• Question: Why do you think that humans are the only species on Earth to have advanced in technology??

    Asked by custardcreams to Andrew, Emma, Marianne on 24 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      Hello custardcreams,
      I suspect they aren’t. Have you seen the Caledonia crows using tools?

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8631486.stm

      Various monkeys also use tools for different tasks. I know our technological advancement is much more obvious and elaborate but other species have advanced too.

      http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16426-nutcracking-monkeys-find-the-right-tool-for-the-job.html.

      I suppose if you were very ‘right on’ (socially conscious) you might suggest that they haven’t advanced further because we’ve been holding them back and oppressing them. We certainly seem to act like bullies in our dealings with the Natural world.

    • Photo: Andrew Maynard

      Andrew Maynard answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      Hi custardcreams,

      Mmm, I’m not an evolutionary biologist, but here are some thoughts anyway:

      Humans’ ability to innovate might just be an evolutionary blip. There’s a temptation to think of intelligence as the pinnacle of evolution, but that isn’t necessarily so – it’s simply a trait that enabled humans to survive and thrive at a particular point in evolutionary history. The fact that other species haven’t evolved to develop and use advanced technologies suggests that it isn’t a compelling evolutionary trait, or that simply humans are currently occupying this niche, so there’s no room for other organisms to evolve into it.

      The really interesting question now though is to as whether, because humans have evolved to develop and use advanced technology, have they broken out of the limitations of evolutionary development (in other words become masters of their own destiny), or will evolution win in the end?

      There are lots of different opinions on this – do you have any thoughts?

    • Photo: Marianne Baker

      Marianne Baker answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      Very interesting question, custardcreams.

      You are right that, while we aren’t the only species to have some technology, it’s only us that have really pushed it further than using simple tools.

      I think it’s because our brains have evolved to be bigger (recently people have been able to pin down some of the genes; the few differences between us and chimps – now that the chimp genome has been sequenced and we can compare it with the human one, very cool!).

      So with our increased brain size we have developed mentally rather than physically (none of us would fare very well against a lion for example!).

      This means, with language, we can build knowledge up over multiple lifetimes. We don’t just rely on what we learn in our life but also on what many have learned before us – this is especially important in science and technology – the application of science!

Comments

  • Photo: elmo97

    elmo97 commented on :

    I would say it’s because we were abit stupid, we didn’t really have any amzing ways of cooking or finding food, so we just experimented, first finding fire and then so on from there, into discovering amzing things.