Not a Chimp: The Hunt to Find the Genes that Make Us Human |  | Author: Jeremy Taylor
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
List Price: $27.95
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 69218
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Reading Level: All Ages
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.2 x 1.4
ISBN: 0199227780
Dewey Decimal Number: 599.935
EAN: 9780199227785
ASIN: 0199227780
Publication Date: August 31, 2009
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Product Description
Humans are primates, and our closest relatives are the other African apes - chimpanzees closest of all. With the mapping of the human genome, and that of the chimp, a direct comparison of the differences between the two, letter by letter along the billions of As, Gs, Cs, and Ts of the DNA code, has led to the widely vaunted claim that we differ from chimps by a mere 1.6% of our genetic code. A mere hair's breadth genetically! To a rather older tradition of anthropomorphizing chimps, trying to get them to speak, dressing them up for 'tea parties', was added the stamp of genetic confirmation. It also began an international race to find that handful of genes that make up the difference - the genes that make us uniquely human.
But what does that 1.6% really mean? And should it really lead us to consider extending limited human rights to chimps, as some have suggested? Are we, after all, just chimps with a few genetic tweaks? Is our language and our technology just an extension of the grunts and ant-collecting sticks of chimps? In this book, Jeremy Taylor sketches the picture that is emerging from cutting edge research in genetics, animal behaviour, and other fields. The indications are that the so-called 1.6% is much larger and leads to profound differences between the two species. We shared a common ancestor with chimps some 6-7 million years ago, but we humans have been racing away ever since. One in ten of our genes, says Taylor, has undergone evolution in the past 40,000 years! Some of the changes that happened since we split from chimpanzees are to genes that control the way whole orchestras of other genes are switched on and off, and where. Taylor shows, using studies of certain genes now associated with speech and with brain development and activity, that the story looks to be much more complicated than we first thought. This rapidly changing and exciting field has recently discovered a host of genetic mechanisms that make us different from other apes.
As Taylor points out, for too long we have let our sentimentality for chimps get in the way of our understanding. Chimps use tools, but so do crows. Certainly chimps are our closest genetic relatives. But relatively small differences in genetic code can lead to profound differences in cognition and behavior. Our abilities give us the responsibility to protect and preserve the natural world, including endangered primates. But for the purposes of human society and human concepts such as rights, let's not pretend that chimps are humans uneducated and undressed. We've changed a lot in those 12 million years.
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| Customer Reviews:
Outstanding overview of what makes humans different from chimps October 11, 2009
Jeri Nevermind (Idaho)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In 2005 Moe, a chimpanzee, turned 19. The couple who had raised him when he was young brought him a sheet cake with raspberry filling. As the couple stood outside his cage, two other nearby chimpanzees attacked the man. "He sustained severe facial injuries and his testicles and a foot were also severed" (p 7).
Taylor was interested enough to investigate just how close the ape family is to humans. He thought the story of man who had been attacked "graphically demonstrates the ambivalent world of chimpanzee-human relationiships: huge emotional attachment of human to chimp; bizarre levels of anthropomorphizing; an animal species capable of thrilling us with its human-like behavior on the one hand and horrifying us with its brutal aggression on the other" (P 8).
This is a very timely book. Many people have proposed that since we are so close genetically to the great apes, they should be granted full human rights. Spain recently voted down such a law; New Zealand passed one.
Taylor wanted to learn the truth. And the result is this very thorough book. He appears to have included every single study over the last 20 years on the subject. And, while he leans slightly against the chimpanzees as being the equal of humans, even from the start, he gives a thorough, and apparently unbiased, investigation.
I found his chapter on "Clever Corvids" especially interesting. Corvids, which includes such birds as ravens and crows, perform quite well on tests designed to reveal their ability to use tools--and yes, they do use tools. Animal lovers will enjoy anecdotes and research that shows humor, cooperating at tasks, and planning.
Dog lovers will also be captured by his history of a "backwater Russian research institute (which) has not only succeeded in producing foxes so tame they behave just like dogs, they have also bred Norwegian rats, otters, and mink" (p 262). The domesticated foxes respond, like dogs, to the way people gaze at them, and they notice what people are pointing at. Wild foxes don't.
Taylor makes an exhaustive investigation of all aspects of human and chimp cognition. He talks about everything, from how variations in serotonin transporters and MAO-A activity affect behavior, from brain size ( humans have a brain about "four times larger than you would expect for a typical anthropoid primate of our body size" (p 221), to research by Povinelli that casts doubt on ape intelligence.
Then there are the television documentaries on apes like Washoe and Koko who 'learned' language. And in the end he concludes most of these documentaries show a "long and sorry history--almost a pathology of science--ridden with wishful thing, over-exaggeration, and even downright fantasy" (p 295)
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