When my dad was a kid the family had a dog with more sense than the typical kid his own age.  The little shit liked carrots, a fairly common trait among asian decent canines.  This dog would clean the dirt off around the tops of the carrots until he found one that was a nice size, pull it, fill the hole back in, wipe the dirt off the carrot in the grass, and hide the top when he was done.  The kids were taking the rap for it too.  As if anyone would suspect a dog of covering his tracks so carefully, or checking the size before pulling them up.

As someone cleaning out beaver dams on a fairly regular basis, I can personally attest to the superior construction skills of certain individuals.  Some build loose dams, some build them tight.  I've pulled out dams where the little shits sunk support beams into the banks and wove the sticks together like they were braiding hair.  The beaver that designed those was a fucking genius of a beaver.  I had to cut them out piece by piece, the normal beaver dam is a cinch to remove because beavers aren't designing dams with the intent of making them hard to remove.  They're tough as nails only in one direction, from the back you just yank on the limbs and they practically remove themselves.  The only thing I can think of is that one of the little shits got tired of me undoing their work every day and tried to fix the problem.

By all means though, pretend we're unique.

We atre unique in that the dog and the beaver do nothing to change their behavior: they will keep building dams and pulling up carrots as long as there are reivers and gardens. Humans, on the other hand, adapt rapidly (sometimes within a single generation or less) to changing situations.

We may adapt quickly, but perhaps that just means our destruction all the sooner. 

Humans have evolvedbecause of our ability to lie, (which can also attribute to our ability to manipulate on such a grand scale).

This was, I believe, our tool for survival, where we had no physical defenses against predators.  We did, however, have our ability to lie.  Ironic that it is both the basis of our existance/survival, yet something that we hold as such a negative trait in our society.

Explain this, please. How does the ability to lie protect an animal from predation?

I don't mean lying in just the verbal, "Honey, I'm NOT having an affair," kind of way, (though that could be one way, haha,) but as a general term that covers things such as manipulation of nature, and camouflage.  For example, We can't out-fight a wolf, but we can make it believe that we are something we are not, with the use of banging rocks, and shouting. 

Camouflage, or blending in with nature, in order to lie to the predators senses, such as rolling in mud to hide our scent. 

Manipulating stone to make arrows, and ultimitely manipulating nature in order to create things such as plastic, and steel out of things that were once natural, but cannot co-exist with nature, creating a sort of "false naturality."

And while we are not, by far, the only creatures that do these things, we are, in most cases, better at it, because of our lack of physical defenses.

So much rationalization, so little fact.

Chimps hunt with spears and fashion stone tools for cutting and pounding.  Woodpeckers employ the use of twigs in digging insects out of their bores.  Ravens possess analytical genius.

Delusions of grandeur.

Psychoak, you have rejected all previous claims, and so I ask you: why do you think that humans, a species with no apparent biological advantages (No claws, can't fly, dive deeply or even swim very well, can't run very fast or for along time, and don't even have much fur to keep them warm) have risin to such a high place on the food chain? Why is the world not ruled by other animals?

Samurye.

I didn't say we were the only creatures that did so.  All animals use tools of some sort or another, whether it is part of their body, or something such as a stick.  And I believe that more animals than we realize have analytical skills.  Dolphin's seem to even have names.  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/060508_dolphins.html

Nor did I say humans were better creatures.  In fact, I believe quite the opposite.  You don't see other animals on the path to complete self-destruction, however humans have managed to master that.

Facts are simply things that are currently known.  None of the facts that you stated contradict anything that I have said.

I think that it is our primitive side that is pushing us toward self-destruction: most, if not all animals compete with one anther, but they just don't have the ability to destroy an entire polanet in the crossfire.

Compete yes... try to complete annihilate, not so much. There is no documentation of healthy animals trying to destroy themselves, or their entire species.

First, bacteria rules the earth, not people.  Regardless, no such argument was made.  We have our position in nature because of the combination of our body structure and our brains.  We have a predisposition for the use of both advanced construction and logical thinking, although the second is often in doubt, and lives of sufficient extent to pass the advancements on.  Even with our abilities, it still took humanity thousands of years to come up with the concept of writing.  Ravens and dolphins are scary smart, but niether of them could ever build a fork, let alone a forklift.  They lack opposable thumbs.  The only ones with the potential to match our tool construction are other creatures with opposable thumbs, the only creatures able to match our learning capacity are ones with similar language capabilities and life spans.

Second, animals put themselves on a path to destruction with regularity, predators over hunt their prey and starve en mass, their prey balloon in population with the decreased pressure and in turn starve en mass when their own food source becomes scarce and are again brought to dangerously low levels by the predator whos populations have swelled off the abundant food provided by sick prey.

