Bill Gill said...
What I am trying to get across is that apes and humans may share a common ancestor, but does not make us apes and it doesn't make apes humans. ..............................> So sharing an ancestor with the apes doesn't make me an ape. While we share a lot of our genetic material with the apes it still doesn't mean that much. After all I have heard that we share 60% of our genetic material with fruit flies. That sure doesn't make me a fruit fly.
Bill Gill
Well said Bill,
of course while we share a lot of Genetic material with the apes.
There are also a number of great ureconcilable differences between ape and man.
Notably, Man the world over, everywhere, truly communicate thru speech and a developed language.
Apes, the world over, communicate using their voice-box for making
various single vocal notes.
Bill Gill said,
The way that the Linnaean classification system works is to classify life forms by what other life forms they are like. The ones that are the most alike are classified as being a species. Groups of life forms that are somewhat alike, but not enough alike to be considered species are genera. Then they diversify up to the family. And from that on to more general classifications. But while these classifications are based on similarities, the thing that makes different taxa are things that are different. So if you get up to the family, you are just saying that there is a relationship between them. So all you can say when you say that humans and the apes are in the same family is that there is some distant relationship and they are somewhat alike. That doesn't mean that you can then assign the same lower level classification. Apes are enough different from homo sapiens that trying to say they are the same is not a realistic statement.
Bill Gill
Mike Kremer said,
Carl Linnaeus attempted to classify similar looking plants, flowers and animals back in the 1750's. Things that looked similar, were placed in the same box. Science has advanced greatly in the last 260 years, where there have been a number of re-classifications.
Is it your opinion that there might be...even should be...a human/ape re-classification in the future due to the use of DNA?
I wonder if a change has been noted, but not officialy registered, for fear of upsetting the preverbial 'apple-cart?'
