EMOTION AND COMPASSION top of page
Scientists have proposed that nonhuman primates and even rodents laugh.
Animal Emotions Pet owners have long believed their companions loved them back. Scientists once scoffed, but now they're coming around By Mary Carmichael NEWSWEEK July 21 2003 issue — Everyone who's ever owned a pet has at least one story (usually many, actually) of an animal that seems just as emotional as any human.
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NO EMOTIONS?
... For decades, psychologists have discounted the idea that pets can love their humans back. They have argued that animals that appear to express emotions are merely reacting to hormonal rushes triggered—in cold, but typical, technical language—by "outside stimuli." But that view is changing, thanks to a loosely knit band of researchers working in fields as far-flung as neurobiology and behavioral observation.
Human and Chimpanzee Functional DNA Shows They Are More Similar To Each Other Than Either Is To Other Apes by Derek E. Wildman1, Lawrence I. Grossman1, and Morris Goodman2 The link to the actual paper
1 Center for Molecular Medicine & Genetics, Wayne State University School o fMedicine, 540 E. Canfield Ave. Detroit, MI 48201 and, 2 Dept. of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Wayne State University School of Medicine, 550 E.Canfield Ave. Detroit, MI 48201.
Correspondence to Morris Goodman. Email mgoodwayne@aol.com.
Chimps are human, gene study implies
22:00 19 May 03 Jeff Hecht
NewScientist.com news service
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993744
The latest twist in the debate over how much DNA separates humans from chimpanzees suggests we are so closely related that chimps should not only be part of the same taxonomic family, but also the same genus.
The new study found that 99.4 percent of the most critical DNA sites are identical in the corresponding human and chimp genes. With that close a relationship, the two living chimp species belong in the genus Homo, says Morris Goodman of Wayne State University in Detroit.
The closeness of relationship between chimps and humans has become an important issue outside taxonomy, becoming part of the debate over the use of chimps in laboratory experiments and over their conservation in the wild.
Traditionally chimps are classified with the other great apes, gorillas and orangutans, in the family Pongidae, separated from the human family Hominidae. Within Hominidae, most paleoanthropologists now class virtually all hominid fossils in three genera, Homo, Australopithecus, or Ardipithecus.
On the basis of the new study, Goodman would not only put modern humans and all fossils back to the human-chimp divergence into Homo, but would also include the common chimp (Pan troglodytes) and the bonobo (Pan paniscus).
" The third chimpanzee"
It is not the first time such a suggestion has been made - in 1991 physiologist and ecologist Jared Diamond called humans "the third chimpanzee". But subsequent genetic comparisons have yielded varying results, depending on how the genotypes are compared.
Goodman compared published sequences of 97 genes on six species, including humans, chimps, gorillas, orangutans, and Old World monkeys. He looked only at what he considered the most functional DNA, bases which cannot be changed without a consequent change in the amino acid coded for by the gene.
Among these, he found that 99.4 percent were identical in humans and chimps. He found a lower correspondence for bases that could be changed without affecting the amino acid, with 98.4 percent identical for chimps and humans and the same for the "junk" DNA outside coding regions. Goodman believes the differences are larger for non-coding DNA because their sequences are not biologically critical.
Split date
His correlations are much higher than the 95 per cent similarity reported in 2002 by Roy Britten of the California Institute of Technology. Goodman does not disagree with those results, he told New Scientist, but points out that the differences analysed by Britten are not important to gene function because 98 percent of the DNA did not code for proteins.
The small difference between genotypes reflects the recent split between chimps and humans, says Goodman, who dates the divergence to between five and six million years ago.
But Sandy Harcourt, an anthropologist at the University of California at Davis, believes chimps and humans split six to 10 million years ago. "That's an awful long time to be in the same genus," he told New Scientist.
Classifying chimps as human might raise their conservation profile, but Harcourt hopes that is not the only way to get people to worry about them. "I'd prefer to go the other way, and consider more things that aren't human" as important for conservation, he says.
Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1232172100)
Chimps 'should be reclassified as humans'
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
20 May 2003
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=407833
A molecular comparison of the chimpanzee with man has concluded that our closest living relative is closer than we ever imagined and that its genetic similarity even gives it a right to join life's most exclusive club - being human.
