Putting humans first is not natural

The most dangerous myths are those that we do not see. Human exceptionalism – The belief that humans are fundamentally separated and superior to the rest of nature – is one of these myths. It is anchored in religious doctrine, textbooks, political campaigns, advertising and daily language. This vision of the world is not hidden because it is obscure – it is hidden because it is everywheretaken for granted, and rarely appointed or questioned. This is precisely where his power resides. I think that human exceptionalism is the most powerful tacit belief of our time.

But what struck me the most in writing The arrogant monkey It was how much this belief infiltrated science – an institution intended to question our prejudices, and not to strengthen them.

In my field of primatology, for example, we regularly compare the intelligence of captive chimpanzees – from highly restricted and man -made environments – with that of entirely autonomous Western humans. And then we conclude that humans are cognitively higher. But it is not a fair comparison. Imagine testing a high child in isolation and concluding that he has no empathy or desire to cooperate. When we observe our nearest living parents in richer socioecological contexts, we are witnessing a striking prosocial behavior.

When we measure the world with a rule made for humans, other species are inevitably failed.

Or do research on self -awareness. For decades, we have believed that only humans and a few other primates could recognize themselves in mirrors, an alleged reference of self -awareness. But the mirror test is biased towards vision. Dogs experience the world mainly by perfume. They pass a olfactory Test with ease – dispute self -awareness in their dominant sensory modality.

When we measure the world with a rule made for humans, other species are inevitably failed.

However, we persist in treating the human brain as the plan for intelligence and consciousness. We assume that spirits are only special insofar as they resemble our minds; That there is a hierarchy of mind, with us comfortably to the apex. Evolutionary diagrams tend to strengthen this view, representing a careful linear trajectory: bacteria, plants, verses, fish, rats, dogs, monkeys … Until us. Even our taxonomic name –PrimatesSince Primatesmeaning “first row” – transforms the same hypothesis.

It is not only a bad evolutionary thought – it is a deep failure of the imagination. And its consequences are of great range. Human exceptionalism supports the belief that earth exists only for human benefit, reducing other species to simple resources. This state of mind rationalizes exploitation not only other animals and ecosystems, but also other human beings deemed “sub-human”. But when we expose and dispute this myth, we do not only lose our hypotheses – we open the door to better science and deeper relationships with the rest of the living world.

Many people treat human exceptionalism as a natural conclusion. But recent studies in development and intercultural psychology suggest the opposite. Beliefs in human exceptionalism are not an inevitable result of our biology – they rather reflect a cultural vision of the world, widely shaped and codified by dominant Western traditions.

When researchers presented American children and adults with moral dilemmas – such as saving a human or more animals – massively adult humans, even when the compromise involved 100 dogs or pigs. The children did not do it. They have often chosen to save several animals on a human, valuing much more similar human and non -human lives. This model has now been reproduced in several European countries. In such Western contexts, children are also much more likely than adults to judge wrong to harm animals for food, and less likely to ignore information on the minds of animals generally considered to be food.

These results suggest that anthropocentric moral frameworks commonly held by adults are not the biological defect. They emerge over time thanks to cultural learning, in particular as children are becoming more and more exposed to the way other life forms are used and appreciated in our society.

Children have often chosen to save several animals on a human.

Research through human cultures also reveals that human exceptionalism is far from being a universal vision. Many Aboriginal and non -Western knowledge systems reject these natural hierarchies. They recognize other animals, plants, rivers, forests and mountains as parents: sensitive beings and agents anchored in a shared moral and ecological world. Far from being immature or naive, they are sophisticated cosmologies based on millennia of observation, relationship and reciprocity with the living world. In these executives, the idea that humans are separated or higher simply does not hold.

Writing The arrogant monkey introduced me to various alternative cosmologies and traditions which reject the ideology of human exceptionalism. These visions of the world do not simply criticize ideology – they model lifestyles in a greater balance with the rest of the natural world (as a single example, studies reveal that land managed by Aboriginal people often have equal or higher biodiversity than formally protected areas). Meeting these alternative relationships revealed the narrowness of my own education and my education. And that made me aware of cultural and historical forces – in particular colonialism and capitalism – which helped globalize the myth of human exceptionalism under the cover of progress and science.

If we consider ourselves separated from nature, we treat the land not as a community to which we belong, but as a set of resources to extract, manage or “repair”. Recognition has changed my way of thinking about the ecological crisis. It is easy to blame global warming on fossil fuels, industrial excess or political inaction. But we don’t just need to reform these institutions – we need a new relationship With the living world and a different story on which we are in progress.

Some people maintain today that humans are the most evolving “successful” species. Success, in this point of view, is measured by ecological domination – our ability to spread around the world while manipulating and controlling our environments. But in reality, the most resilient ecosystems – and the most durable lifestyles – are not built on domination, but on interdependence. What if cooperation was the faculty by which the evolutionary “success” was measured and reached? In ecology, cooperation and mutualism are just as widespread and essential to life as competition and predation. However, recent research shows that more than two -thirds of the journal publications Ecology Study “competition”, while less than 2% study “cooperation”. We have built our scientific models around struggle and individualism, even if life on earth is maintained by relationships and co-evolution.

The Covid-19 pandemic exposed the dangers of this world vision. He probably emerged, in part, due to human encroachment in wild habitats. And yet, media stories celebrated human ingenuity in the development of vaccines while ignoring the systemic exploitation which has made the trigger possible. Militarized language – “war” or “battle” against the virus – changed nature as the enemy to be conquered and destroyed again. Similar reflection surfaces in climatic discussions, where technofixs such as solar geo-engineering or the colonization of March promise salvation by additional domination.

These fixes are based on the same logic of control: that we can exceed the limits of the planet instead of learning to live in them. They assure us that humanity will prevail after all, but they echo the very state of mind that brought us by the edge! We are not above nature – we are expressions. Our bodies, our spirits and our cultures have evolved in a deep tangle with the earth over millions of years. To imagine as exempt from ecological constraints is not foresight; It is an illusion. This does not mean that technical innovations have no role in the fight against climate change. But I think that some of them are better understood as new forms – and undoubtedly more powerful – of human exceptionalism.

We often confuse domination with success, mastery with a real understanding. But real insight comes from humility – considering what we do not know, listening to other (including other species) and recognizing the limits of our conventional frameworks. Writing The arrogant monkey was humiliating in the best direction. It taught me that we can see clearly – not as leaders, but as participants in a larger network – is one of the most urgent scientific and moral challenges of our time.

Image of lead: captures_by_ap / shutterstock

• Christine Webb

  Published on September 3, 2025

  Christine Webb is a deputy professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University, where she is part of the animal study program. It is a primaryist largely trained with expertise in social behavior, cognition and emotion. She works with non -human primates in various contexts and collaborates with researchers from the social sciences and human sciences to reinvent the role of science in increasing charge to grant moral status to other animals. His work was covered by popular points of sale, in particular The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographicand the BBC.