I’m a graduate student in evolutionary biology. Sometimes it’s difficult to have the ‘e’ word in my job title. People who don’t understand evolution don’t understand what it is that we evolutionary biologists do. And misunderstanding evolution is common, particularly when it comes to human evolution. The Pew Research Center estimates that at least a third of Americans think humans and all living things today are the same as they were since the beginning of time. Apparently, we are doing a bad job of disseminating accurate evolutionary biology. That’s why I want to laud Agustín Fuentes for his Boundaries seminar last month where he gave an accessible definition for complex natural facts and theory; evolution encompasses both.
Something I found particularly interesting was Fuentes’ ability to distinguish humans from other animals as “super niche constructors.” His discussion of niche construction as a selected quality that allowed for other modern human traits to evolve is a refreshing idea. One reason I think human evolution can be difficult to understand is that we live in a society that wants to de-animalize humans. We have a tendency to separate humans as being special, as being non-animal, and as being immune from the forces of natural selection. Humans may be special, but humans are still animals and humans have evolved (and continue to). Arguments I have heard in the past on what makes humans “special” have come across as ego-laden or abstract — traits like intelligence and creativity are, in my opinion, human-constructed, human-defined, and very difficult to compare between species. Can we compare the creativity of a bowerbird’s nest to the creativity of a human’s painting? I agree that humans as a species are special, but I prefer Fuentes explanation for why: we are super niche constructors. Finally a definition for special-ness that we can compare between species and one that seems more quantifiable than a trait like intelligence or creativity. We are special but we are special in the same way that other animals are special by having a unique accentuated set of skills or traits. While we super niche construct, the termite super mound builds, the bat super eco-locates, the humpback whale super sings, the food caching bird super remembers, and the lowly thorny devil lizard super drinks water through its skin. I think labeling humans as super niche constructing animals helps us to look at our evolution through a more objective lens, where we can ask why certain traits have emerged over the course of human evolution without subjectively labeling ourselves as a “superior” species isolated from the rest of the animal kingdom, and the evolutionary forces to which they succumb.