Hominidae

In Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein, the feud between Victor Frankenstein and his Creation unwinds before the reader. In this story the reader is exposed to the Creation’s first moments of life. Like an innocent child the Creation finds himself wandering in the forest and eventually encounters a human. In this encounter, the reader is shown the intricate yet destructive relationship between the Creation and the rest of society. This relationship uncovers the raw emotions of the Creation…

What does it mean to be human? Is it if you physically have all of the parts of a human or is it what’s on the inside that makes the person a human? Or is it something totally different? Throughout the movie The Island, this thought is questioned about Lincoln and Jordan, the main characters, quite often and makes one wonder the answer. Both Lincoln and Jordan learn the meaning of the term human throughout the film and form their opinions on whether they are actually human. Both Lincoln and…

A struggle for survival can lead human beings to degeneration towards the lowest realms of animality. A man is a man only until his basic instincts of hunger and survival are fulfilled. Once his survival instincts are challenged physically, mentally and emotionally, he will go above and beyond his human nature that is assumed to be decent, kind and humane. These limits of ruthlessness are crossed as these “living dead” can touch any depths of lowliness ranging from cannibalism to coprophagy.…

The ethics of animal research Zhongyu li University of Missouri - Columbia I still remember the first time I watched the old French movie called ‘The Plague’ with my mom. I was only thirteen at that time but the movie still impressed me till now. In this movie, Pairs is persecuted by an unexpected plague. Hospital was crowed by sick people while there were no efficiency treatments for patients. Mice are bigger than 6 inch and fulfil the sewers of the city. The heroine found a cat was eaten by…

Why is making networks, things and the relationship between humans and nonhumans visible both so difficult and so important? Sociology that focuses primarily on interactions between humans assigns an inactive role to objects and other non-human things. Non-humans can, and sometimes do, indeed figure prominently in traditional sociology, but they are not evaluated as anything more than passive tools that humans employ in order to reach our various ends. Traditional sociology holds that humans…

Reaction paper 1 The article, Darwin’s Rib, by Robert S. Root-Bernstein was fascinating to me. My personal reaction to the reading was one of surprise. When I read that the student in Dr. Root-Bernstein’s class believed that “males have one fewer pair of ribs than females” (Root-Bernstein 2010: 53), I was shocked. As someone who is invested in scientific information, I found her reasoning odd and unfounded. She had based her knowledge of scientific facts off a personal religious assumption. I…

TITLE OF THE ESSAY Introduction In the year of 1984, an almost complete skeleton, with the exception of the hands and feet, of an eight-year old boy was found by Kamoya Kimeu in Nariokotome near Lake Turkana in Kenya (Brown et al., 1986). The Nariokotome Boy, formerly known as the Turkana Boy/WT 15000, was very special in that it was the only hominid from the H.erectus produced with the most complete skeleton and was chronometrically dated back to about 1.6 million years (Brown et al., 1986).…

By Kierkegaard’s standards, the lack of loving your neighbor as yourself may be the root of the problem of dehumanization. In Charles Kinnane’s The Human Experience, the audience is introduced to a homeless woman living on the streets. She tells the story of a time when, while living on the streets with four dogs, people felt the need to give the animals a place to stay so they wouldn’t freeze on the streets. The people stood around and made sure that the dogs had a home to go to, but paid no…

The intelligent and aggressive species known as the chimpanzee is recognized as the most closely related animal to humans in the world. At one time it was believed that gorillas and chimps were the most closely related, until new technologies were developed resulting in the finding that humans share a massive 99% of our DNA with these creatures. Chimpanzees are classified in the genus known as Pan, along with the species bonono, but not with humans. Humans are classified in their own genus known…

All over the world we see people having some sort of culture from one country to the next country. The traditions that people in different countries can be passed from one generation to the following generation. But do we ever think and wonder that implies to animals such as chimpanzees? Do chimpanzees have culture? Different anthropologists define culture in different ways. Anthropologists proposed two definitions for culture. These two definitions are polar opposites from each other. According…