Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
Apes and Humans Have Similar Brain Function
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Apes and Humans Have Similar Brain FunctionHUMANS AND CHIMPANZEES HAVE INCREDIBLY SIMILAR BRAINS Steven M. Wise, Professor Animal Rights Law at the Harvard Law School, 2000, “Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals” Questia p. 133-134 Human and chimpanzee brains certainly appear similar. Human brains weigh perhaps three pounds. A chimpanzee's brain weighs about one pound. Our brains contain between 10 billion (1010) and 100 trillion (1014) neurons. That humans have triple the number of neurons of chimpanzees almost certainly makes no difference when such vast numbers are involved. At least some of the physical structures believed to underlie consciousness in all mammals are found in the cerebrum and especially its outer layer, which is called the cerebral cortex. Many think the thalamus is also involved. However, the complex behaviors of some birds, who lack a substantial cerebral cortex but possess highly developed striatal brain regions, suggest that complex cognition may not necessarily be dependent upon a cerebral cortex. Anatomical equivalents may also exist. Eighty percent of our brains and 75 percent of chimpanzee brains is cerebral cortex. The area of our cerebral cortex is about 2,200 square centimeters, compared to about 500 square centimeters for the chimpanzee. Each square millimeter of the surfaces of the cerebral cortexes of both species contains about 146,000 neurons. Both cortexes therefore probably hold on the order of 1010 or 1011 neurons, about the number of stars in the Milky Way. The map of our cortical layers is also similar. The anthropologist Katerina Semendeferi, an expert on neuroanatomy, has written that the most forward section of the cortex, the frontal lobe, is often associated with the "most complex mental activities, such as language, creative thinking, planning, decision-making, artistic expression, some aspects of emotional behavior, and working memory." Both human and chimpanzee frontal lobes have nearly identical relative volumes (the ratio of the frontal lobe to the rest of the hemispheric volume) and cortical surfaces. Humans average a 36.7 percent relative volume and 35.9 percent cortical surface compared to the chimpanzee's 35.9 percent relative volume and 38.1 percent cortical surface; each is about what would be expected of a primate with that size brain. On average, each neuron in the cerebral cortex connects with the synapses of more than 1,000 other neurons and can potentially connect with tens of thousands more, so that the synaptic connections in the cerebral cortex number about 1 million billion (1015) for both us and chimpanzees. For both species, the combinations of neural connections is an estimated ten, followed by millions, perhaps trillions, of zeros. There are about 1087 elementary particles in the entire universe. The structures, numbers, and density of neurons, synaptic connections, and combinations of neural connections in both brains are of the same kind and order of magnitude, while the cortical layer maps are approximately the same. According to the psychologist Stephen Walker, Much work has been done since Huxley emphasized 100 years ago that "every principle gyrus and sulcus of a chimpanzee brain is clearly represented in that of a man," but there is nothing that contradicts his conclusion that the differences between the human and chimpanzee brains are remarkably minor by evolutionary standards. Apes Have CultureARGUMENT THAT ONLY HUMANS HAVE CULTURE IS A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHESY—WE’VE NEVER LOOKED FOR EVIDENCE BECAUSE WE THINK THEY DON’T HAVE CULTURE Barbara Noske, Researcher, Department of Social Philosophy, University of Amsterdam, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 259 Unlike human beings, animals tend to be regarded as organisms primarily governed by their individually based genetic constitutions, i.e. by their instincts or by their genes. But this conviction turns out to be a rather a priori one, given that almost no student of human society and culture ever pauses to ask the same questions about animals that they ask about humans. One simply does not look for the social and the cultural where surely it cannot be found., i.e. outside the human sphere. If one preconceives humans to be the sole beings capable of creating society, culture or language, one will thereby have preempted “ape” forms of society, “ape” culture and “ape” language almost by definition.
Barbara Noske, Researcher, Department of Social Philosophy, University of Amsterdam, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 259-60 Paul Bohannan is among the very few anthropologists who do think animals worthy of anthropological consideration; he warns against the methodology, are therefore dismissed as secondary, or, worse, rationalized out of existence. Thus, the part of animals under scrutiny in the laboratory and under the control of the positivist natural scientist comes to represent the whole animal. On top of all this came the Cartesian notion of the animal-machine, a view which denied animals all subjectivity, feeling, suffering, needs, fear or knowledge. In short, animals ended up as passive and law-bound products of the laws of living matter.
Barbara Noske, Researcher, Department of Social Philosophy, University of Amsterdam, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 262 Mainstream animal science such as biology and ethnology is just not designed to handle things that are socially or culturally created (instead of genetically) and which in their turn shape their creators. Generally speaking, biologists and ethologists do not possess the methodological equipment to conceptualize the non-material aspects of culture such as ideas, meanings and values held by groups. Needless to say that many biologists run the risk of giving biological deterministic explanations for human and animal behavior. HUMAN CONSTRUCTION OF NON-HUMAN ANIMALS IGNORES THEIR CAPACITY FOR CULTURE Barbara Noske, Researcher, Department of Social Philosophy, University of Amsterdam, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p.262 When, but only when such biological reductionisms are directed at humans, social scientists are up in arms. In contrast, these students of human society and culture seem to uncritically endorse whatever animal image is being put forward by animal scientists. What social scientists typically fail to appreciate is whether or not this animal image really reflects the “truth” about animals. Contrary to the images of “man” and more recently the images of “woman”, there has as yet been very little debate on the image of animals as a product of human construction.
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