Maybe it’s because humans are better at dealing with absolutes than matters of degree? It’s true, tool use is a special property of humans. It’s not unique but

Maybe it’s because humans are better at dealing with absolutes than matters of degree? It’s true, tool use is a special property of humans. It’s not unique but it is special. Animals don’t commonly use tools, certainly not with the sophistication of humans. Tool use is one of those things that makes us different – combined with all the other things that make us different. If you were to write a list of human properties you would definitely include tool use and it would even be pretty high up the list, as opposed to other properties that are much more common and boring (like, for example, live birth). It’s easy to misinterpret what those properties actually mean, to turn them into unique properties. Sure, humans wouldn’t be humans without tool use, but that doesn’t mean that they must be the only ones using tools.