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Frequently asked questions (see also: the FAQ)

The lead image has been a highly controversial issue.)

To view the response to a question, click the [show] link to the right of the question.

Q1: Why does the Human article use the third person? Aren't we humans?

A1: The third person ("Humans are..." or "They are..." as opposed to "We are...") is simply the conventional mode of writing for Wikipedia and other reference works. We realize this may cause some phrases in Human to sound quite strange — "a majority of humans professes some variety of religious or spiritual belief" sounds almost like it was written by space aliens. However, the occasional strangeness this approach may lead to is still preferable to the alternative of inconsistency.

If we were to use "we" in the Human article, it would mean sometimes switching strangely between persons as we narrow our topic of discussion. For example, even if an editor were female, she would be forced to write things like "We humans, and especially those females...." Whenever a subgroup of humanity became the article's focus, we would need to switch to the third person; a sentence about humans would use "we", but a sentence about adults, Asians, engineers, or heterosexuals would need to use "they". It is far simpler to just consistently use the third person in all contexts, even if this doesn't always seem completely natural.

A related issue is the fact that, as a general rule, Wikipedia prefers to avoid self-references. In addition to being human, all editors on this site happen to be English speakers — yet we treat our article on the English language the same way we treat every other language article, in order to avoid bias and inconsistency. Likewise, we treat Wikipedia the same as other websites and reference tools. Analogously, we ought to aspire to treat Human in much the same way that we treat every other species article. Ideally, we should make exceptions of Human only where objective, verifiable facts demand that we make exceptions (e.g., in employing a lengthy behavior section^{[broken anchor]}). This is the simplest and easiest way to avoid bias and to prevent editorial disputes: When in doubt, follow the rest of Wikipedia's lead.

Q2: Aren't humans supposed to be purely herbivorous/frugivorous despite our modern omnivorous habits? Aren't we jungle apes albeit highly intelligent and largely furless jungle apes? Most jungle apes eat no meat or very little.

A2: No, we really are natural omnivores. Contrary to popular belief, we humans did not evolve in jungles. We actually evolved on open grasslands where fruit-bearing trees are nowhere near as plentiful as in the jungle, where most of our surviving close relatives evolved. Evolving in such a place, we would have always (for as long as we've been humans rather than Australopithecines and other even earlier fossilized genera) had to supplement our diet with meat in addition to plant material. We evolved also eating plant-derived foods to be sure; the Savannah (grassland) has some trees with edible fruit although comparatively few and far between, and grain-bearing grasses are far more plentiful there than any tree. (Some evidence suggests that the first bread and beer were made from these tropical grains long before recorded history.) Even so, the grassland being much less fruit-rich than the jungle caused us to evolve as true metabolic omnivores, not pure herbivores/frugivores. See the Archived Debates on this subtopic for source documents.

Q3: How was the lead image chosen?

A3:

The current lead image was added on 15 September 2009 following this discussion and given this explanation. In short, an editor looked at commons:Category:Couples and picked one. Due to alphabetical sorting, this one came up early (the filename starts with "A"), so they picked it. They were looking for an adult couple standing side-by-side. The use of this image has been discussed many times over the years, including but not limited to: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. The current wording of this FAQ entry was decided following this discussion. See also our policy on photo galleries of people.

Q4: How should the infobox image best represent humanity?

A4: The lead image should illustrate important features of the subject — in the case of Human, these include an upright bipedal gait, hands specialized for manipulating tools, and use of cultural products such as clothing.

Lead images can attempt to encapsulate the broad strokes of the diversity and variation in its subject (e.g. Frog, Primate). The current consensus is that attempting to do further like that for humanity is not practical. There is a guideline MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES that exists due to issues on this topic in the past, stating that we may not assemble a gallery of many images into the infobox.