Researchers who have compared the working genes of chimps and humans believe that the two species are so alike at the level of their DNA that they should both be classified as members of the human genus Homo.
Traditionally chimpanzees, also known as Pan troglodytes, have been classified as belonging to the pongid family as they were considered to be closer to other non-human primates, such as gorillas and orang-utans, but the latest study by Morris Goodman of Wayne State University in Detroit puts chimps close enough to humans for them to become practically indistinguishable.
"What we found was that at the genetic level chimps are more like humans than gorillas. The finding would support those who want to extend legal controls to stop the abuse of chimps," Professor Goodman said. "Our results lend weight to the idea that it wouldn't be ethical to treat them in the way laboratory animals like rats or mice are treated," he said.
The research team found that some of the most important genes of chimps and humans share about 99.4 per cent of their genetic sequence, bringing them far closer together than the 98 per cent similarity which previous studies have suggested.
Professor Goodman explained that his study looked at the crucial "coding" or functional regions of 97 genes common to chimps and humans that have changed as a result of natural selection.
They also looked at rather more neutral "non-coding" regions of the genome where changes are more rapidly accumulated because they are less important. Here the similarity was less pronounced.
Most non-coding DNA -- which is usually not part of a gene and does not produce proteins -- is not closely scrutinised and shaped by natural selection and so on average evolves more rapidly than the DNA of working genes, which are responsible for the body's vital proteins.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, challenges the anthropocentric concept of nature that has dominated zoological classification since Aristotle who conceived a "great chain of being" from the lowliest creatures to the higher forms of life
Humans and our extinct relatives such as the Neanderthals, are classified as belonging to the Homo or hominid grouping based on anatomical comparisons but the researchers write: "This concept of greatly different 'hominid' and 'pongid' zones has perpetuated the widespread continuing use of the term 'hominids' to refer solely to humans.
"We humans appear as only slightly remodelled chimpanzee-like apes. We argue in the light of findings such as 99.4 per cent identity between humans and chimpanzees ... to place these two closely related genetic relatives in the same genus," they add.
Family matters
This week, scientists claimed that chimps are so close to mankind that they should be reclassified as practically human. So should they have the same rights as us? Tim Radford reports on a debate that could help save them from extinction, while Stephen Moss visits them in 'person' at London Zoo
Tim Radford and Stephen Moss
Wednesday May 21, 2003 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,960125,00.html
Chimps have language. They can, and do, communicate with humans. There is a linguist chimp called Nim Chimpsky with a vocabulary of 125 signs, all used correctly. Chimps can solve problems, use tools and when they lose their teeth, even improvise a makeshift food blender. Two observers have now claimed to see chimps in the wild leaving each other "notes". Separate groups of chimpanzees have different ways of doing things, and pass these ways on through the generations: that is, chimpanzees have culture, just as humans have culture.
Some laboratory animals can count up to nine, and remember a sequence of up to five Arabic numerals. Captive chimps have starred in films, performed in television commercials, and served each other afternoon tea at London Zoo. They are naturally political creatures: they have been observed forming alliances, using subterfuge and launching breakaway parties. They use violence to get their way when they can, and sex to get their way when they cannot.
In a word, they might be human. But Morris Goodman, a geneticist at Wayne State University school of medicine in Detroit, is prepared to take the matter further. He argues, in a scientific journal published yesterday, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that chimpanzees should be included with humans in the same evolutionary grouping. That is, chimps and their close relatives, bonobos, would no longer be Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus, but Homo troglodytes, and Homo paniscus. They would take a new place in creation's pecking order, as near as dammit Homo sapiens - that's us. <snip>
Chimps, humans 'should share grouping'
By Richard Black BBC science correspondent
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3042781.stm
Chimpanzees are so closely related to humans that they should properly be considered as members of the human family, according to new genetic research.
We shared a common ancestor many millions of years ago Scientists from the Wayne State University, School of Medicine, Detroit, US, examined key genes in humans and several ape species and found our "life code" to be 99.4% the same as chimps.
