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The Cowboy by Frederic Remington, 1902 |
Are you an animal? If a man eats with deplorable table manners, his wife might ask him if he had been raised in a barn. If the guy down the street behaves wildly, you might call him an animal, though not to his face. If you hear on the news of a couple like Bonnie and Clyde going on a murder spree, you might remark that they are behaving like animals.To read the rest, click on "What Are Humans? Animals, Mammals, or Neither?"
What is it about these behaviors that prompts us to call a fellow human an animal, whether in jest or seriously? It is any behavior that we deem less than civilized, behavior that we associate with animals more than with humans. But do those behaviors mean those individuals are actually animals? Of course not. The very fact that we might derisively call someone an animal based on “animal-like” behavior illustrates the fact that we humans generally consider ourselves different from animals.
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