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The Human Toolmaker

HOW ARE HUMANS DIFFERENT FROM OTHER ANIMALS? Humans can do a number of things that no other animals – not even our closest relatives (such as chimps and gorillas) – can do. We are the only species that has developed languages with a set of rules (a grammar) that requires words to be in a certain order. You might have seen monkeys calling each other (for example, a “koo” call is signaling friendliness), but you have never seen one writing a letter and wondering about spelling! We are also able to predict from the look of a friend’s face or the sound of his/her voice how he/she feels about the world, whether he/she is happy or sad. In addition, we pass from generation to generation the knowledge that we have learned about the world and our universe – this is why we go to school! Going to school and teaching children about the world is part of the human “culture,” another human-specific characteristic. Language, predicting a friend’s mood, and culture are all examples of “human-specific” abilities. Why can we do all these things and other animals cannot? It is because our brain has developed extra machinery for these abilities: there are specialized parts of the brain that produce language or predict a friend’s mood (see Figure 1).