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babbieabbi t1_je1m16i wrote

It’s called a monotypic genus, and there are a lot of them out there. It’s particularly common in plants, but also happens in animals too. There did used to be other species in the Homo genus, but they’re all extinct now.

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[deleted] t1_je1n1bf wrote

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Brain_Hawk t1_je2dqmd wrote

Perhaps we would be replaced by homo desapiens. When the dumbest humans are the only ones that survive and they make a species of dum dums. Kind of like but not exactly like idiocracy.

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bwc6 t1_je1lcxr wrote

Do you mean apes? We're still great apes. We're just not hairy.

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urzu_seven t1_je2z4hq wrote

The Great Apes represent a family (Hominidae) not a species. Below family is genus and then species (using the modern basic taxonomic system).

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Garbleshift t1_je333m3 wrote

Yes but the question seems deeply confused about this. The person you're responding to almost certainly already knows it.

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monkeynose t1_je1jhgl wrote

We used to, and we wiped them out and/or mated them out of existence.

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PandeiroMan t1_je7pyc7 wrote

There is now evidence that Neanderthals went extinct after a major volcanic eruption from which they couldn't shelter.

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Haven_Stranger t1_je1sct3 wrote

How about the platypus? It's the only living species in its genus, and it's also the only living genus member in its family.

The dugong is at least as lonely. It used to share a family with the Steller's sea cow, before that was hunted into extinction.

The narwhal isn't quite so lonely. It's the only species in it's genus, but it still shares a family with the beluga (which is also the only species in its genus).

In any case, Homo sapiens isn't unique in, er, being unique. It's just a question of how much diversity develops, and then how much of it survives.

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Hawaii-Toast t1_je1rvav wrote

I'd like to add that this question is by far not a purely biological one.

There would be good reasons to categorize both gorillas and chimpanzees under the genus "homo" together with humans since they're genetically very close to us - a claim that has already been made by some biologists. But that also would have a lot of cultural implications: from questions about their legal and moral status and our duties towards them up to potential problems with religious groups who insist on the uniqueness of humans and their special position among all of God's creatures.

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OurUrbanFarm t1_je562if wrote

^ This is the correct answer. If you look at the amount of DNA we share with other primates, like, say, the Bonobo, it is clear humans could be re-classified to more accurately reflect our close genetic ties to them.

But, here is the thing: It is we humans who define the categories into which we group genus/species, etc. And we really love to think of ourselves as extra special. So, the idea of including ourselves with a group of non-human animals goes against the grain of society, no matter how genetically accurate it would be.

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Brain_Hawk t1_je2e2eb wrote

The kind of interesting question and there's been quite a few potentially interesting answers

The fundamental reason that we are the only species of our genus remaining is that we murdered and or interbreed with all the rest of them.

Some of them just couldn't compete. And some of them we basically made friends with enough of them to mix together and kill the rest. Primitive homo sapiens were not a sharing species with our cousins. At least as much as I understand early human anthropology, which is admittedly not well.

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atomfullerene t1_jea9y0u wrote

With humans specifically, a lot of it has to do with dispersal and competitive niche exclusion.

Competitive niche exclusion means that you can't (usually, there are some exceptions) have two species occupying the same biological niche. A niche is a way of making a living...the foods you eat, the places you nest, the times you are active, etc. Other hominids were similar to humans, and modern humans have a very broad niche (we eat a lot of different things, live in a lot of different places, etc).

So it's not surprising that there's no other surviving hominids where humans are...you'd expect us to push them out of their niches. Earlier hominids seem to have narrower niches and so could survive alongside each other in some cases. And often, animal species occupy narrow niches that allow them to avoid competing, for example similar species of fish may specialize in living in different parts of a lake. So you get a lake full of several species of sunfish, for example, where one eats snails on the bottom, another eats bugs in the shoreline plants, and another eats plankton in the middle of the lake.

The other relevant factor is dispersal. Humans are very good at dispersing. Of course, you can fly around the world in a jet today, but even 10000 years ago we had walked or boated almost across the whole planet. And people didn't stop moving once they got to new places, people kept moving around between most of these populations. Most species aren't this good at dispersing, so you get one species here and another similar species there, and you wind up with a bunch of similar species in different parts of the world, originating from isolated populations. People just move around too much for this to happen.

Humans aren't unique, there are other species where there are no other similar animals for various reasons, but this why humans wound up this way.

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ObligatoryOption t1_je1n1me wrote

There is only one of every species, by definition of species. You can have a number of varieties within one species, and Homo sapiens is no exception. We just don't call distinct human groups a "variety" even though there are obvious differences between sub-groups.

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Flimsy_Repeat2532 t1_je3xvo9 wrote

One definition of species is that they can't interbreed with fertile offspring.

But in many cases, they are distinct because they live too far apart.

It seems that lions and tigers can interbreed, but normally live too far apart.

The offspring, ligers and tigrons, depending on which one is the mom and which is the dad. But humans have spread all over the world.

Otherwise, we have carefully defined species such that there is only one of us!

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[deleted] t1_je4oz7x wrote

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erwan t1_je501n7 wrote

They are still the same species, the reason why they are so different from one other (compared to humans for example, who also have different skin colors, hair colors, faces types etc) is that we artificially bred them into those multiple races.

If we were to do the same for humans and specifically breed only redhair people with long limbs, only tall thin black skin people, etc., we could also get to more extreme physical differences between human populations.

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Dillinger0000 t1_je55sfb wrote

There was approximately 15 other Homo type species ranging from Neanderthals to Homo-Erectus etc... we either wiped them out or they came much earlier than us. Homo-sapiens-sapiens (us), were the last to leave Africa and settle around the world. There were numerous others that did this in the hundreds of thousands of years before us, so we either got there and killed them off / outcompeted them or they did that to themselves.

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Antimidation t1_je55ytf wrote

There were at least a few dozen other Homo species. Homo sapiens, considered "modern humans", lived along side 8 other species at one point. They are all extinct now. Part of the reason is because of how well we adapted to a rapidly changing earth in the ice age. What seems like simple accomplishments now were monumental then, making ranged weapons, tighter fitting clothing, and being omnivores helped us dominate. The most famous cousin to us was Homo neanderthalensis, which were specialized in hunting big game. This hunting practice may of made them less adaptive and they had to travel great distances just to eat, which may of lead to their demise.

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chaddict t1_jebi5fv wrote

As many people noted, we either outcompeted, killed off, or interbred with other members of the homo genus. Even if we hadn’t, Homo sapiens travel all I’ve the world every day. We have permanent settlements in all but the harshest environments. If other members of the homo genus had survived, we would have encountered them, and either fought or bred with them. Every other multi-species genus can’t travel the world at the merest whim. Fish, marine mammals, birds, and even butterflies are capable of making tremendous journeys all over the world, but they largely have to follow food sources and/or migratory patterns, which could prevent them from encountering closely-related animals. There is very little choice in where they go.

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[deleted] t1_je48s2a wrote

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LeiTray t1_je4gn4c wrote

I know you didn't just try and say different ethnic and cultural groups of people are different species from one another.

They're not. Every human on Earth alive today is of the same species : Homo sapien.

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