Third, refutation of specific claims is not itself a claim of perfect equality.  Humans are not the only species able to rapidly adapt to a change in circumstances.  That doesn't even imply that humans don't adapt the fastest, regardless of whether they do or not.  Humans are not the only species to advance technology in order to obtain a goal, nor the only species to employ deception, or solve logical puzzles, or any number of claims of unique behavior among humans.

Teach a few wild chimpanzees ASL and see where they are a century from now.  They employ manipulation, tactical maneuvers, weapon construction, have advanced societal structures, and show curiosity and creativity.  They display everything needed to create an advanced civilization comparable to what humans have, except a language capable of processing it.  Their vocal chords suck, and body language ain't real useful for science.

You keep implying that this argument has been made.  Nowhere did I mention that what we have done is UNIQUE, you're arguing a point that was never made.  I didn't say we were the only ones that lied ("employed deception") or created tools, or had creativity period... simply that it was the basis of our survival. 

Your entire argument, in a nutshell, is that we aren't the only ones to use these techniques, and you can say this over and over, but that isn't the point.  The point is that I believe that humans survived and been able to evolve, because of our ability to lie.

You are not countering this, you are simply stating what I have not argued, that we are not the only creatures that have done this. 

If we are only here because of our capability to lie, than what happens when another specie gains this capability?  Will we compete?  Will we accept? Or will we destroy, out of Instinctive fear?  Also, what of our ability to difference ourselves from other species?  I think a majority of our "dominance" is that humans cannot share an ecosystem with an animal that requires the same resources as it.  Neanderthals, for example, are believed to have been wiped out by Homo Sapiens(humans) because we both needed, and therefore competed for, the same things.  Today, we harvest trees for houses that themselves housed countless animals.  We dam rivers for energy, killing fish in the process.  In fact, we kill that which has, or uses, what we need, and it's nature, and we can never escape it.

Koda0

But we never stop trying to.

Samurye.

Silver, you're arguing with other people over what makes humans unique.  You knew that, right?

Nope, I'm not, actually.  It was mentioned that human's ADAPT quickly, and I made the comment that I believe we evolved because of our ability to lie. 

Now if you would like me to argue that...

While human's aren't the only creatures that deceive, we are the only ones that have mastered it so completely that we can not only lie to other mammels, and even others of our own species, but to ourselves as well. 

If this weren't so, the delusional state you mentioned before wouldn't be possible.

Not to mention "self-denial," or the ability to create fictional stories.  

Good point, but who is to say that we would be the creatures that wouldn't be wiped out?  If human's are evolving, the next stage would likely wipe us out, as, logically speaking, they would probably be even more advanced.

Humans dont need to evolve we have technology. Why adapt to the cold when you can have heaters? the case could be made that this may lead to our demise but our ability to use technollogy and understand how we can apply it gives us our advantage in the world. Other animals dont have higher brain functions, they lack the brain structures for them So we know this. As man evolved that area of the brain grew and it gave us the ability to create. Not just tools but art, language, poetry, music, and stories. Last i checked animals had none of these.

Animals don't have these by HUMAN standards, but they certainly have versions of it for themselves.  A bird sings, not just out of mating, or communication, but for joy.  I believe all animals have a type of language, different barks, different caws, and for some mammels, like dolphins, perhaps more. 

Poetry and stories, I agree with, animals probably don't have those.

As for your other point, our technology is proof that we have evolved.  We may no longer be evolving physically, merely adapting, but this isn't neccesarily true of our brains, or even, more abstractly, our minds.

yes our brains are certainly improving. Research shows that the nest generation almost always has a higher IQ than the previous one. And yes while animal have a way to comunicate they dont have language which is a much more advance form of comunication.

It's not so much we are trying to destroy ourselves but rather those we identify as our enemies/competitors. This behavior has actually been documented among animals such as pack animals and chimps.

"The foreign policy aim of ants can be summed up as follows: restless aggression, territorial conquest, and genocidal annihilation of neighboring colonies whenever possible. If ants had nuclear weapons, they would probably end the world in a week." --Journey to the Ants, page 59. Bert Holldobler & Edward O. Wilson

"Lots of people think only humans fight wars. That only humans are murderous. Let me tell you something — compared to ants, human beings are full of nothing but peace, love, and understanding."-

Ants aren't animals...?  Insects often commit acts of suicide, and murder.  For instance, females eating males after mating.

Bseides, how would you feel, being only a bit bigger than a speck of dust.  You would have a "tiny" complex too.   (And yes, I know that there are ants that get much, much, much bigger than a speck of dust.)

This would be a type of adaptation to its environment.  The plant was probably never originally immune to the Ant's poison and so it adapted to its environment to survive the poison.  The other plants have yet to do so.