Humans and Other Animals: A Biological and Ethical Perspective

Abstract

The first thing to be said about our title is that all humans are animals. Our biological kinship with the whole of animated nature, to use an oldfashioned phrase, in one Great Chain of Being should be unequivocally clear. In this connexion should also be included our intimate relationship to the world of inanimate nature, precisely because it is inanimate, for it speaks to us in a voice no less appealing and meaningful than that other, of animate nature. In our Father’s house, we are members of one family, but in its mansions we are guests in common with all its other inhabitants, neither superior nor inferior, but members of an extended family, a kingdom of animate and inanimate nature comprising several millions of variegated species, and sustaining a physical environment the most wonderful and beautiful to behold. As an anatomist, a biological anthropologist, and social biologist, I have learned that we are made of the same essential materials as are all other animals, that ultimately, indeed, we are constructed of the same stuff as is our world, and that our kinship is with the whole of nature, that we are guests upon this earth, and should conduct ourselves accordingly, with sensitivity, thoughtfulness, reverence, enjoyment, and gratitude.