And regardless of MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES, by picking just one image, we leave space for showing important details of that image which would be obscured if we shrank it in order to fit multiple photos in. Sometimes, what a collage gains in diversity, it loses in detail and clarity. In this case, the current consensus is that the topic covered at Human is best served with a single image — a collage of faces, for example, would fail to illustrate the human body.

Q5: Shouldn't the lead image show more major groups of humans?

A5: There is no good way to decide which groups of humans are the "major" ones. The consensus is that showing more groupings (such as along ethnic lines) is contentious due to the risk of unverifiable species-wide generalizations. As a middle ground, we currently just show examples of a male and a female human to represent sexual dimorphism in humans. While many Wikipedia articles on diverse subject matter (e.g. Spider, Bird) do attempt to encapsulate that variety through galleries and selections of images, we are prohibited from doing so on this article per MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES even if we wanted to. Other articles on diverse subject matter sometimes similarly have few examples, or even one example, rather than a collage in their infobox (e.g. Whale).

Q6: The current image is blurry/low-resolution/JPG-artifacted. Shouldn't it be replaced?

A6: The current consensus is that this isn't that big a deal. When viewed as normal at thumbnail size at a glance, you can't really tell.

Q7: The current image shows two people, not one. Doesn't that violate MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES to begin with?

A7: The current consensus is that group photos probably do not violate MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES. That guideline is based on an RfC, and is to be interpreted narrowly. It specifically only prohibits galleries or photomontages to illustrate ethnic groups or other similarly large human populations. The consensus on this page is that a group photo does not count. Past discussion of this can be found here.

Q8: Could the lead image be a different photo? Perhaps a group photo with more than two people in it? Or a photo of an individual?

A8: There is nothing prohibiting that, it is just not the current consensus to do that on this page. It would likely take a large discussion and very strong arguments for why the alternate image is an improvement.

Q9: Other ethnic groups have lead images such as a flag or map (e.g. of population density). Could that be the lead image (instead of any image(s) of humans)?

A9: There is nothing prohibiting that, it is just not the current consensus to do that on this page. There already is a population density map at the bottom of the infobox.

Q10: Why isn't the lead image more abstract or symbolic?

A10: Because any attempt to symbolically or nonliterally depict humans will subtly express an editorial opinion about what the "essence" or "nature" of humanity is. Even if we pick a famous artist's work to put at the top of Human, the fact that we chose that particular work, and not another, will show that we endorse certain non-encyclopedic points of view about humanity. The only real way to avoid this pitfall is to not pick an image that is even remotely symbolic or nonliteral — a completely literal, straightforward photograph simply depicting a human, with no more "deep meaning" than our lead image for Brown bear has, is the most neutral option available.

It is also worth noting that most abstract depictions of humanity remove a great deal of visual information. Wikipedia's purpose is educational, and our readers include non-native English speakers, young children, neurodivergent people, and other readers who will be best served by a clear, unambiguous, and factually rich depiction of the topic at hand.

Imaginative works also tend to be much more subjective and idiosyncratic than photographs, reflecting the creator's state of mind as much as the subject matter itself. The purpose of an article's lead image is to accurately depict the article's subject matter, which in this case means accurately depicting a human.

The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When editing this article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve it, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, use the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information.

All Wikipedia contributors are personally connected to the subject of this article. Relevant policies and guidelines may include conflict of interest and neutral point of view.

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This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (center, color, defense, realize, traveled) and some terms may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Human is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.

Human has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
September 13, 2005	Peer review	Reviewed
November 1, 2005	Featured article candidate	Promoted
February 13, 2006	Featured article review	Demoted
November 14, 2006	Good article nominee	Listed
January 1, 2008	Good article reassessment	Delisted
February 1, 2020	Good article nominee	Not listed
July 25, 2021	Good article nominee	Listed
Current status: Former featured article, current good article

Anthropology Top‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Anthropology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Anthropology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AnthropologyWikipedia:WikiProject AnthropologyTemplate:WikiProject AnthropologyAnthropology
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale.

