Are we Really Just Mammals?

As I was listening to my friend's iTunes play list today, I heard this opening line to a song by the Bloodhound Gang. "You and me baby ain't nothing but mammals, so let's do it like they do it on the discovery channel."  I found this to be quite disgusting.  Thank you very much Mr. Bloodhound Gang, but I think I am a little more than any old mammal. 

Let's review what these differences are, shall we?

1. I can choose my mate based on intellect and personal connection, rather than simply how well he is built.

2. I also have a set of morals and ideals.  The closest non-humans can get to that is finding a mate who can fulfill the ideal of being an able bodied protector who is able to bring home enough food to feed his mate and offspring.

3. Humans are also known for something commonly known as modesty (however rare that may seem nowadays). Most people like to wear some sort of clothing to cover the private areas of their bodies, whereas animals tend not to exhibit modesty.

Does anyone have other differences to add to the list?

 

Comments

[Sarah]

Would it be too radical to point out that humans have souls and animals do not?

[Emily]

Wow, that's such an old song, but yeah I remember it, didn't like it at all.

Not to contradict the differences you enumerated, but I did think of a corrollary (sp?) to modesty in the animal kingdom- there's a posture known as 'presenting' in the animal world whereby a female signals she is ready to mate. They only do this when they are 'in season'. Female humans are often shown in a 'presenting' posture in advertisments, not because they're in a constant state of sexual readiness but because that's a way to gain attention for the product.
Maybe we could learn something from the animals.

[spudmom]

Humans appreciate beauty. I have yet to see an animal gaze in wonder at a starry night and sigh in awe, or stop eating to gaze at a spectacular sunset or rainbow.
Some humans sacrifice themselves for others (beyond their own children, which does happen in the animal world at times.) Have you ever seen an animal head towards a forest fire in order to lead others to safety?
Some humans know that there is more to life than eating, drinking, being merry, and copulating. Even apes and dolphins make little or no attempt to change their environment to make their own lives better, such as planting seeds or corralling fish.
Some humans plan for the future beyond the next winter. Honeybees are probably the best example of animal planning, for which my peppermint tea is grateful.
Unfortunately, some humans crave power beyond domination of a family group. Others simply act like mammals and give the rest of us a bad name.

[Katie Gillet]

We make decisions, not act on instinct beyond the needs for food, sleep, restrooms, and protecting oneself and one's child(ren) from immediate danger.

[R.B.]

We're capable of controlling our own fertility, so that we can have sex for pleasure and bonding instead of just reproduction. Also, we have an amazing capacity for science and mathematics.

[Sharon Bynum]

Sal-OM everyone, We may be mammals in a scientific categorization. You stated already that one difference is that becoming human has a moral code. (even that varies in levels of consciousness in humans!) To realize that who we are is not our bodies is a sign of the 'awakening of the Spiritual Forces' within. It makes the break between animalist behavior (even in humans) to a consciousness who can choose a higher understanding - God! Only the Human can make this choice! In Arabic there is a term which describes this: "Tabarokolaho Ahsanol Khaleghin" - praise to the Highest in the creation which is man.

Using our choices in life will help each person to evolve to return to that Highest/God. We fell,,,so we have to return.

We choose modesty in many ways in our lives as a way to exercise the use of this awakened Spiritual Force - T0 be more Godly!

Music, writers, tv shows, radio,etc. needs to start to reflect better choices and show some evolvement rather than choosing animalistic behavior. Keep the private life of couples behind the bedroom doors,,,not in public! Society has a responsibility to clean itself up.

So, the addition to your list is the ability to Choose God.

[Richard Gay]

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation...

[Amy]

Or we could take him up on his offer, only have sex when we need to reproduce and not have sex again until the first set of offspring had reached early adolescence? Say... once every 12-16 years? This is probably not what the singer had in mind. :)

[Yael]

Before my wedding, I learned that people are the only ones who "do it" facing each other. This symbolizes that sexual relations are much more than a physical, animalistic act. It is a union of two bodies, which brings about the union of two souls. Pity that society has stripped sex of everything sacred, rendering it nothing more than something you'd see on the Discovery Channel.

[Sam MT]

The song is meant as a joke. Bloodhound Gang songs often make broad outrageous generalizations and assertions. They are tongue-in-cheek. Another song is "I Wish I Was Queer So I Could Get Chicks" and the hook from a third song goes "Life's short and hard like a body-building elf,
So save the planet and kill yourself." None of these are serious! And neither is the "Mammals" song (actually titled The Bad Touch).

[Ken]

Sarah: "Soul" is hard to define, other than "I know it when I see it".

That's why I prefer the term "Transcending the Animal".

In Thomas Cahill's Gifts of the Jews, he leads the reader through a thought-experiment of the world before Torah, a sex ritual on the steps of a Sumerian ziggurat, all the acolytes crowding the lower steps howling like animals in rut. The image of "animals in rut, howling on the steps of the ziggurat" and the realization that Torah is all about Transcending the Animal has never left me. (Incidentally, I'm not Jewish. I'm Catholic.)

Yael: A couple years ago, I advised a writer who was doing a story using anthropomorphic lion characters along the same lines. Went something like this:

"Face to face, in accordance with the Way ... not mounting like four-leggers with the Penetrated crouching in submission before the Penetrator."

(Incidentally, these lion-oids concept of damnation was "going feral", i.e. dropping to four legs and becoming nothing more than the ancestral animal.)

SamMT: "Bad Touch" is a popular over-the-top dance tune at some events I attend. It was also my introduction to "freak dancing": Imagine, if you can, two 300+ lb gay males freak-dancing to "Bad Touch", thrusting like Siamese Twins joined at the genitalia, hands fondling everything above the waist, tongues bathing faces & heads like a cat tongue-bathing on speed. I don't need to imagine. I SAW IT! last year. Not enough alcohol in the world to get that image out of my brain, and all to "Bad Touch".

"I wish I had never heard. I wish I had never seen. 'IA! IA! CTHULHU FTHAGN!'"
-- one of the best lines in the horror flick Dagon (actually a modern-era adaptation of "Shadow Over Innsmouth")

[Lori]

Even if we are just mammals...

I hear prurient men arguing in favor of screwing around as much as possible by saying that they have a biological imperative to spread it around.

B%@^&#*t!

If there is ANY biological imperative, it would be for monogamy--think of the number of, and the impact of, sexually transmitted diseases in humans. Not to say they do not exist in other species, they do, but I think all that matters is that among us they can, at best, lead to sterility, at worst, be a long, slow, torturouse death--and be passed on to the children of the sufferer at birth. HIV/AIDS, HPV, gonorrhea, syphillus, chlamydia, herpes...

And there really is no such thing as "safe" sex--the only safe thing is to be monogamous; not "serially monogamous" but to mate for life. To get married and sex as part of the sanctity of marriage.

(Read Ibsen's "Ghosts" for an idea of the wide-reaching effects syphillus can have. And now, thanks penicillin resistant strains, this is something that we will be seeing once again.)

Mammals? Maybe. But we have the intelligence to know what the outcome of our actions can be. And should also have the intelligence to behave accordingly.