderthalensis. And now there also seems to be some other group that left its genetic imprint on West African humans, a group suspected to be Homo heidelbergensis.*** All this “crossing,” as I indicated, was purposeful.
We house the crossings in our DNA. And now, we live as a single species, admittedly with variations, but nevertheless, single, capable of breeding viable fertile offspring. Amazing unity. And this biochemical unity underlies “human” behaviors. Is there anything more amazing than our undeniably similar behaviors with regard to those basic needs we all learn about in Psych 101.
Across the planet, we see cultural differences that shape some behaviors, but always similar behaviors with regard to basic human needs and in response to similar stimuli. Look, for example, at the way people have responded to threats imposed by SARS, Covid-19, and Ebola. Look at the stock market fall in 1929 and the market fall in 2020. Someone sells, and on rumor, innuendo, or fear the Market falls. Fears of both the real and imagined drive a common hysteria. Those mythical aliens who are watching from a distance must be puzzled by an organism that proclaims individuality for its members, yet also acts in unison over broad swaths of the planet during times of perceived stress. The petri dish of society belies claims of diversity and reveals our unity of behaviors. As they watch from their hovering spacecraft, aliens see humans acting like magnetotactic bacteria.**** “Look,” they say, “how they swarm.”
And is there anything more amazing than our undeniable, self-spiting foolish counterproductive swarming motivated by cultural, religious, philosophical, and political traditions. Apparently, some in the so-called mainstream media of 2020 would prefer to hype an economic disaster and a pandemic even when their own economic and physical well-being might be jeopardized. And the groups they influence follow in unison, finding in a perceived enemy someone to blame for the spread of a virus. Scapegoating is a common response of the media and opposition party members in times of uncertainty (and elections). But who is to blame? Viruses that threaten our species with pandemics are invisible to the naked eye. It’s not as though one is sitting in the stands of a baseball game, where one often hears the warning “Heads up!” for a foul ball. One needs an electron microscope to see viruses. No one can shout, “Look out” or “Duck” until after viruses begin their invasion. And those who would blame people who serve as the initial hosts of cross-species viruses—possibly, in the case of Covid-19 the bat-to-human hypothesis—fail to realize that whereas the practice of eating bats might be the hidden pathway for this 2020 pathogen, the analogous practice of eating chickens might be the pathway for another bird flu in the near future. Being part of a single species makes us vulnerable to any cross-species pathogen.
And isn’t it amazing that viruses can jump from species to species? Doesn’t that speak to the relationships among Earth’s current animal populations? Here we are, separate, and yet tied to many life-forms. And among ourselves, claiming separation but acting as one when threats arise.
But is there anything more amazing than a species that eliminated all rival species for control of a planet now relishing its own potential destruction for the sake of culture, religion, philosophy, politics, or just plain old envy and territorialism? All that interbreeding over all those millennia has produced a species that outwardly proclaims diversity as its members, divided by self-imposed differences, behave similarly. Would we be as opposed to one another if those other hominins had survived into the present, giving all humans of our kind some competitors, some other scapegoats? If only that single Denisovan had said, “You’re not my type. Get lost,” to that Neanderthal or that West African had said something similar to that Heidelbergensian, and the Neanderthal had in turn rejected the advances of that lusting ancestor of ours, we would be more like those pandas and elephants, seemingly similar but co-habiting the planet as separate subspecies with true differences.
Instead, our singular species dominates the planet, claims diversity, and exhibits destructive and self-destructive behaviors in the face of threats and changes to our physical, religious, cultural, philosophical, or political status quo.
Like magnetotactic bacteria aggregating in an electromagnetic field, humans gather and behave similarly when threats to the status quo emerge. And one of those behaviors is scapegoating. Another is hoarding. Yet another is hiding.
Those unintentional cross-species pathogens find a way into our midst. Obsessed as we are with finding fault in one another, we fail to see the insidious crossers until they make themselves part of who we are just as we made Neanderthals, Denisovans, and possibly Heidelbergensians part of who we are. The difference between us and those pathogens that drive us to panic is that the latter have no intention in doing what they do whereas we intentionally crossed species.
*http://www.sci-news.com/biology/two-species-red-pandas-08203.html
** https://phys.org/news/2020-02-earliest-interbreeding-event-ancient-human.html
***https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5573301/Modern-day-people-West-Africa-carry-genes-unknown-species-human-ancestor.html
****https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-pty-pty_maps&hsimp=yhs-pty_maps&hspart=pty&p=video+of+magnetotacgtic+bacteria#id=3&vid=25933849b4d8aa99af725b1f116d6962&action=view
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