Humans ARE primates.
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2026
168 points (93.3% liked)
Showerthoughts
42538 readers
746 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
That's the exact point OP is making. Humans do primate things because they're primates.
Yes but OP is right, primates pre-date us so anything we do similarly, they did it first and we copied them.
We didn’t copy, we are an extended branch of their abilities.
Which primates? Chimpanzees? They evolved from earlier primates too.
I have no thoughts on the matter, but here's a couple monkeys I saw this morning.
They saw what you did and are very disappointed in you.
When I stopped my bike to look at the monkeys, the front wheel slipped on some wet leaves and caught the bike while accidentally revving the engine and hitting my balls on the fuel tank. The monkeys saw it all.
As I was running my fingers through my hair, I was struck with I'm just a monkey with delusions of not monkiness.
^this
The other catarrhine monkeys don't have umbrellas, though, so we're clearly superior.
I also like our use of electricity and air conditioning!
The human monkey is easy to spot from its belief that it is not a monkey nor even an animal.
Ahh.. but humans are primates?
So wouldn't that make both true? Other primates would display human like qualities, while the inverse of 'humans do primate things' also holds true?
I can see what OP is getting at but it's really an argument around semantics, and sentence structure.
For example, we don't say "Some fruits are similar to Apples", because it sounds daft and it's redundant.
On the other hand saying "Pears are similar to Apples" is of course fine, and helpful to someone who's never seen a Pear.
Like most shower thoughts, they're pointing out something obvious, but in an emotive way. "Primates aren't like us, we are like them!"
In terms of biology, specifically botany, we do say some fruits are similar to apples. This comparison seems like a biological one too.
It's important to combat anthropocentric bias. Primates came first we're actually the newest ones, so if we share behaviors, they did it first and we copied them.
Humans are in the set of primates, but not all primates are human.
Still, your showerthought says "a subset of primates are doing primate things".
Well humans are the newest primates so anything we do similar to other primates, they did it first and it's us who copied them.
No we're not.
Heck, chimpanzees and bobobos only branched from each other like a million years ago.
Modern day non-humaj primates evolved from common ancestors, just like us.
Exactly — 'Like' is a comparison and doesn't imply belonging to a set. Someone can be 'like a piece of shit' without belonging to a greater class of shits
All primates doing primate things is exactly what you'd expect primates to do
Feels like a weird unnecessary distinction between Humans and other Great Apes like them.
But there certainly are activities unique to humans such as filing taxes.
In Prometheus Rising it is described that instead of dabbing poop at the edges of our territories, we just dab ink on borders.
No, we absolutely still do dab poop at the edges of our territories.
On a small scale (private property) quite literally, in regions that don't have internal plumbing.
And metaphorically, with countries preferably building landfills and polluting industry in border regions.
Never monkey around with another monkeys monkey. I learned that!