The lack of common knowledge among some people simply amazes me. It shows itself every time somebody asks “If you were an animal, what animal would you be?”.
Human beings, for those who are still confused, are indeed animals. We belong to the Order of Primates, the Class of Mammals, and the Kingdom of Animals. Scientifically you might refer to us as Homo sapiens sapiens. Like it, or not, we evolved from an ancient ape-like being and now rule the planet with numbers over 2.8 Billion (as of November 2009).
We are Animals, we are not rocks, we are not plants. Our bodies are made of cells, the cells in our bones are not all that unlike the cells in the bones of other animals. The cells in our skin are not so different to the cells in the skin of our beloved cat or dog. Our lungs work to bring air into our bodies, to enrich our brains with oxygen, not unlike the lungs in whales.
Image via Wikipedia
We react to stimulus. We need to eat, we want to avoid being eaten. We have an urge to multiply.
Simply because we have opposable thumbs and a larynx placed low enough to allow for speech does not make us any less of an animal than does the elephants unique trunk.
Simply because we think we are superior to the other animals does not make it so. We seem to think we have dominion over all the other animals. For some this is justified through their religion. We have to justify it to allow ourselves to commit the kind of atrocities we have towards the other animals, and by this I refer to any thing done to the other animals except for eating them. By the ignorance shown in the original question we see that some people are raising their children to think humans are not animals, but some sort of superior being.
Image via Wikipedia
None the less, since humans ARE animals, we must return to the original question and rephrase it correctly to read: “If you were another type of animal, what would you be?”.
To answer that, personally, I would have to pick an animal with the least risk of human interference. This would probably be a deep sea creature of some sort. Living in the dark at the bottom of the ocean or in the Mariana Trench.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/readers/2009/12/12/anglerfish600_1.jpg
It might be simpler living as one of the protected species, but if we consider that many of these are confined in cages as part of breeding programs we can see that their lives lack deeper meaning, and are sterile and boring.
Undoubtedly nobody would select to come back as a battery hen but it doesn’t stop them from eating eggs from those birds.
In the mean time, we, humans, ARE animals, so deal with it!
Are Humans REALLY the Smartest Animal?
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