![]() ![]() As De Waal explains in a series of engaging accounts, language, self-recognition, tool making, empathy, co-operative behaviour, mental time-travel, culture and many other traits and abilities have turned out not to be exclusively human. ![]() Virtually every characteristic that has been claimed to be uniquely human has eventually turned out to have some kind of a precursor in a close relative. Do you care about animals? Then you really shouldn't eat octopus | Elle Hunt He justified this proposal by stating that from “animals to man there is no abrupt transition … What was man before he invented words and learnt languages? An animal of a particular species.” In his fine book, the Dutch-American primatologist Frans de Waal pursues this line of thinking, not so much to see if apes can use language (they can, although only at a very low level), but to show that there is no clear behavioural division between ourselves and other animals. ![]() In 1747 the French doctor and philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie suggested we might, using sign language, teach great apes to speak. ![]()
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