Humans think we’ve built something special, but I’m not so sure. If you show any of our civilizational marvels to animals they just blink at us. We think this is because they’re dumb, but what if they’re right and we’re wrong?
Humans — because we perceive things the same way — take for granted that Shakespeare or pyramids or music are singularly impressive, but we’re obviously biased. It’s not clear that our activities are categorically better than whale song or dung balls or bird calls. That is to say, they don’t transcend the category of ‘something-this-species-is-really-into’ into something ‘higher’, as we claim that they are. We think that Shakespeare is obviously better than anything whales are coming up with, but we don’t know what whales are coming up with. And it’s certainly not obvious to them. The truth is that every species thinks its own stuff is the best. We’re not even unique in that regard.
I’ve seen some bird mating dances (on TV) and they’re very complicated, inventive, and impressive. Then I watch what humans are doing on TV and I can’t say that it’s categorically different. If you listen to our popular music it’s 95% mating calls. As the Bloodhound Gang sang, ‘you and me baby, ain’t nothing but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.’ A lot of what we call classic art…
