FOREWORD All over the world and for hundreds of thousands of years the ancestors of today's indigenous people lived close to wild animals They passed along cultural traditions of respect for animals as the equals or sometimes the superiors of humans As time passed many humans left their homes in the wild and gathered together in cities and towns Seeing less of wild animals changed our ways of thinking about them We began to believe that humans were better smarter more powerful and more important than the animals around us Look at us we said to one another we have figured out how to farm the land and raise the few animals we like to eat We communicate using language We invent things We live in big cities We build giant buildings We organize our societies Some of us even vote to decide what to do Plus on top of all of that we are fantastic problem solvers we are aware of ourselves as individuals and we feel deep emotions All of those things make us special Scientists agreed They came up with a simple definition of humans that went like this Humans are tool makers Making and using tools sets us apart from the rest of the animal world Things went along that way for a while Then in the middle of the 1900s something big changed A small number of scientists started doing something that scientists hadn't done before They went out into the wild and watched animals And they didn't watch for a few hours or a few days the way tourists and hunters did They watched for many years taking 4
notes and photos and videos so they could remember what they had seen and share their observations with the world And one of their first discoveries changed everything Jane Goodall working in Tanzania saw chimpanzees making and using tools Yikes Our definition of humans was out the window Since then thousands of scientists have observed a huge range of animals in the wild from chimpanzees to whales to bees And others have worked with captive animals or measured animal brain chemistry or analyzed animal DNA to learn even more So here's the upshot It turns out that the respect for animals that is so important in indigenous traditions makes very good sense Most of our ideas about humans as the best smartest deepest feeling creatures ever Wrong or at least mostly There are some things humans do that animals don't So far no other animal has flown to the moon for example But in many other ways animals are astonishingly like humans Animals are so much like us that as I wrote this book I kept thinking that we need a new word one that helps us understand how much we have in common So I made one up and used it as the title I hope once you've read the book you'll agree we're all Humanimal Christopher Lloyd May 2019 5
COMMUNITY Humans live in families and communities of every shape and size We work together too We build buildings raise crops and animals and make decisions together about what needs to be done when We support one another lending our special strengths to help the whole group succeed And we show off what we do best Then when the work is done and sometimes when it isn't we play together Sometimes we play games like football or rugby but we're often just as happy playing tag or rolling down a snowy hill It turns out that none of this makes us very special Scientists working around the world have found animals working in teams farming and building towers complete with climate control Some animals go to great lengths to show off for others And it even looks as if some play for the pure joy of it In the Spring Mexican free tailed bat communities split into groups The adult males create several small all male groups for the season The adult females and their babies stay together in one huge group These nursery groups can be gigantic The biggest in Bracken Cave in Texas has up to 20 million bats The babies keep themselves safely on the cave walls by using their feet and thumbs to cling to the walls and one another 7
