Families interfering with their choice of mate, that’s what!

Well, maybe not to that extent, but family ties are life-long, and remain strong enough that family considerations are present by default, especially in Mediterranean and other old societies, ranging from invitations to the ceremony, to having family blessings, and up to having the family as the main channel to find a spouse. When you think about it, that is behavior unheard of throughout the animal kingdom. It is rarer than language and opposing thumbs!!

Throughout my life, I kept listening to different people describing, even boasting, allegedly unique traits and behaviors of human beings. Well, now I can easily say people perpetuating those allegations were seemingly not interested in putting the least effort in checking their claims. To cut a long story short, here’s a selection of realizations I got from the comfort of the couch, with generous assistance of a TV and its remote control:

• Humans are NOT the only species that knows laughter. Whoever says otherwise never watched chimps playing, and has definitely not tripped and fell on their face in front of a chimp. In one obscure corner of my mind, I had also suspected dogs laughed, but it seems this was one of my far-fetched, counter-common-sense-and-science fantasies, but only until recently;
• Humans are NOT the only species to have empires; ants did it first. Common Sense would reply “They’re not real empires since they let us cross their borders without checks; we are supreme!”, but chances are that Uncommon Sense would answer back “Well, we let birds and gazelles and even human tribes cross our borders too, are they supreme to international borders, or simply enjoy mutual indifference?”
• Humans are NOT the only species to levy taxes; go watch some baboons and try to feed the females or the weak before the alpha male accepts. Baboons have stricter tax systems that ensure the strong remains well fed;
• Humans are NOT the only species that feels responsibility. You’ve probably seen that video of a leopard caring for a baby baboon it orphaned after it killed its mother;
• Humans are NOT the only species to use tools and natural phenomena (aka “science”) to its advantage; I’ve seen fish spit water into the air to catch insects, and the amount of birds that rely on gravity to break their lunchbox open (throwing rocks on things or throwing things from high to break them is overwhelming;
• Humans are NOT the only species that understands political favors; big predators such as sharks and crocodiles have little friends who clean them and are treated with the utmost favoritism;
• Humans are NOT the only species that uses blackmail; get a cat to torture yourself with glutton cuteness!
• Humans are NOT the only species that understands military tactics; watch lionesses coordinate a hunt, stalking their preys against the direction of air currents so their scent won’t be detected, correctly encircling their prey taking care to stay out of line of sight until the correct moment, and finally using a psychological factor to ensure all goes as planned! A sudden forceful appearance terrorizing their prey into the now-established ambush.. let the feast begin!
• Humans are NOT the only species that grieves; watch a mother monkey carrying her dead child for days before abandoning it, or a buffalo attacking lion cubs in revenge for supposedly forgotten crime;
• Humans are NOT the only species evolved enough to have honorable dealings with other species; get a dog!
• Humans are NOT the only species to farm or raise cattle; some kinds of ants use damp leaves to farm mold, and others raise sugar-producing insects to secure their local production of sugar (you cant leave that to the chances of interforestial relations, can you??
• And please do not tell me we are the only species that has religion because (1) this is debatable, (2) every species has its own species-wide life philosophy (well except maybe us, that would be a good point to make), and (3) religion is NOT an aspect of all our societies.
• In short, tell me what you think humans are unique in and I’ll tell you something shocking about it, except mayb arrogance and believing in the uniqueness of our species.

Aside from that, I can tell you, the only tangible social proof of our uniqueness remains the interference in our offsprings’ choice of mate, if not explicitly then implicitly.

Prove me wrong in this before I build my whole theory of human specificity on it. So tell me what you think..