How humans are like other creatures.

 We are like ants in that our work is sometimes highly regulated. We can tend to let our birth separate us into functional castes from worker to warrior to queen. We fight not only against outside forces, but sometimes against others of our own kind. We make places to live. We are not like ants in that every one of us seems to have some spark of creativity, some drive to break out and do the amazingly different.

We are like wolves in that we like living and relating in little groups, with males and females equally represented. Some male always seems to rise to a position of control and authority, though it seems not as strictly present in humans as in wolves. The females nurse the little ones. The males fight and hunt. Sometimes the biggest and toughest take much more than their share of the food first. Sometimes loners drift off and live essentially alone. We fight not only against outside forces, but sometimes against others of our own kind. We make places to live. We are not like wolves in that we can form groups where there is little hierarchy. We keep to nuclear families more than larger extended packs.

We are like sheep. We are a lot like sheep. We often don’t think much for ourselves. We do what everyone else does. We make noise just to hear ourselves bleat. We are fearful when we get lost away from the herd. We like to play when we’re little, both alone and with others, but we lose that when we get older. We are not like sheep in that they don’t fight much and they don’t make places to live. Some of us rise far about the others and that is not like sheep at all. We eat a far greater variety of foods than sheep.

We are like dolphins in that we are sometimes very bright. We solve spacial problems. We often go out in groups to find mates. We spend much of our time alone getting food. Even when we are near others we are often not interacting, we are working to get food. We are very curious and need stimulation to function properly. We fight against outside forces. So far as I know dolphins don’t fight amongst themselves and don’t make places to live. We eat a far greater variety of foods than dolphins.

We are a lot like eagles. We can soar high and range wide to get food. We do our best work when we go high above and see a great deal of the situation at once. I don’t know if eagles mate for life as some birds do, but we do tend to pair off as eagles do. We prey on other animals for food. We care for our young as if they were all we had, and perhaps they are. We fight not only against outside forces, but sometimes against others of our own kind. We make places to live. Sometimes some of us let out own young die.

We are a lot like butterflies. We go through stages of spiritual life just like butterflies go through stages of natural life. I have known people who went off to school or college and were completely different people because of it. Almost like the difference between a caterpillar and winged stages of butterflies the were so different. So far as I know caterpillars never fight anyone or anything. Butterflies don’t raise their young as we do. They find homes but don’t make them. They don’t seem to think much, or do anything creative as humans do.

We are like unicorns. In some sense we are real only in that we live inside the minds of another. Or maybe not.