20 Weird Things Humans Can Do That Most Other Animals Can’t
Humans Are a Pretty Strange Species
Humans aren't the fastest runners, strongest fighters, or best climbers in the animal kingdom, but we've developed a unique collection of abilities. Some of them are physical, while others come from the unusually powerful way our brains handle language, imagination, cooperation, and planning. A few other animals can perform simpler versions of these behaviors, but humans tend to take them much further. From throwing with remarkable accuracy to getting embarrassed about something that happened years ago, here are 20 things that make us human.
1. Throw Objects With Incredible Accuracy
Plenty of animals can toss or fling things, but humans are exceptionally good at throwing objects quickly and accurately. Our shoulders, flexible waists, long arms, and ability to coordinate movement let us send an object toward a distant target with impressive precision. That talent likely became especially useful when early humans began hunting with spears and similar weapons.
2. Sweat Across Most of Our Bodies
Humans are unusually sweaty compared with most mammals, and that's actually one of our useful physical advantages. We have millions of eccrine sweat glands spread across much of our skin, allowing us to cool ourselves while moving in hot conditions. Many other mammals have to rely more heavily on panting or sweating through limited areas such as their paws.
3. Run Long Distances in the Heat
You probably wouldn't beat a horse in a sprint, but humans are surprisingly capable endurance runners. Our sweating ability, upright posture, long legs, and other adaptations help us shed heat during sustained activity. Under the right conditions, a trained human can keep moving for distances that would overheat many other mammals.
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4. Speak Using Thousands of Different Words
Other animals communicate, sometimes in remarkably complicated ways, but human language operates on another level. We can combine a limited number of sounds into enormous vocabularies and rearrange words to express completely new ideas. You can even describe something that has never existed, and another person can understand what you mean.
5. Talk About Things That Aren't Present
Human conversations don't have to stay focused on what's happening right now. We routinely discuss yesterday, next year, fictional characters, dead relatives, distant planets, and events that might never happen. Some animals appear capable of communicating about things beyond the immediate moment, but humans do it constantly and in extraordinary detail.
6. Read & Write
Writing isn't an instinctive human behavior, which makes our ability to do it even stranger. We train our brains to turn marks on a surface into language, allowing thoughts to survive long after the person who produced them is gone. Other animals can sometimes learn symbols, but no nonhuman species has independently developed a full written language.
7. Invent Detailed Fictional Worlds
Humans don't just imagine simple possibilities. We create entire fictional universes complete with histories, governments, languages, religions, maps, and characters who never existed. Once those imaginary worlds are shared through stories, millions of strangers can discuss them as though they're all looking at the same place.
8. Make Music With Organized Rhythm & Melody
Animals certainly produce beautiful and complicated sounds, but humans deliberately organize sound into musical systems. We create rhythm, melody, harmony, and musical traditions that can be taught from one generation to another. Better yet, we somehow decided that assembling hundreds of people with different instruments and asking them to play together was perfectly reasonable.
9. Dance Together to a Beat
Moving rhythmically to music seems simple until you notice how uncommon it is elsewhere in nature. A handful of animals have shown an ability to synchronize movement with a beat, but humans do it easily and socially. Groups of people can coordinate complicated dances simply by listening to the same rhythm.
10. Blush From Embarrassment
Humans appear to be the only animals known to blush noticeably because they're embarrassed or self-conscious. Blood vessels in the face widen, producing that unmistakable redness that can make an awkward situation feel even more obvious. It's a bodily reaction that often advertises the exact emotion you'd prefer to hide.
11. Cry Emotional Tears
Many animals produce tears to keep their eyes healthy, but humans are unusual because strong emotions can trigger visible crying. Sadness isn't the only cause either, since happiness, frustration, relief, anger, and even laughter can bring tears. Your eyes can essentially announce that your emotional system has become overloaded.
12. Cook Food
Humans have been deliberately using heat to transform food for an extremely long time. Cooking can make many foods easier to chew and digest while also destroying certain harmful microbes. No other species has developed anything comparable to humanity's enormous range of cooking methods, recipes, and culinary traditions.
13. Control Fire
Some animals take advantage of naturally occurring fires, but humans learned to create, maintain, transport, and manipulate fire. That gave our ancestors heat, light, protection, and a reliable way to cook food. Eventually, the same basic ability contributed to everything from metalworking to industrial technology.
14. Teach Complicated Skills Deliberately
Animals learn from one another, but human teaching can become remarkably intentional and detailed. We demonstrate techniques, explain mistakes, answer questions, and design entire systems devoted to passing knowledge along. You don't need to rediscover mathematics, farming, or car repair from scratch because someone else can teach you.
15. Cooperate With Huge Numbers of Strangers
Other animals can cooperate in small packs, but humans can organize enormous societies filled with people who'll never meet. Millions of strangers follow shared laws, exchange money, build infrastructure, and contribute to institutions together.
16. Use Money
A piece of paper, metal disk, or number on a screen has value because humans collectively agree that it does. That shared belief allows strangers to exchange goods and services without needing to barter directly. Other animals trade favors and resources, but they haven't built anything resembling human monetary systems.
17. Create Laws for Imaginary Future Situations
Other animals may use punishment, but none of them have laws for situations that haven't actually happened. We make rules for hypothetical circumstances, write them down, debate their meaning, and create institutions to enforce them. A legal system can therefore govern situations nobody involved has personally experienced.
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18. Preserve Knowledge Across Thousands of Years
Most animal knowledge disappears when the individuals carrying it die, although some species maintain traditions across generations. Humans found ways around that limitation through writing, art, recorded speech, libraries, and now digital storage. You can learn what someone thought thousands of years ago without ever having shared the planet with them.
19. Build Tools That Build Other Tools
Tool use isn't uniquely human, since animals including crows, chimpanzees, and otters use objects to accomplish tasks. Humans, however, routinely manufacture specialized tools whose purpose is to manufacture even more complicated tools. That extra layer helped us progress from shaped stones to factories capable of producing computers and spacecraft.
20. Leave the Planet
For nearly all of life's history, Earth was the only place any known organism could call home. Humans eventually built machines powerful enough to carry people beyond the atmosphere and even onto the Moon. Plenty of animals have incredible abilities, but so far, we're the only species known to deliberately send members of our own kind into space.
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