Unnatural Selection | Hugh Notman | TEDxCanmore (2016)

Primates are our closest living relatives which biologically means that we share the greatest proportion of genetic material with them. Because of this simple or as some state "arbitrary fact", primates have been given a position of privilege among other animals, as if they were close family.

From a cross species perspective, if we want to understand a trait that we humans have, whether morphological or behavioural, it is useful to look at other species with a similar trait and infer its purpose from there. In this sense, if we think of our hands in the context of us being the only primates on earth, we would think its purpose has to do with, for example, manipulating a touchscreen or driving. Hence, by using the cross species perspective it gives our traits some historical context. This is something that seems banal today, but it pre-Darwinian times this teleological approach was perfectly acceptable; this idea that we could define God's design of something through its function. If we apply this to a biological perspective, like Barbara Smuts did regarding sexual coercion in non-human primates, we have to be very careful of this “biological determinism” as it explains behaviour as something ingrained in our biology.

Besides, there is a tendency to think that all animals at a fase trhough which human evolution has succesfully passed, are retarded in their progress. This concept of progress in evolution is constantly reinforced by classical images of how humans emerged from a fish that evolved into other intermediate forms till it became a Homo sapiens. This gives the impression that life is going through these stages and that human evolution is a series of failed successions of different animals. Thus, we have to keep in mind that there is no implied principle of progress in biological evolution.

Nowadays, there is a tendency to think that our brain should be getting larger and smarter. However this simply is not happening due to one of the main constraints for the expansión of the brain: the size of the female birth canal. In the same way, there is also the misconception that humans have reached the peak point of evolution and that culture has buffered as from natural selection. This is simply not true because evolution is differential reproduction in different populations of a species, and that is exactly what is happening in today´s society.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWRTH4gJ5Jw