Are Chimpanzees people?

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What about dragons?

I want my descendants to be dragons.

So that scalefags can rawr them? That's sick.

I didn't think about that.

But monocled scalefags would also be dragons, while derpy ones would be extinct.

By far the most astonishing part in that episode is where they film chimpanzees walking on two legs to cross a body of water. My personal favourite documentary piece by Attenborough.

PS: Btw, Arcanum played around with the idea that all fantasy races are descended from humans, as that was a theory scientists in Tarant University had just presented to the world when the game takes place (naturally, also includes a theory of evolution). Naturally, this caused major butthurt among Elves and Dwarves.

If you look at the other members of the genus, you'll notice pretty quickly that chimpanzees diverted before even the earliest member of homo. I would argue against it on that basis, it represents a different(though similar, we're all great apes after all) evolutionary pathway.

The taxonomic model you're referring to is just a useful placeholder until we've fully mapped out the clades anyway.

I think behaviorally ants are more like humans than any other primates.

Holy shit, this board again. Quick, someone fuck it up.

Sliding back towards derp and inanity, eh?

We did get really, really close to developing halflings though.



Just need some hairy feet.

It's a bit hard to argue for personhood on the basis of 98% genetic similarity.

All that means it that base for base, we share 98% of the same sequence. In genetics, that 2% can account for a whole lot. Plus, the actual expression of the 98% of DNA that is similar may be heavily affected by that 2% of difference, thus creating even greater variations in phenotype.

I'd stick to debating personhood on the basis of sociology, since the rights granted to a person are man-made and therefore cultural in origin.

If you were to approach it from a biological perspective (i.e. all Homos are people), to re-classify chimpanzees under Homo and not Pan would take quite a bit of tweaking as to what constitutes a genus. The morphological distinctions are quite striking.

Maybe you should do a bit of research about why I said what I said before making retarded posts you stupid dumbfuck. Ants are the only beings other than humans that wage organized wars, take slaves, engage in agriculture and animal husbandry, as well as in some cases choosing their best soldier to duel the best soldier of another colony. Ant colonies are also comparatively the scale of the average human city, containing separate areas for farming mushrooms, keeping slaves, etc. This way of organizing living space is, again, something only ants and humans have in common.

The ability of ants to understand the process of farming/keeping other insects as "farm animals" in order for a greater future return of food makes them, on the behavioral scale, a lot more like humans than primates that fling their feces at each other and have not nor will they ever understand complicated processes for building cities or farming/animal husbandry. The only reason it's hard to believe and not studied as much as primates is because ants are insects and thus not attractive to show on TV and in studies. It's also much harder to study their brain functions since they are so small.

The point that I'm trying to make is that, based on an honest and comparative approach, human civilization and ant civilization are probably the two most similar on earth.

Another thing ants and humans share: colonizing every continent on earth. While Chimps again do not show the intellectual ability to ever be able to do this.

of Cloaked Figure.

Um, the only personal opinion I made in that post was the "not attractive to show on TV/studies" and saying that ant/human civilization are the two most similar on earth. The rest is research provided by scientists so, what exactly do you find so disagreeable about this? Other than the fact that ants are "gross" and "no way comparable to us" typical human hubris.

What I'm trying to say is that while we share more DNA with chimps, behavior wise they are nothing like us. Ants on the other hand, while looking nothing like us, behave in the same way as barbarian human tribes of old. They have a tendency to build and plan for the future with a specific social-status system while chimps do nothing different than the alpha/female dichotomy of every other animal on earth.

Hear it from the brownie in da hood.

For the record, muslim people are nothing like us, humans. Just saying.

For streamlined digestion, I'm recommending you Googling Robert Sapolsky and watching his video lectures, CF.

Uh... no, behavior wise, as individuals, they are probably very much what you'd expect of a feral human. You're taking a particular period of human development (ancient tribes) and trying to match ants to that period to show ants are the same. Now the issue here is that we certainly aren't acting like barbarian human tribes anymore (at least, most of us), and there has been undeniable sociological development in recent years.

To say studying their brain functions is hard because they're small is bullshit. A single ant is simple. It'll hardly surprise you. Certainly far less complex than predicting human behaviour on an individual basis. The challenge is in predicting their groupthink, which relies mainly on pheromones for communications. In this, they usually react similarly to a well-oiled machine -> if environmental conditions = x, perform y.

Those pheromones work very well in ensuring a group of ants as a whole attains a dynamic adaptive capability. But one ant? No (well, as far as I know. If there are new studies proving otherwise, I'm interested).

