DailyKos blogger Devilstower has a pretty good write up of the chimp thing. He seems to agree that whatever it is that we think defines us as different from them* is not as clear as most people would like it to be.
*I'm inclined to think we're the only species capable of communicating abstract thoughts. We can imagine places infinitely far away, the beginning of time, etc., and actually communicate it to each other. On the other hand, I don't see why the right to life, or the right to live with some modicum of dignity, really stems from that.
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I question the notion that we can imagine places "infinitely far away." I'm a mathematician (or mathematician-in-training, depending on your definitions), so a member of one of the few classes of individual trained to deal specifically with abstraction. I have a very well-developed language for dealing with quantities infinite, trans-finite, and just very large. But I think the notion that I know what infinity "means" is highly questionable. Indeed, I'm not even sure I can explain to you what even some large numbers "mean." Take a small large number, like, say, 10^100. That's small enough that I could actually write it down for you on a piece of paper. But what it represents, as a quantity, say? It's larger than the number of atoms in the universe times the number of seconds since the Big Bang.
On the other hand, the ability to communicate abstract ideas does seem relatively unique -- chimpanzees have a concept of fairness, for sure, and they get upset when it is violated, but as far as we know they don't have any way to articulate it to one another. (Stabbing the offender with a sharpened stick doesn't count.)
Well, you just said "the Big Bang" which in sense was infinitely far away, and the beginning of time. Not that we can know exactly what it was, but I don't think its clear that any other species could communicate that.
And they are actually hunting smaller primates with the spears, not each other.
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