Although elephants are far more distantly related to us than the great apes, they seem to have evolved similar social and cognitive capacities.

Popular culture bombards us with examples of animals being humanized for all sorts of purposes, ranging from education to entertainment to satire to propaganda. Walt Disney, for example, made us forget that Mickey is a mouse, and Donald a duck. George Orwell laid a cover of human societal ills over a population of livestock.

Religions have a strong binding function and a cohesive element. They emphasize the primacy of the community as opposed to the individual, and they also help set one community apart from another that doesn't share their beliefs.

In humans, the family prevents infanticide. Next to language, the core family, consisting of a mother, a father and children, is the greatest difference between us and other primates.

People want to work with somebody who feels shame, who worries about the perceptions of others. Dishonesty is something we don't like in others.

Armies are a purely human invention. Most soldiers who go to war nowadays don't even do it because they're inherently aggressive.

To neglect the common ground with other primates, and to deny the evolutionary roots of human morality, would be like arriving at the top of a tower to declare that the rest of the building is irrelevant, that the precious concept of "tower" ought to be reserved for the summit.