What it means to be human - Part III

In prior posts I've suggested on a number of occasions that humans, as a species, are substantially different in our origins and development than other species such as horses or dogs. I referred to humans as a hybrid species. I think that statement requires definition and clarification.

There are a number of aspects to how the term hybrid is used. The first listed definition in Webster's is the breeding of a male of one species or genus with the female of another species; a cross-bred animal or plant. Usually, however, the term cross-bred is reserved for the crossing of varieties of the same species while hybrid is used to define a mating of two different species. That is how I use the term hybrid when talking about human origins - the mating of (at least) two different species. That conclusion slowly grew over a number of decades. Problem is, of course, how do you prove something like that? At the current level of understanding of the human genome, the current state of the science of genetics, I don't think you can prove it through scientific methodology. And yet I am convinced. The question that keeps circulating in my mind is, "Why are humans necessary?"

For every environmental, ecological, niche whether in the sky above, the earth below or the seas beneath, there is some form of creature who inhabits it. Hundreds of thousands of species from the microscopic to the gigantic. And they all are purpose-driven and devised by the environment in which they originated. Designed from the ground up, cell by cell, over millions of years of evolution to fill that niche. Only a few such species can exist outside the original environment, whether it is an amoeba or a Blue Whale. What niche do we fill? What is the environment that we are designed to fill in a purpose-driven and holistic fashion. What is our species' existential gestalt? The specific environment we evolved in, and an environment that defines the boundaries of our continued existence (a tube worm living at the edge of a fumarole at the bottom of the ocean is an extreme example). Clearly, there no longer is one. Perhaps there never was such an environment. Humans are different from every other species in this regard. Drastically so.