What Makes Us Different?

There is no distinct definition of human yet. Usually it is defined through inexplicable terms or through negation. This happens because there are still a lot of doubts concerning this topic and there is no definite answer to the question about the peculiar qualities and characteristics, which distinguish human creatures from all the others. When we think about characteristics which distinguish us from animals intelligence is the first thing which comes to our mind. This characteristic doesn’t stand critics if we study the problem deeper. There are retarded people with very low IQ level but they are not less humans than those with high results on IQ tests. From the other side there are animals, like whales, dolphins and chimpanzees, for example, who have high IQ but this doesn’t approach them to humans. There are many other proves, which show that it’s not intelligence, which differentiates us from other creatures. Those, who call environment among the main reasons, which help to form unique human characteristics, are right only partially. It’s a proven fact that environment plays an extremely important role in forming the human identity of the person. Parents and surrounding give children basic knowledge about the world and models of behavior. But from the other side, the series of experiments when different animals were grown up in the same environment as humans show that these conditions were not enough to make them humans. Till recently scientists claimed that humans had a unique structure of the brain and no other animals possessed it but latest researches proved vice verse. There are animals that have brain even bigger than humans do and there are so many characteristics of human brain, which are alike with the ones of the animals that it’s impossible to consider brain structure to be the main distinguishing feature of humanness. Memory and attention also can not be exceptional human characteristics as they are peculiar to many kinds of animals. Behavior and even social behavior also isn’t the prerogative of the men only.