Humans: We're Really Weird!

A conversation which I had with my father today inspired me to think about just how weird humans are.

The conversation was about the respective ecological niches of mice and rats. I won't go into the details, suffice to say that we concluded that rats and mice both follow very specific, quite different patterns of nesting and feeding.

The weird thing is that humans don't. Whereas every other animal I know of is programmed to behave in specific ways, humans are, as far as I can tell, not.

Okay, I lied. I am going to go into a bit of detail on our conversation. My father was explaining to me that whereas mice nest in one spot and travel within a short radius of their nest, nibbling on food here and there (but not bringing any back to the nest), rats travel relatively far from their nest, and bring food (and other random crap) back to the nest.

Humans, as a species, don't seem to follow patterns like that. Some of us are hoarders, like rats. Some of us "nest" in one spot, and refuse to move; whereas others are nomadic, and can't live in the same place for more than a few years or they'll go crazy. Some of us are violent and confrontational, some are peaceful and terrified of conflict. You get the picture.

The only circumstances that I know of in which other animals show so much variety in behavior is during speciation events. A speciation event is an event in which one species splits into multiple different species. These events typically occur during times of extreme population growth or shrinkage, especially when a population moves into a new environment.

When the population expansion or contraction occurs, individuals in the species occupy a variety of different ecological niches, and eventually become reproductively isolated and evolve into separate species.

Human population is expanding exponentially. And we're occupying a wide variety of niches, economically as well as ecologically. All it would take for a speciation event to occur, as far as I can tell, is reproductive isolation.

Reproductive isolation in humans has taken place over the history of civilization; it has brought us the different races of humans we see. But, at least according to the opinions of various people I've heard from, this isolation is decreasing as our abilities to travel and communicate become greater.

I see two possible futures for mankind, in this respect:

1. We continue to interbreed with others who are different from us, and patterns begin to emerge between genetics, upbringing, and ecological/economical niches

2. We begin to mate only with those relatively similar to us, and a speciation event occurs.

In my opinion, either of these two possibilities has astounding implications.

Just some food for thought.