Ants are one of the most extensively studied and documented families on the planet. The parallels that you can see superficially between ant and human society are one of the greatest causes for that. Biologists aren't exactly people concerned with what's "cute" anyway. These are people who can spend hours washing animal shit to see what it had eaten recently, remember?

Behaviour-wise chimpanzees and us are extremely close, and ants are incredibly far away from us. Comparing ants to a barbarian human tribe of old is a gross inaccuracy. You see, a core difference between us and ants is that ants are a Superorganism. The degree of organization in ant society makes mockery of our best attempts, ant society is collective to the utmost point. Ants have barely any individuality in the collective, and instead act as a pheromone-directed superorganism and fulfill the exact task they were born to do. There is no such a thing as a "best soldier" in ant society, because all of the soldier ants are identical and perform the exact same function. In fact, among many ant species that hibernate the purpose of waging wars with neighbouring colonies is not really about territory and resources first and foremost but about killing off last year's population while the Queen pops up a fresh new generation. Even comparing our monkey joy to the super-advanced ant society is ridiculous.

An interesting factoid: Ants are NOT organized into a single nest. The nests you see if you walk along a forest path next to an ant-road are not separate, they're part of the same colony, with ant-roads stretching back to the oldest, largest nest. The original nest of the colony. Ant colonies can also form astonishing large networks. An Argentinian species of ant that was introduced to Europe has a supercolony that stretches for 6000 kilometers along the coast from Northern Spain to Northern Italy. Colonies can have multiple queens as well.

Also, not all species of ant practise agriculture, aphid husbandry or slavery. In fact, Slaver Ants are all specific species enslaving specific other species of ant. Of particular interest with Slaver Ants is the fact that they CANNOT survive without slaves, as their collective is no longer capable of handling working tasks. If you create a closed test environment with a Slaver Ant nest and their slaves, and then remove the slaves, all the Slaver Ants will sit on their asses and starve to death.

Just the difference between human and ant sexual behaviour is enormous enough to cast aside any thoughts of similarity!


By contrast, chimpanzee communities are organized starkingly similar to our primitive society. Large deal of chimpanzee behaviour from assertion of dominance to family units (albeit chimpanzee family unit never has a biological father) bears incredible similarity. In fact, for all our efforts in sophisticated large-scale society, if you go down to smaller units once more it's still all monkey joy.

Also, chimpanzees engage in warfare, slavery and animal husbandry (though the last is extremely rare). Chimp warfare is war of extermination, a very "human" thing. But they also do other very human things, like adoption of orphaned infants, advanced communication (in the form of sounds and gestures with very specific meanings, a language so to speak. They also use the same part of the brain as we do when communicating), spirituality, aesthetics, self-recognition, high-degree of individuality, emotions, comprehension of death, altruism and as a big one: Laughter (though all Great Apes engage in it).



EDIT: And yes treave, you are correct. Ant study focuses entirely on their collective and not on individuals or small groups, because being highly specialized parts of a superorganism individual ants CANNOT SURVIVE on their own. This is not the case with humans or chimpanzees.

Also, an interesting aspect: Chimpanzees and Humans both appear to have the same biological foundation for "Bros Before Hoes," which is why bros wanna hang out with bros and do bro stuff. Chimpanzees do the same thing, with males generally hanging around males doing male stuff away from those goddamn women and their goddamn women stuff.

Also, both chimpanzees and humans are capable of "needing time on their own" and temporarily leave the group for days or even weeks at an end before returning in a much better mood. They can also get depressed like we can.

Another important aspect is that ants literally have no individuality or perception of individuals. As a metaphorical example, if you could vocalize ant pheromone messages, they'd always address everyone as "comrades" (probably in thick Russian accent), and no one could ever remember meeting anyone. By contrast, chimpanzees, like us, are capable of recognizing individuals based on looks, sound and behaviour.


EDIT2: Btw bros, here's some very thought-provoking material: http://www.originsnet.org/chimpspiritdatabase.pdf

Cool sci fi. Would read again.

Tell us Khor, do you believe in evolution? In fact, where's HHR when one needs him?

Of course I do. But that doesn't mean that chimps are humans. In fact, someone with any biological knowledge to speak of would find the op question a silly troll attempt. Science isn't about trolling what you think 'religious' people believe. It is supposed to be an unfiltered quest for natural truth.

Is Vaarna_Aarne a Chimp? Discuss.

Can he impregnate a female homo sapien?