Reply #18: I'm not so sure _H. sapiens_is actually really "advanced."

[HereSince1628]

This whole notion of humans _uber alles_ seems pretty bloody stupid to me.

And I'm not sure that humans are really the most advanced species in our own Family tree. Of course, I mean in an evolutionary sense based on morphology. I'm not so sure that we are the most apomorphic of the great apes, and I'm not sure we are the most apomorphic of the Hominidae.

Moreover proposing notions of cross-phyletic "advancement" between disparate groups is mostly pretty friggin stupid. There are a shitload of Coleoptera and Diptera that are extraordinarily specialized, reflecting many many apomorphies and "advanced" evolution. Just because they are insects doesn't mean in any way that they aren't highly evolved.

This crap about humans as the pinnacle of evolution is just species-ist (i.e. interspecies xenophobia).