a brief excerpt from the next book on my reading list, the tell-tale brain.

a fish knows how to swim the instant it hatches, and off it darts to fend for itself. when a duckling hatches, it can follow its mother over land and across the water within moments. foals, still dripping with amniotic fluid, spend a few minutes buckling around to get the feel of their legs, then join the herd. not so with humans. we come out limp and squalling and utterly dependent on round-the-clock care and supervision. we mature glacially, and do not approach anything resembling adult competence for many, many years. obviously we must gain some very large advantage from this costly, not to mention risky up-front investment, and we do: it's called culture.

.. a specific class of brain cells, called mirror neurons, may have played a pivotal role in our becoming the one and only species that veritably lives and breathes culture. culture consists of massive collections of complex skills and knowledge which are transferred from person to person through two core mediums, language and imitation. we would be nothing without our savant-like ability to imitate others. accurate imitation, i turn may depend on the uniquely human ability to "adopt another's point of view" - both visually and metaphorically... the ability to see the world from another's vantage point is also essential for constructing a mental model of another person's complex thoughts and intentions in order to predict and manipulate his behavior. this capacity, called theory of mind, is unique to humans.

peter wolf crier - hard as nails