Re: Is the AAH a legitimate hypothesis? Of course it is.

From: Marc Verhaegen (fa204466_at_skynet.be)
Date: 01/05/05 

Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2005 20:30:04 +0100

"Algis Kuliukas" <algis@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
news:1104918357.121942.284180@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...

> "Many of the wild animals such as rabbits, hares, otters and moles, were
apparently healthy with less than 2% fat - in some specimens, less than 0.5%
of the body mass was adipose tissue - but the captive rats and guinea pigs
with continuous access to food contained 9 to 19% fat. More than half the 31
captive monkeys that we examined were less than 5% fat, thinner than most
laborotory rodents, although all of them had continuous access to food and
little opportunity to exercise. However, a few of the monkeys kept in the
same way became obese, and, at more than 25% fat, were fatter than normal
rats. Males and females were equally fat. In contrast, a typical "reference
man" is estimated to be 15% fat by weight of adipose tissue, and "reference
woman" 27%. In contemporary Western societies, people tend to get fatter
with age. Complete dissections of the cadavers of elderly people yield
average figures of 40% adipose tissue in women, 28% in men. The minimum
fatness recorded for teenage girl athletes is 7%, and for men 5%. Thus most
human beings are not only much fatter than most wild and captive mammals,
but women and girls are consistently fatter than men and boys. Most human
beings are as fat or fatter than the fattest of our monkeys, so it is not
surprising that the paunch and other superficial depots are conspicuous
under our thin, hairless skin.The main differences between ourselves and
other primates arise from the quantity of adipose tissue in humans. The
distribution of human adipose tissue is similar to that of exceptionally
obese monkeys. We don't need to postulate that special evolutionary forces
are behind more than minor changes in the shapes of certain depots, such as
the breasts." CM Pond 1987 "Fat and Figures" New Scientist Vol: Pages:62-66

:-) Thanks, Algis.

Snipped on webbing & laryngeal descent:

Webbing: The extremely dextrous otters Aonyx have no claws & no webs on
their fingers.

Laryngeal descent in humans is composed of 2 elements:
- Hominoids (vs OWMs) have descended larynges (vs hyoid). In other spp
related to loud sound production.
- Humans have also descended hyoids = tongue bones (vs mandible). In other
spp related to swallowing.

--Marc

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