From Edward Medalis:

Re: Humans not just “big-brained apes,” researcher says (Aug. 22): The title of this article seems to be somewhat contradicted by the content of the article which focuses on brain differences and probable related behavior. Note the following phrases used within the article: “an­i­mal-hu­man si­m­i­lar­i­ties”, animals are “so like us,” “they’re (meaning animals) real­ly quite un­like us” These phrases tend to divorce the human animal from other animals by failing to make it clear that he is talking about the human animal. Considering the human as something other than an animal is common religious thinking.

Why is it “confusing” that human animal brains “have similarities in structure to other mammals”? Do to DNA evolution this sounds quite non confusing to me.

Then their is “most neu­ro­sci­en­tists agreed with Dar­win un­til re­cently”. I think that most neu­ro­sci­en­tists still agree with Dar­win that humans are animals and fit quite comfortably into the clasification of “big brained apes”.

Then, ”hu­man brains” have “unique” “mi­cro­scop­ic fea­tures,” “en­hanced wir­ing,” “con­nec­ti­vity among nerve cells not found in any an­i­mal.” There it is again, words that deny we are animals. What’s his point? Or, perhaps I should ask, whats his real point?

It makes me wonder if psy­chol­o­gist Da­vid Pre­mack has an “Intelligent Design” motive and is simply trying to discredit Darwin and infer that humans are not animals but some product of the supernatural.

One can draw all kinds of inferences from behavior but the buck stops at the DNA when it comes to defining what kind of animal we are from a physical biological perspective. DNA overlaps between species and behavior can vary widely within species and also overlap species.