Hmm... she seems to enter into advocacy at the end based on a scientific misunderstanding.

Her argument is that humans and other animals are categorically indistinct because we're separated from them only by many small gradations of speciation that occurred throughout evolutionary history.

Categories being connected does not mean that the categories cannot be distinguished using meaningful criteria.

First of all, Lalla ward is only reading it, the text is written by Richard Dawkins, so aim your accusations at him.. Secondly what "scientific misunderstanding"? Clearly Dawkins knows as well as anyone that there is a difference between chimps and humans, scientifically speaking, what makes us "different species" is that we cant interbreed. There are ofcourse also many other obvious differences, and there is no problem putting us into different categories. His argument is that since we are actually connected in a unbroken line of breeders, separated only by time, not geography, it makes interesting food for thought.

Imagine if it was like the herring gulls, with chimps and humans living side by side in england, and as you went east, "humans" became more and more chimp-like and the chimps got more and more human-like in the westword direction, where would you draw the line?

Its easier when all the intermediates are dead, that was Dawkins' point.

By the way: Chimps arent our ancestors, we share ancestors, so to get to the chimp from human you would first have to go back to our shared ancestor, and then forward again to the chimp..

I wonder if the Neanderthal may have been the result of a similar 'ring'. A like, but distinct species. Such rings could form, then be broken by some means into two distinctly separate non-breeding groups .. by disaster, extinction, competition and such evolutionary influences. Ultimately one survived (our ancestors), and they did not.

Either that, or they moved too darn slow and couldn't get their asses onto Noah's Ark in time for the big flood. LOL.

I wonder if the Neanderthal may have been the result of a similar 'ring

The Neanderthals are like a shorter "twig" on the evolutionary tree. twigs like Chimps and humans have reached the current top of the tree (the here and now) while the neanderthals was a twig that managed to go it own way, far enough to be called a twig, but not far enough to survive up to this point. In the strictest sense, we individual humans (and all other animals) are all soon-to-be aborted twigs on the tree of life,(atleast the vast,vast majority of us) Theoretically, we could, each and every one of us branch off as a new species.. if you isolate yourself from everyone else and breed only your own genes, (we cant do it as individuals, you need atleast 2 for humans) and keep it in the family the very wrong way, you'll soon branch off as a new species, creating a small twig of your very own.

Real life doesnt work like that, but the lesson is that you only need "islands" to separate and evolution will do the job of divirging the species, this is the tale of the next video in these series, the Giant tortoises Tale:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Richard-Dawkins-The-Giant-Tortoises-Tale

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