 The defender of a “ties of birth” account could respond in two ways. First, she might deny that species identity and pride were necessary to ground the full moral status of species members. Rather, that status was grounded in similarities among human beings, even radically disabled ones, that arose from their distinctive embodiment and that created a strong sense of fellowship (among those self-conscious enough to feel fellowship) overshadowing even vast differences in mental capacity. These similarities include ways of feeling, communicating, moving, and reacting to and interacting with other members of the species. These affinities are refracted by culture, members of other species share some of them, and not all members of the species—even cognitively normal ones—share all of them. Nevertheless, they may be a distinctive enough ensemble to provide a basis for partiality. Or a defender might argue, as Bernard Williams (2006) does (see  Sec. 5.2),  that species-identity and pride could play a role in human fellowship now obscured by the lack of a suitable comparison class. Although, as Robert Nozick (1974) observed, no contemporary human boasts about having an opposable thumb or speaking a language, our sense of species pride and identity might crystallize in the presence of another advanced species, which would highlight our distinctive shared history and achievements.