Physiology Revision and Super-Rabbits

OK so it's been a while since I posted. Sorry i've got a big Physiology exam coming up on Monday and I've basically gone into frantic cramming hibernation because I was only at about three of the lectures....and there's a hell of a lot to learn.

One of the things that struck me while I was making out notes on lectures was something in relation to brain formation and function. I'm sure a lot of people believe that what sets us apart from our fellow animals is our ability to feel empathy and emotions, or certainly that our emotions were a lot more developed than an animals. What I found during the lecture was actually that most animals brains are made up mostly of the limbic system (the parts of the brain that control emotion and memory) and not much else. Instead the evolutionary path that was taken with humans was that initially they had the same sort of brain i.e. it was mostly made up of a limbic system, and then we evolved to have a cerebral cortex which allowed us greater intellect and understanding than the animals around us.

I personally found this quite interesting as it suggests that some animals may have as complex emotions as humans do, and they also have the ability to retain and remember these emotions the way humans do.....and can animals therefore experience love? Love is induced by the dopamine reflex, i.e dopamine is released when you're with the object of your affections, causes an addiction blah blah.....surely it's possible that this process happens with animals aswell?

It then made me wonder; What if we're just the first in a line of "super animals"? If we take the point of view that we are basically "Super-apes" i.e apes who developed a cerebral cortex and higher brain functions (A horrible over-simplification, I do apologise), isn't it then possible that other animals could do the same thing. Is it possible that in millions of years time there will be "super-rabbits" or "super-snakes" prowling the earth, because they're experienced a similar gene mutation by pure chance?

Furthermore, what would the social implications of this be? Would there be interspecies war? Would these intellectual animals be used as slaves? Bought and sold like animals because , in the human's eyes, perhaps they see them as animals? Would there be eventual revolt and many social upheavals or would everyone learn to co-exist peacefully? Perhaps the trouble in Israel would go from being Jew vs Muslim to Human vs Supercamel?!?!

And let's be honest....if there's a superlion we're all fucked.

Well this has been a relatively short post cos I need to go to bed to get up early in the morning and do some more work...but if you stuck it through to the end (if you did, I pity you lol) then congratulations.....You've received more insight into the barren wasteland that is my brain.

P.S...Watched Derren Brown earlier that man is a genius...may discuss in next post lol