Primates Top‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Primates, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Primates on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PrimatesWikipedia:WikiProject PrimatesTemplate:WikiProject PrimatesPrimate
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Anatomy: Meta High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Anatomy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Anatomy on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AnatomyWikipedia:WikiProject AnatomyTemplate:WikiProject AnatomyAnatomy
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article has been classified as relating to The field of anatomy.

Animals Top‑importance

Human is within the scope of WikiProject Animals, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to animals and zoology. For more information, visit the project page.AnimalsWikipedia:WikiProject AnimalsTemplate:WikiProject Animalsanimal

Top

This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Animals To-do:

Here are some Open Tasks :

Copyedit:
Merge: GLAM/ARKive donated texts into articles about endangered species.
Improve: Photoperiodism, Tool use by non-human animals, Omnivore, Animal suicide, Sphaerium beckmani (a species in family Sphaeriidae),
Requests:
- Mammals:
- Invertebrates: Campocraspedon
- Fishes: Zaniolepis frenata
Merge: GLAM/ARKive donated texts into articles about endangered species.
Expand: Junqueira cow, Atka mackerel
Nominate and vote: Science collaboration of the month, Article Improvement Drive, WikiProject Animals Collaboration

Mammals Top‑importance

	Mammals portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Mammals, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of mammal-related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MammalsWikipedia:WikiProject MammalsTemplate:WikiProject Mammalsmammal
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Transhumanism Top‑importance

Human is part of WikiProject Transhumanism, which aims to organize, expand, clean up, and guide Transhumanism related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page for more details.TranshumanismWikipedia:WikiProject TranshumanismTemplate:WikiProject TranshumanismTranshumanism

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For more information and how you can help click Show:

If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page for more details.

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Show off a userbox with {{userWPA}} or {{userWPA2}} and attract potential members
Help with articles.
See this month's adopt an article.
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Be consistent

Use a "standard" layout for transhumanism related articles (see: The perfect article, and Featured articles)
Add Transhumanism navigation template on the bottom of all transhumanism articles; (use {{Transhumanism}} or see navigation template)
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Find/cite sources for all positions of an article (see citing sources.
Try to expand stubs, however, some "new" articles may be neologisms, as this is common with positions on theories on life and may be suitable for deletion (see deletion process)
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Tree of Life Top‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Tree of Life, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of taxonomy and the phylogenetic tree of life on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Tree of LifeWikipedia:WikiProject Tree of LifeTemplate:WikiProject Tree of Lifetaxonomic
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Spoken Wikipedia

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of spoken articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Spoken WikipediaWikipedia:WikiProject Spoken WikipediaTemplate:WikiProject Spoken WikipediaSpoken Wikipedia

This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

Ellen Airhart (2018-03-10). "How Wikipedia Portrayed Humanity in a Single Photo". Wired. Retrieved 2018-03-11. ...the editors of the "human" entry on Wikipedia were having such a hard time in 2003. The crowdsourced encyclopedia, in theory, offers a solution to the problem of representation; no single writer has control over the way in which a subject is presented. But still: They had to choose a single image to lead the entry. And whatever photo they went with would inevitably leave out most of the diversity and cultural nuance that makes humanity beautiful and interesting.
James Felton (2025-04-07). "Why Do These Two People Represent All Humans On Wikipedia?". Iflscience. Retrieved 2025-04-07. There were plenty of other problems too, with other editors suggesting that the top image should be of real humans who wear clothes, given the importance and ubiquity of clothing for humanity.

The Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use require that editors disclose their "employer, client, and affiliation" with respect to any paid contribution; see WP:PAID. For advice about reviewing paid contributions, see WP:COIRESPONSE.

