Now that we're shaking off the old-fashioned idea of human uniqueness, we must be wary of any suggestion that what makes humans human can be explained by a single thing. If that 'thing' feels intuitively right, we must be doubly suspicious. The one conclusion we can safely consider unequivocal in all of our observations of gorillas, orangutans, bonobos, crows, dolphins, monkeys and humans is that our basic intuitions in this matter are not just bad, they are wrong. A follow-up on some of the experiments from The First Word in this week's New Scientist cover story.
