acemeiosangue:

metapianycist:

acemeiosangue:

ineffablyaro:

Random person: You do know that romantic and sexual attractions are what make us fundamentally human-

Aros, turning to Aces: Gods?

Aces, nodding: Gods

Things that makes us human:

– THE highest Endurance on the Animal Kingdom

– Being able to throw things

– High tolerance to a lot of natural poisons (Caffeine anyone, like we legit are the only known species that not only survives but THRIVES on caffeine)

– cultural diversity and different ways of personal expression through art (evolutionary byproducts of both our prospect to voice/environment mimicry and advanced pattern recognition adapted to long-distance pursuit predation)

– Being able to walk, run, swim AND climb

– A desire to learn AND teach, and a high flexibility of roles within the packs such as different arrangements, social roles, genders etc. (though those might actually be present in all pack species to at least some degree)

– General stubborness, or the ability to shutdown our own instincts to keep on the hunt

– Generally being the best long-distance pursuit pack predator there is

Things that DOESN’T make us necessarily human:

– Being highly social (all pack species are, herd species tend to be as well, eusocial species are so by default)

– Mating desire or imprinting on mates/possible mates (aka. sexual and romantic attraction)

i didn’t expect this epic evolutionary biology nerding but I absolutely love it as a takedown of “[attraction that most people report experiencing] makes us human”

i would love it if you had any further info dumping about human evolution in terms of how some people in evopsych seem to oversimplify partner relationships as mating instinct (“misdirected” mating instinct if you’re not cis and heterosexual). there’s a social complexity to relationships and it’s so dismissive for people to write that love is just oxytocin and that partner relationships are just socially accepted outlets for mating instinct.

i hate when people say “we’re just animals” because they mean it as “love has no deeper meaning than chemicals” and not as like, “many nonhumans form deep emotional attachments to each other and this is extremely cool”

Ahjajakakaja You’re right. To be honest, I wasn’t sure about “imprinting on mates” being the right expression for romantic attraction akjakanakanana I thought about putting “imprinting on packmates/packbonding” instead, but that’s like, platonic attraction I guess

(Also the “being able to walk, run, swim, AND climb” bit ignores disabled people I guess? I meant it as we’re the only species with the potential to do all of these (most species can do only 2 of those at maximum, or fly lol’). I think I should’ve said something about a broken limb or smth not stopping US too, while other animal like a horse having a broken limb means immediate death,, but still some other animals like lizards and starfish fare better than us on this aspect akajakajjaja I should’ve put this on parentesis)