Davykamanzi (talk · contribs) has been paid by Upwork user "Goro Goro". (diff)

Text or other creative content from this version of Homo sapiens was copied or moved into Human with this edit on 14:31, January 19, 2017. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

Section sizes

Section size for Human (36 sections)
Section name	Byte count		Prose size (words)
Section name	Header	Total	Header	Total
(Top)	7,361	7,361	586	586
Etymology and definition	4,813	4,813	224	224
Evolution	20,555	20,555	586	586
History	40	31,158	0	1,040
Prehistory	5,678	5,678	120	120
Ancient	10,720	10,720	313	313
Post-classical	5,038	5,038	230	230
Modern	9,682	9,682	377	377
Habitat and population	17,128	17,128	671	671
Biology	15	73,478	0	2,626
Anatomy and physiology	10,238	10,238	412	412
Genetics	10,730	10,730	419	419
Life cycle	16,098	16,098	550	550
Diet	13,448	13,448	433	433
Biological variation	22,949	22,949	812	812
Psychology	6,089	31,176	194	1,302
Sleep and dreaming	3,177	3,177	212	212
Consciousness and thought	7,074	7,074	314	314
Motivation and emotion	8,526	8,526	309	309
Sexuality and love	6,310	6,310	273	273
Culture	6,634	42,861	145	1,492
Language	5,345	5,345	164	164
The arts	11,232	11,232	438	438
Tools and technologies	7,441	7,441	229	229
Religion and spirituality	5,182	5,182	205	205
Science and philosophy	7,027	7,027	311	311
Society	1,655	29,641	118	1,367
Gender	6,245	6,245	228	228
Kinship	3,567	3,567	183	183
Ethnicity	3,622	3,622	156	156
Government and politics	3,778	3,778	177	177
Trade and economics	5,449	5,449	206	206
Conflict	5,325	5,325	299	299
See also	1,294	1,294	0	0
Notes	89	89	0	0
References	698	698	0	0
Total	260,252	260,252	9,894	9,894

Semi-protected edit request on 20 September 2026

Latest comment: 1 month ago4 comments3 people in discussion

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Change requested

Please modify the taxobox of the article to explicitly display the missing sub- and infraorder (respectively, Haplorhini and Simiiformes) in the lineage sidebar.

Rationale for the change

The current default taxobox layout hides these clades. This inadvertently reinforces a widespread, unscientific misconception in vernacular language, namely the cultural belief that Homo sapiens is entirely excluded from the monkey clade (Simiiformes).

From a modern cladistic perspective, humans are cladistically nested within Simiiformes. Displaying sub- and infraorder would provide critical educational clarity. Umbranimus (talk) 11:08, 20 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

Not done: Your rationale is not compelling; should we also display all of the intermediary ranks up to Primates from Homo? I think not. By default, we show intermediary ranks from the article's subject to the next higher primary rank, and then only primary ranks above that. I have, however, made it so that when the user clicks on Hominoidea in the taxobox, the article they go to shows the ranks you are desiring to see. These ranks should have been displayed there, in alignment with our standards. - In solidarity, UtherSRG (talk) 14:41, 20 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi, I don't think it would be useful to display every intermediate rank either, especially since the taxobox already allows ancestral taxa to be displayed. Nor am I disputing the rationale behind the default layout. My point is specifically that, in the particular case of Homo sapiens, explicitly displaying the Simiiformes infraorder would provide useful educational clarity given the widespread misconception that humans are somehow excluded from the monkey clade.

I agree that broadening the exception globally would not be appropriate, since infraorders are generally low-importance taxonomic clutter for most species. My proposal is specifically for a narrowly scoped exception on the H. sapiens page only, so that Simiiformes would be displayed there without changing the default behavior of other primate taxoboxes, if this is technically feasible.

Given the particular educational value of making this relationship explicit on the H. sapiens page, I think such a narrowly scoped exception is warranted. Umbranimus (talk) 16:00, 20 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

Simiiformes is a technical term not many people will be familiar with. So adding it would provide very little educational value. The taxbox already includes Primates, which is a term more widely known and better clarifies the potential misconception you mention. Vpab15 (talk) 10:29, 21 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

No direct mention of "The arts" in the lead?

