Because unlike virtually every other creature on Earth, we human beings do much more with energy than just power our own metabolism. We are a creature of fire. Humanity's exceptional relationship with energy began hundreds of thousands of years ago, with our discovery of fire.
The strongest land animal in the world is the elephant. The typical Asian elephant has 100,000 muscles and tendons arranged along the length of the trunk, enabling it to lift almost 800 pounds. The gorilla, the strongest as well as largest primate on the planet, is at least six times stronger than the average human.
Humans control the planet because they are the only animals that can cooperate both flexibly and in very large numbers. Now, there are other animals, like the social insects - the bees, the ants - that can cooperate in large numbers, but they don't do so flexibly. They're cooperation is very rigid.
As a result, not only have humans become the most dominant species on the planet, but they have also become by far its most intelligent, imaginative, adaptable and resourceful species. This outcome is the result of some very fortuitous events that have happened to humans along their evolutionary pathway.
The traditional explanation of human success was that we aggressively beat off the competition by seizing land, hunting larger predators into extinction and wiping out other hominid competition, including Neanderthals.
We have much bigger brains relative to body size and in absolute size than other mammals, and have a level of intelligence that other animals don't. There are many advantages to intelligence, such as the ability to plan and cooperate, innovate new techniques and share information about what works.
According to the “cultural brain hypothesis,” humans evolved large brains and great intelligence in order to keep up with our complex social groups. We've always been a social species, and we may have developed our intelligence in part to maintain those relationships and function successfully in these environments.
Broadly speaking, evolution simply means the gradual change in the genetics of a population over time. From that standpoint, human beings are constantly evolving and will continue to do so long as we continue to successfully reproduce.
For years, dolphins have been heralded as the smartest animals on Earth, second only to humans—though some would even contest that ranking. Aside from humans, dolphins have the greatest brain-to-body ratio among animal species, including primates.
Some argue that humans began changing the global environment about 50,000 years back, in the Pleistocene epoch, helping along if not outright causing the mass extinctions of megafauna, from mammoths to giant kangaroos, on most continents.
Humans are unique because they have attributes which no other animal has. Some nonhuman animals can certainly use tools and solve complex problems. Yet many human beings can also write scientific papers, compose symphonies or build spacecrafts that go to the moon.
Nature feeling the squeeze
As a result, humans have directly altered at least 70% of Earth's land, mainly for growing plants and keeping animals. These activities necessitate deforestation, the degradation of land, loss of biodiversity and pollution, and they have the biggest impacts on land and freshwater ecosystems.
Plants rule the planet—at least in terms of sheer mass. Many tallies of Earth's life use biodiversity as a measurement and simply count the number of species.
Our results show that chimpanzee muscle exceeds human muscle in maximum dynamic force and power output by ∼1.35 times. This is primarily due to the chimpanzee's higher fast-twitch fiber content, rather than exceptional maximum isometric force or maximum shortening velocities.
It depends on your definition of predator. Lions, gray wolves and great white sharks have one thing in common: They're top predators. Their diets consist almost entirely of meat, and except in rare instances, these animals have no natural predators — except humans.
Koalas have the smallest brains of any known mammals, and their behavior can be compared to someone who is high.
CHIMPANZEES. RECKONED to be the most-intelligent animals on the planet, chimps can manipulate the environment and their surroundings to help themselves and their community. They can work out how to use things as tools to get things done faster, and they have outsmarted people many a time.
Unsurprisingly, chimpanzees are one of the most intelligent animals on this planet—next to humans, of course. Similar to how humans inherit their intelligence from their mother, a chimpanzee's intelligence also greatly relies on their genes.
The model, called Mindy, provides a terrifying glimpse at what people could look like in 800 years if our love of technology continues. According to the company, humans in the year 3000 could have a hunched back, wide neck, clawed hand from texting and a second set of eyelids.
In the next 1,000 years, the amount of languages spoken on the planet are set to seriously diminish, and all that extra heat and UV radiation could see darker skin become an evolutionary advantage. And we're all set to get a whole lot taller and thinner, if we want to survive, that is.
While, as shown with creatures such as hydra and Planarian worms, it is indeed possible for a creature to be biologically immortal, these are animals which are physiologically very different from humans, and it is not known if something comparable will ever be possible for humans.
Several studies corroborate the fact that our ancestors were far stronger than us, and that human strength and fitness has decreased so dramatically in recent years that even the fittest among us wouldn't be able to keep up with the laziest of our ancestors.
By many metrics, the most successful animal species is Homo sapiens: it has conquered the world and can fly around it in a matter of hours; it can live at the polar regions and the equator; plus, it is able to dive the depths of the sea, climb the highest mountains and even go to the moon.
Scientific evidence shows that the physical and behavioral traits shared by all people originated from apelike ancestors and evolved over a period of approximately six million years. One of the earliest defining human traits, bipedalism -- the ability to walk on two legs -- evolved over 4 million years ago.