tried googling it but I only got the idiom and not an actual answer

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 5 points 1 day ago (1 child)

My theory: Its that way because humans tend(ed) to describe themselves as special "players" for a long time till this day and beyond. Probably the concept of religion, philosophy and some sciences are also in part responsible for this. When referring to nature, life or species in daily conversations it seems to be rather common for humans to mention humans isolated from the fauna (and flora (and fungus)).

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 3 points 13 hours ago

    it's impossible to test until we find another sapient species (and not something like highly evolved crows in the future, because they would be affected by us), but i think it's likely that any sapient creature would group "sapients" and "non-sapients" separately.

    Like we intuitively group other human species as "not animals" with that line getting blurrier the further back you go and they're less obviously sapient, and at least personally i find it a little bit difficult to call parrots animals when they can literally learn to vocally describe a random object they've never seen before.

  • source
  • parent