Sunny

is our cockatiel and we have regular conversations. But no one in the family thinks he is human or even near-human. So I do understand the human foible of anthropomorphizing animals. So a more rational analysis of the relationship between humans and animals is in order:

Humans are unique - get used to it, or get therapy. Do NOT get a chimpanzee:

In "Restating the case for human uniqueness," in Spiked* (Issue 25, June 2009), managing editor Helene Guldberg reviews Not a Chimp: The Hunt to Find the Genes That Make Us Human by Jeremy Taylor (Oxford University Press 2009):

She notes that

Taylor sets out to argue that it is ‘as wrong as it is misguided’ to ‘exaggerate the narrowness of the gap between chimpanzees and ourselves’: ‘It plays into the hands of our natural propensity to anthropomorphise our pets and other animals, and even our inanimate possessions, and it has allowed us to distort what the science is trying to tell us.’

Read the whole thing.

(Via Mindful Hack.)