Darwin
What Darwin Didn’t Know – Geoffrey Simmons, M.D.
ISBN 0-7369-1313-0 23
The Differences Between Man and Monkey
Are we basically monkeys or not? Scientists say that human DNA and chimp DNA are between 95 and 98 percent the same. Yet our blueprint allows us to do calculus, compose poetry, build cathedrals, and walk on the moon, while chimps pick bugs off each other and eat them. It’s obvious that there’s a physical resemblance, but does similarity prove that both species descended from the same ancestor? If so, why have we progressed over 500,000 years and they haven’t? Why are there so many hard-to-explain differences, like face-down deliveries rather than face-up, bipedalism (walking on two feet), and speech? Why is it that monkeys never need a haircut?
Even if we were truly identical in 98 percent of all our genes – the maximum possible percentage – that still leaves 120,000,000 chemical bases in which we differ. Listed below are just a few characteristics. In each case the genetic gap is monumental.
Humans vs Other Primates
1. Chimpanzee’s feet and big toes are prehensile, able to grab nearly anything. Without a great deal of training, humans can barely pick up a folded napkin with their toes. They have long arms and short legs; we have short arms and long legs.
2. Most animals, including chimps, have wraparound mouths. When a monkey shows its teeth, it is either angry, feeling threatened, or hurting. We have a narrow mouth to articulate better, and showing our teeth usually denotes friendship.
3. The chin is unique to humans. It is thought to have showed up about 150,000 years ago.
4. Humans require a prolonged childhood. Survival of the fittest should logically require a shorter childhood. Chimps and gorillas are emancipated by 11 or 12 years of age.
5. The human gestation period is also the longest among primates. One might think that this, too, would be contrary to the survival of the fittest.
6. Tails – where did they go? There are no in-between tails.
7. Monkeys and apes rarely linger more than a few seconds over intercourse. They can always tell when a female has ovulated. We usually can’t. Face-to-face intercourse is rare in the rest of the mammal world.
8. Gorillas have 48 chromosomes, and we have 46. Curiously, potatoes have even more.
9. With the exception of the pilot whale, only humans are known to go through the menopause.
10. The human body is relatively naked, and there are no known intermediate, partly hairy, species.
11. Apes lack the fatty inner layer of skin that we share with aquatic mammals like the whale and hippopotamus.
12. Humans are the only primate with breasts that are apparent when not nursing.
13. A newborn human arrives plump and naked; a newborn chimp is hairy and cadaver-like. Our newborns are helpless, whereas newborn monkeys can cling and move about. Gorilla babies stand at 20 weeks; humans stand at 43 weeks. Is that an advancement?
14. According to Elaine Morgan in the Scars of Evolution, “the really indispensable pre-adaptation for speech is the enhanced degree of conscious breath control which we share with all diving mammals and no purely terrestrial ones.”
15. Monkeys have a bone in their penis called a baculum.
16. Humans may be the only creature who weep, although paired giraffes seem to shed tears when they are separated.
17. Many primates and most mammals make their own vitamin C. Somewhere along the road to survival of the fittest we apparently lost that life-sustaining ability.
18. Among primates, the hymen is found only in humans, Madagascar lemurs, and other prosimans (lemurs and tarsiers).
19. We are the only creature that blushes over relatively minor events, and we may be the only one that laughs at jokes. Chimps will laugh when tickled.
20. According to Pulitzer-prize winning author Jared Diamond in Why is Sex Fun? human sexuality is different from all of the other 30 million animal species. “By the standard of the world’s 4300 other species of mammals, and even by the standards of our closest relatives, the great apes, we are the ones who are bizarre.” He points to long-term partnerships, co-parenting, private sex, concealed ovulation, extended female receptivity, sex for fun, and female menopause.
21. According to Charles Kingsley in Evolutionary Wars, no other animal even approaches the repertoire of sounds and skills that humans use to communicate.
22. There are different bone structures. Chimps’ lumbar spine is shorter. Humans have a different kind of hip joint. Chimps do not have an arch in either foot.
23. Humans have a protruding nose.
24. Monkeys don’t sweat.
25. Among primates, only humans have the capacity for blue eyes and curly hair.
26. Penguins, sea mammals, and humans seem to be the only creature who can consciously hold their breath.
27. Monkeys and apes, despite any amount of training, will never be able to read a book, understand a joke, drive a truck, fly a plane, sing the national anthem, or recite the Lord’s Prayer. And note that the old idea that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite amount of time and typewriters would type out a Shakespeare play was recently dispelled in Plymouth, England, when a group of monkeys were given computer keyboards for a month. Instead of typing words they covered the keyboards in excrement. The ones that actually became interested in typing typed several pages of the letter “s”.
There are many differences between man and monkey, and the gaps cannot be explained by minor internal adjustments, rare mutations, or survival of the fittest. Where’s the tail? Why did we lose the fur (a disadvantage)? Why does our skin more resemble a dolphin’s than a monkey’s? Why can’t we grasp fruit with our feet? Why is our brain more interested in literature than in dodging banana peels from the upper branches?
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