Latest comment: 29 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Creating and engaging with art is something that sets humans apart from other species, and almost every human engages with it in some way, even if it's just listening to music or watching films. Given that stuff like science, philosophy and religion are all mentioned, I see no reason why the arts/art shouldn't be in the lead as well.

Would appreciate your thoughts. Gauzecard (talk) 11:52, 2 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

I completely agree; this could potentially even be worth mentioning in the first paragraph, after the mention of science and technology. ARoseThorn (talk) 04:34, 5 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. Art is one of the important benchmarks, and in my understanding there is evidence its use extends beyond just the extant homo sapiens members of the human family tree. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 05:50, 5 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Remove info on Human Genome Project &c.

Latest comment: 12 days ago5 comments5 people in discussion

The "Genetics" subsection contains several sentences about specific projects to catalog the human genome:

In 1984, the US government began to plan the Human Genome Project (HGP), which officially started in 1990.^[1] Utilizing the data from the HGP, 92% of the human genome was first sequenced in 2001.^[2] After the HGP was completed in April 2003, the All of Us Research Program in 2022 released its first major dataset, which included nearly 100,000 whole genome sequences. By April 2023, approximately 245,000 genomes had been sequenced.^[3] In 2012, the International HapMap Project had compared the genomes of 1,184 individuals from 11 populations and identified 1.6 million single nucleotide polymorphisms.^[4]

To me, this seems pretty extraneous for an article about humans, but I didn't want to unilaterally remove it without discussion. ARoseThorn (talk) 04:31, 5 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Yep that is far to detailed. No need for all those dates. Can reduce to a sentence or two.

The majority of the human genome was first sequenced in 2001, with complete sequencing accomplished in 2022. It discovered that humans have about 20 000 protein-coding genes, with many different variants.

Aircorn (talk) 09:02, 5 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Yup. All that is needed. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:10, 5 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

I strongly disagree with that we don't have space for one wikilink to the biggest cooperative scientific endeavor in human history. Mausfield (talk) 18:25, 8 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Articles are not merely repositories of interesting links. — An anonymous username, not my real name 16:45, 21 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

References

↑ "NOVA Online | Cracking the Code of Life". www.pbs.org. Retrieved 2026-03-30.
↑ Pennisi E (February 2001). "The human genome". Science. 291 (5507): 1177–1180. doi:10.1126/science.291.5507.1177. PMID 11233420.
↑ "All of Us Research Program | National Institutes of Health (NIH)". allofus.nih.gov. Retrieved 2026-04-09.
↑ Altshuler DM, Gibbs RA, Peltonen L, Altshuler DM, Gibbs RA, Peltonen L, et al. (September 2010). "Integrating common and rare genetic variation in diverse human populations". Nature. 467 (7311): 52–58. Bibcode:2010Natur.467...52T. doi:10.1038/nature09298. PMC 3173859. PMID 20811451.

Inappropriate Image

Latest comment: 9 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

There is a image showing private parts, please delete it. ~2026-56908-39 (talk) 17:58, 24 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

No. Wikipedia is not censored. - In solidarity, UtherSRG (talk) 18:30, 24 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

[1] "NOVA Online | Cracking the Code of Life". www.pbs.org. Retrieved 2026-03-30.

[2] Pennisi E (February 2001). "The human genome". Science. 291 (5507): 1177–1180. doi:10.1126/science.291.5507.1177. PMID 11233420.

[3] "All of Us Research Program | National Institutes of Health (NIH)". allofus.nih.gov. Retrieved 2026-04-09.

[4] Altshuler DM, Gibbs RA, Peltonen L, Altshuler DM, Gibbs RA, Peltonen L, et al. (September 2010). "Integrating common and rare genetic variation in diverse human populations". Nature. 467 (7311): 52–58. Bibcode:2010Natur.467...52T. doi:10.1038/nature09298. PMC 3173859. PMID 20811451.

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