Today, the belief that human beings are special is distinctly out of fashion. Almost every day we are presented with new revelations about how animals are so much more like us than we ever imagined. The argument is at its most powerful when it comes to our closest living relatives – the great apes. This book argues that whatever first impressions might tell us, apes are really not ‘just like us’. Science has provided strong evidence that the boundaries between us and other
species are vast.
Unless we hold on to the belief in our exceptional abilities we will never be able to envision or build a better future – in which case, we might as well be monkeys.
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‘Helene Guldberg has done us all a favour in this lucid account of the many failings and false premises of the protracted research programme to demonstrate the intellectual continuity between ourselves and our primate cousins’.
James Le Fanu, author of Why Us?: How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves
‘an eloquent and well argued case’
Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist
‘An essential antidote to our narcissistic over-identification with our fellow apes’.
Jeremy Taylor, author of Not a Chimp
‘a sparkling, erudite polemic’.
Tim Black, spiked
‘Guldberg’s book is a much needed restatement of our humanity; why we’re something more than ‘just another ape’.
Robin Walsh, Culture Wars