When we use the word 'human' and its variants - humanity, humanitarian, humane, humanize - we almost always imply a quality that we like to think is unique to Homo sapiens: the ability to feel and to empathize.

We look at nature from the outside, seeing ourselves 'above' it, above the purely instinctual (and purely automatic) needs of the (other) animals. When we watch a nature show on television and see a leopard with its teeth clamped to the throat of a struggling antelope we wince and shudder; we empathize with the prey. Yet the leopard doesn't. Its only concern is to provide food for its cubs and nature provides that food in the form of antelope.

We see nature as a machine, cold and well-oiled, a machine with no feeling, red in tooth and claw. It is inhumane. Nature is a nightmare realm of brutal efficiency where dog eats dog and only the fittest survive. We, as humans, do not belong there. We are different. We are special. But are we? And if we are, what makes us unique?

(There is an obvious conflict about where we start. A significant number of people are happy, and doctrinally obliged, to dismiss any theory of evolution out of hand: we have not evolved from apes and anyone who suggests otherwise is just plain wrong and denying God. That is an interesting and valid argument, but for another place. For the purpose of this article I am siding with science insofar as I am taking it as writ that humans ARE walking on some form of evolutionary path.)

If we ARE part of an evolutionary process then the first implication is clear: The qualities and skills that mark us out as being distinctly human must have been present, at least potentially, in our simian ancestors. And we do recognize some of those qualities in our closest relative, the chimpanzee.

Chimpanzees conduct their lives in much the same way humans do: they are individuals with 'personalities'; they are emotional; they are tribal, and aggressive to outsiders; above all, they can plan and adapt. When chimpanzees hunt colobus monkeys in Central Africa they do so in a calculated fashion. The male hunters are able to perform specific tasks in the overall master-plan: some act as scouts and decoys, others as beaters and the rest as pursuers. The hunting group springs an elaborate trap. Only at the climax of the hunt do they come together and act as one.

Yet most of us, in witnessing that final act, would find it hard to discern any evidence of potential humanity. It is a cold and brutal

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