Re: A critique of the BBC aquatic ape programme and the transcript.



Algis Kuliukas wrote:
> JAE wrote:
[snip]

> In gallery forest habitats prone to flood-desiccation cycles bipedal
> wading is going to have clear survival benefits in flood cycles, and
> walking efficiently on drying river beds is going to have clear
> survival benefits during dry phases. What's your problem with that?

You are still not addressing the survival value. Why is the
facultative biped at a disadvantage? My problem is that you've got no
selection in a adaptationist argument. There's nothing in your
argument that differentiates between the facultative biped standing up
and the obligate biped that relates to water.

> > His notion of
> > "different depths" of water that must be waded through, shallower
> > increasingly looking like terrestrial bipedalism *also* ignores that
> > apes are already facultative bipeds, but compounds this with a
> > seemingly unrealistic amount of moving in and out of the water. Why
> > are the apes getting in the water and getting out such that they're
> > spending so much time in this "gradient area," moving about? What sort
> > of lifestyle is this and is there any analog at all? I'm certainly not
> > familiar with one. What resources (more specifically than "aquatic
> > ones" did this give them access to and what was the net reward relative
> > to other resources that made it a favorable condition?
>
> I think you're being too pedantic here. When I suggest that it is in
> sub-waist deep water that some (literally watered down) need for the
> traits of a terrestrial biped may be selected for, I'm not suggesting
> that they spent there lives in that twilight zone. It's just a fact
> that as one wades through water there is a continuum of depths. As the
> water level goes down there is a shift in locomotor requirements: Less
> physical work has to be done to propel the body forward, but more work
> has to be done keeping one's balance. It's this shift, that must have
> happenned thousands of times in the lifetime of a gallery-forest
> dwelling hominid, that honed in those traits that would act as the
> perfect precursor to human bipedalism.

What is the selective process here? What killed off the facultative
bipeds? What made them have fewer babies?

[snip]

> I do think it is astonishing that for 150 years paleoanthropologists
> have scratched their heads on bipedal origins when, staring them in the
> face, they could have gone to any zoo with a moat and seen that apes
> move bipedally most predictably even in the shallowest of water. It's
> obviously a big part of the answer. I think the tax payer would have
> expected a better return from their input. I think they'd be appauled
> if they knew how such a simple, plausible idea had been dismissed on
> the basis of so little scientific enquiry.

You joining Pauli on this "tax payer" kick, huh? This scenario where
the general public's democratic cries decide what is and isn't good
science? In the U.S. the "tax payers" as a whole would vote to fund
"research" into "intelligent design" and 7-day creationism. You're
raising a red herring.

[snip]

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: A critique of the BBC aquatic ape programme and the transcript.
    ... > and the obligate biped that relates to water. ... They were *all* facultative bipeds ... were evolving, step by step, towards obligate bipedalism. ... > You joining Pauli on this "tax payer" kick, ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Bipedalism in different substrates
    ... phobia that you claim forced proto-hominins into a pattern of bipedal ... >that the fact that quadrupedal apes move bipedally in water, ... But you claim they weren't wading for hours at a time, ... >selection of traits that would aid terrestrial bipedalism. ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Bipedal Orrorin?
    ... Yes - snip, Jason. ... >> shallowest depths there is still a greater tendancy for bipedalism ... It serves your argument, I suppose, to interpret my claim that apes ... are most predictably bipedal in water in the most extreme way possible ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Bipedal Orrorin?
    ... Yes - snip, Jason. ... >> shallowest depths there is still a greater tendancy for bipedalism ... It serves your argument, I suppose, to interpret my claim that apes ... are most predictably bipedal in water in the most extreme way possible ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Bipedal Orrorin?
    ... Yes - snip, Jason. ... >> shallowest depths there is still a greater tendancy for bipedalism ... It serves your argument, I suppose, to interpret my claim that apes ... are most predictably bipedal in water in the most extreme way possible ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)