Humans and Apes: Is it Possible for Chimps to Dominate Humans?

The Planet of the Apes series of movies deals with the assumption that chimpanzees can become superior to humans. However, from a genetic and sociological point of view, this is not possible.

 

Planet of the Apes is based on the 1963 novel by French author Pierre Beaulieu and has been remade numerous times. The fact that a movie and TV series have been made about the same subject for over 50 years is a testament to the timelessness of the subject matter. When the movie first came out, people were shocked by the idea of monkeys ruling the world with a superior thought system to humans. It’s a warning to humans, who have been conditioned to think that they are the warrant of the universe, that no species on Earth has the right to rule over another.
In Tim Burton’s reimagining of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2001), chimpanzees are trained for space exploration. The chimp is a pilot sent in place of humans to explore dangerous territory. Sent to explore a powerful magnetic storm around the ship, the chimp gets caught in the storm and goes missing, and when the protagonist chases after him to rescue him, he gets caught in the magnetic storm and crashes back in time to a planet of apes in the distant future. His companions, who crash-landed on the planet in the past to find him, are wiped out by evolved apes. As we later find out, these evolved apes are descendants of the chimpanzees that humans used to train. This raises a question for the audience. Is it possible that chimpanzees that have been genetically engineered and trained to be highly intelligent could evolve and dominate humans?
I don’t think it’s likely that other animals, including chimpanzees, will evolve to surpass humans. Some might argue that after thousands of years of evolution, as in the movie, chimpanzees could become as advanced as humans. The rationale is that chimpanzees are the closest animals to humans, with primates like chimpanzees, gorillas, and others having more than 95% of the same genes as humans, and more than 98% in the case of chimpanzees. This fact has surprised and intrigued many scientists. This fact has surprised and intrigued many scientists, as a difference of just a few percent is what makes humans and other animals evolve differently. Scientists used to think that the more advanced organisms had more complex genetic structures, but the results of the Genome Project have changed that. Human genes don’t even differ much from those of fruit flies.
However, research shows that genetically, chimpanzees are no more advanced than humans. While some of their genes are 100% identical to ours, many of them are actually less developed than those of rats and monkeys. In other words, chimpanzees are very similar to humans in their overall DNA structure, but not identical. Furthermore, the differences between humans and chimpanzees stem not only from the homology of these genes, but also from the structure and nature of the factors that regulate their function [Hong-Seog Park et al, ‘Comparative analysis of chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes unveils complex evolutionary pathway’, Nature Genetics 38, 158 – 167 (2006)]. Therefore, it is unlikely that chimpanzees and other animals will ever become like humans, even if their DNA structure is similar. If genetic manipulation were to make a chimpanzee almost human-like, it would no longer be a chimpanzee, but a human being.
A study by Gregory Warray and his team at Duke University in the United States supports this argument from a genetic point of view. His team studied a gene that is present in both humans and chimpanzees, which makes a substance called prodynorphin. This is the raw material for endorphins. Endorphins are associated with learning, pain perception, social bonding, and are morphine-like substances. When the researchers examined the chromosomes of 74 humans and 32 chromosomes of seven other primate species, including chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, they found that the genes differed significantly. Humans have between one and four copies of the gene, while primates have only one. Humans also have five mutations in the gene that are not found in other primates, and their ability to make the protein is 20 percent higher. “Changes in this gene must have played an important role in human evolution after humans and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor between 5 and 7 million years ago,” concludes Warray.
Sociologically speaking, chimpanzees can’t be human. Of course, societies exist in the animal kingdom. Even ants and bees distribute roles to form one giant kingdom. But what distinguishes human societies from animal societies is the rich sharing of emotions and a high degree of information exchange between members. This human social ability can be defined as “social intelligence”. It is not just high IQ, but social intelligence, which is much higher than that of other animals, that makes human society what it is today. The fact that humans are endorphin-rich is also evidence that factors of social intelligence such as learning, pain perception, and social bonding are superior to other animals.
American anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Huddy’s research on social intelligence supports this argument. She conducted intelligence tests on a three-year-old child, an adult chimpanzee, and an orangutan. There was no significant difference in most comprehension tests, and chimpanzees even outperformed humans on some memory tests. Only in social intelligence did children outperform chimpanzees and orangutans. Almost all chimpanzees and orangutans have mothers who are solely responsible for childcare, while humans, on average across most cultures, have mothers who do only half of the work with their children, with the rest being shared by family members, relatives, friends, neighbors, and outsiders such as professional educators. To solve this dilemma, babies developed social intelligence by learning to read and adapt to other people’s moods and desires as early as possible. This social intelligence, Huddy concludes, is why human babies are better able to survive.
Thus, humans are social animals, not only because of our genetic differences from other animals, but also because we share our feelings and thoughts with other individuals, which makes us capable of complex thinking and has allowed us to evolve unlike other animals. This social characteristic of humans is known as the “altruistic instinct,” and it is this instinct that has brought us to where we are today. In the end, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever see anything higher than human beings in the line of human civilization, unless we discover life that surpasses us from outer space or robots with artificial intelligence. However, this doesn’t mean that humans are the most superior beings on Earth. In the movie Planet of the Apes, Ted’s father, the monkey general, gives us something to think about when he exclaims, “Humanity will bring destruction, damn you humans!” All living things are in balance with each other, forming an ecosystem. In some ways, humans, the most peculiar species on the planet, are the ones who are upsetting that balance. I believe it is our duty as higher beings to stop thinking that we are the warrant of all things, and to live as a member of the planet by expressing our “altruistic instincts”.