Re: Vegan A'piths?

From: richard01 (richardparker01_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 09/08/04 

Date: 8 Sep 2004 12:50:38 -0700

"Bob Keeter" <rkeeter@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<E5t%c.10393$Wv5.7982@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net>...
> Ah, yes, Pauline, you are back!
>
> Couple of issues to consider. While it might be difficult to really pin
> that C4 concentration on meat eating in isolation, there might just be more
> "reasons" to consider the carnivorous route than the vegan route. Think
> about this. . . . if you look at all of the possible sources for the C4 in
> the enamel there are basically very few. The enamel could have been
> extracted from a creature that grazed on grasses like a horse, or ate horses
> (and other grazing animals or possibly even "dryland termites") that ate the
> grasses. I say "dryland termites" because forest termites are what they
> eat, and they just dont have the concentration of C4 vegitation to get the
> C4 concentration to pass on.
>
> Another possibility I will even concede for the sake of discussion is that
> the enamel came from a creature that ate other C4-rich plants (like bull
> rushes and papyrus shoots). You just just cant get that C4 if you make a
> living off of fruits, nuts, berries and other more typical "great ape" food.
>
> Now if you DO look at the apith teeth, do you see the teeth of a grazer?
>
> Do you see the teeth of a creature that could, with its dental machinery,
> actually deal with the tough shoots and rhizomes of sedges?
>
> Considering the gorilla model for a good example of a "vegan" great ape, I
> think that the closest parallel might be Gigantopithicus as far as the
> dental hardware is concerned. But of course, the gorilla would not generally
> have access to a great deal of access to C4 rich food sources even if he did
> have the teeth to deal with it.
>
> Do you see a creature with the necessarily large gut or other digestive
> machinery that would allow consuming and digesting the stalks and rhizomes
> of sedges?
>
> Again, its Gigantopithicus that seems to have the bulk to actually carry
> around the fermentation factory to digest the tough stringy vegitable fiber
> that would come from eating uncooked bullrushes or their rhizomes.
>
> By the way, there is a generally safe experiment that you can do yourself to
> prove this point! Eat a large white potato raw. You will quite likely find
> out the hard way that your body just can not digest that plant material,
> even though with just a little bit of cooking potatoes are staples of many
> modern diets. People, at least very poor and hungry people along the Nile,
> can by the way, and do, eat papyrus and its rhizomes, BUT only after
> cooking. Now unless you want to hypothesize our little apith friends also
> had command of fire for cooking purposes, you have VERY limited sources for
> that C4 that will not trash out a human-like hominid's digestive tract, and
> I know that you dont like the options! 8-)
>
> Its those "peripheral" issues that also have to "fit in" to the other
> hypotheses. For example, termites COULD be the source, but ONLY if those
> termites feasted mainly on grasses. The enamel's carbon isotopes show that
> at least one scenario was in effect to somehow provde the C4, without
> question! The enamel alone cant break out the source. The tooth itself can
> eliminate some of the otherwise possible sources outright, and the basic
> physiology of an apith cast others way into doubt. You end up left with the
> most likely answer. Why would any scientific mind not just take the most
> likely answer and run with it? Hmmmmmmmmm! 8-)
>
> The teeth of a carnivorous ape dont have to match the teeth of a lion or
> tiger, they just have to be unsuitable for any other purpose! And as for
> human-like teeth being unsuitable for eating meat, Id suggest a quick
> consideration of the possibility that they might not be suitable for
> anything else in an apith's environment! Fruit and veggies? Yep, and
> probably a major component of an apith diet no matter what else they might
> have eaten, but no C4. Grasses and sedges, nope, but plenty of C4 but
> neither the teeth nor digestive tract required. Animals with a C4-rich diet
> (and that includes animals from proboscids to mice and insects), at least on
> the low end, most certainly!
>
> Most probable, now, what would that be? 8-)) This is NOT a rhetorical
> question! ;-)
>
> Regards
> bk
>
>
> "Pauline M Ross" <pmross@ross-software.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:27qrj0lae2alunrk7v9i0ni4er9ocs9lgv@4ax.com...
> > On Tue, 07 Sep 2004 14:22:01 GMT, NA Sides <nas@sonic.net> wrote:
> >
> >>And to muddle things up even more, a paper that uses isotopic data to
> >>infer that africanus possibly *did* eat significant amounts of meat:
> >>
> >><http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/images/isotopic_evidence_for_the_diet_o.htm>
> >>or http://tinyurl.com/3m3v9
> >
> > I can't access this url, so I don't know which particular paper you
> > are referring to, but the isotopic analyses I have seen show that A.
> > africanus had on average a large C4 component in the diet, but nothing
> > to show whether that component was the result of eating C4-type plants
> > (grasses and sedges), or the animals which eat them, or both. There
> > was also wide variation in the size of the C4 component (from 0 to
> > 60%, averaging close to 40%).
> >
> > The Teaford/Ungar reference seems to suggest that they were *not*
> > eating much meat, so you are left with sedges and/or termites :-)
> >
> > How does this affect your weapons/bipedalism scenario?
> >
> > --
> > Pauline Ross
> >

I've just eaten a small white potato raw, and I'm not feeling terribly
good. So maybe I'll go out tomorrow to the local swamp and get some
sedge rhizomes. But on the way, I'll get some oysters, that I know
will settle my stomach.

Also, I've just looked at my unsettled stomach and, as usual, it is
larger than it really should be.

Do you think I'm evolving "the fermentation factory to digest the
tough stringy vegitable fiber that would come from eating uncooked
bullrushes or their rhizomes" ?

Have I got a rumen on the way?

Please answer Richard (worried)

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