Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Human/Non-Human Animals
My opinion of humans has never excluded them from the animal kingdom in the way a lot of other people might, I would say that the similarities between humans and animals far outweigh the differences. What I would say distinguishes us are the advantages of real speech and a written language, they allow us to communicate more than notions or feelings, and the allow us to teach each other and maintain knowledge over time even long after its creator dies. As clever as many animals are, none of them can leave me information .
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While I agree with your point that that the similarities between humans and animals far outweigh the differences, I strongly disagree with your choice of explanation between the distinction of them. Many animals have been used to learn about our past where human information was not available. While we have created a system of communication that works for us, whose to say we are the ones who are missing out by not being able to understand the "languages" of other species of animals. They too may be maintaining knowledge from one another over time, and as Josephine Donovan states, we are "not seeing it through our own "prison house of languages" (50). If this is the case, non-human animals now have numerous species to communicate with, since we are so stuck in our verbal form of communication that maybe non-human animals’ attempts are overlooked. Instead of expecting them to advance why shouldn’t we take the initiative to "learn to read the language of the natural world" (Donovan 50)?
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