They propose moving common chimps and another very closely related ape, bonobos, into the genus, Homo, the taxonomic grouping researchers use to classify people in the animal kingdom.
Humans, or Homo sapiens to give the species its scientific name, are the only living organism in the genus at the moment - although some extinct creatures such as Neanderthals (Homo Neanderthalis) also occupy the same grouping.
FERRAL CHILDREN RESCUED LOVED AND PROTECTED BY ANIMALS
Ferral Children
Extensive list of children along with comprehensive information about every child.
Boy adopted by chimps
KANO, Nigeria: A disabled Nigerian boy believed to have been adopted and raised by chimpanzees for 18 months is in care in a specialist children's home in this northern city.
Named Bello by nursing staff at the Tudun Maliki Torrey home in Kano, he was brought to them six years ago by hunters after being found with a chimpanzee family in the Falgore forest, 150km south of Kano, staff told AFP.
Believed to have been aged about two when he was taken in, Bello is probably the son of nomadic ethnic Fulani people who travel through the region, Abba Isa Muhammad, the home's child welfare officer, said.
Mentally and physically disabled, with a misshapen forehead, sloping right shoulder and protruding chest, he was probably abandoned by his parents because of his disabilities, Isa Muhammad said.
Such abandonments of disabled children are common among the nomadic Fulani, a pastoralist people who travel great distances across the west African Sahel region, and in most instances the children die, specialists told AFP.
Chile's ``Dog Boy'' peeks through the window of a state-run welfare institution in Concepcion, Chile, yesterday.
REUTERS Wednesday, Jun 20, 2001,Page 1
A 10-year-old Chilean boy who had been abandoned by his parents survived for two years in a cave with a pack of stray dogs who scavenged for food with him and may even have suckled him, child care workers said on Monday.
The Scotsman - Taming The Monkey Boy 1999, 17 October
As Molly translates, he tells me that when his mother was killed he ran away and somehow found himself among the trees. He was afraid to go home because he thought his father might kill him, too. He says he was hungry and the monkeys brought food to him, especially bananas, kasavas and sweet potatoes. He just ate whatever they dropped.
The Observer - Homeless Russian boy raised by stray dogs
by Tyler, Richard 1998, 23 July, London
Such are the appalling conditions facing homeless Russian children that six-year-old Ivan Mishukov preferred to live with stray dogs. The child told social workers, "I was better off with dogs. They loved me and protected me."
Empathy may not be uniquely human quality
April 04 2004 © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994901
The ability to empathise is often considered uniquely human, the result of complex reasoning and abstract thought. But it might in fact be an incredibly simple brain process meaning that there is no reason why monkeys and other animals cannot empathise too. That is the conclusion of Christian Keysers of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and his colleagues. The team used a functional MRI scanner to monitor volunteers while their legs were touched and while they watched videos of other people being touched and of objects colliding. To the team's surprise, a sensory area of the brain called the secondary somatosensory cortex, thought only to respond to physical touch, was strongly activated by the sight of others being touched. This suggests that empathy requires no specialised brain area. The brain simply transforms what we see into what we would have felt in the same situation. "Empathy is not an abstract capacity," Keysers concludes. "It's like you slip into another person's shoes to share the experience in a very pragmatic way." Shared experience Even more surprisingly, seeing objects collide generated the same activity. "We expected a big difference," Keysers says, "but the results are not restricted to the social world. In a certain way we share experiences with objects." Other studies have produced comparable results: emotional faces activate emotional areas, for instance. It seems that the brain not only generates a visual sense of what we see, but also activates other sensory components to give us a complete "sense" or feeling for what we are observing. This means we can feel empathy without building up complex theories about what others feel, Keysers says. Instead, after we have learned what feeling goes with being touched ourselves, our brains become conditioned to trigger the same feeling when we see others being touched. "We do not need to assume a separate mechanism to understand the social world," he says. Not everyone agrees. Narender Ramnani of the University of Oxford, UK, thinks that this process alone cannot fully explain empathy. We seem to have special areas of the brain as well, he says, which are active when we represent, or "mentalise", the thoughts of others.