Re: Postural bipedalism may have preceded and not causally connected to walking.
- From: "Jim McGinn" <jimmcginn@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 26 Nov 2005 13:56:27 -0800
"Paul Crowley" <slkwuoiutiuytciu...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4fNhf.625$j7.43157@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> McGinn wrote:
> > > ` An animal that regularly is singled out by jaguars (or jaguar-like
> > > ` predators of the late miocene and pliocene) must be capable of
facing
> > > ` them down and/or even wrestling with them occasionally.
> Not so. Baboons regularly harass leopards.
> Predators cannot afford significant wounds,
> and will avoid confrontation if there is any
> likelihood of them,
You're not contradicting anything I've said AFAICT.
A prey animal needs
> weapons that can inflict them -- and long,
> strong canines being the most common. As
> soon as early hominids learnt to use pointed
> sticks, they no longer needed large canines.
This is silliness. They started to poke at predators with pointy
sticks.
This is nonsense.
> > > ' This requires
> > > ` the maintenance of strength in the upper body.
> Nonsense.
This isn't even controversial, you idiot.
> > > ' And if A'pith fossils
> > > ` are any indication, it seems that the adoption of bipedalism--at
least
> > > ` initially--involves a shift to a more diminutive, slight, weak
animal.
> > > ` It would seem then that the shift to the new bipedal ape niche must
> > > ` have coincided with a reduction in the likelihood that these animals
> > > ` would be singled out by feline predators.
> The 'reduction in the likelihood of predation'
> must have been total before these animals
> came down from the trees, and (therefore)
> became bipedal.
Naw. They just needed a different strategy to deal with the different
predation problems of a monsoon forest habitat. My hypothesis explains
the
rest of what happened.
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> Pete wrote:
> > > It would seem suggestive of one of a number of possibilities. There
> > > could have been a long term sequestering of the source population in
> > > a region where predators were rare, for a long enough time (1my?)
> The period required for the shift to ground-
> living need only have been ~100 Kyr.
> > Well, this is similar to Crowley's predator free islands. The first
> > problem with this is that it is extremely farfetched with respect that
> > it requires unusual situational factors.
> It requires the factors we see around us in
> plenty today. An island like, say, Zanzibar
> or Borneo -- and that's all.
Extraneous nonsense based on your ignoranced based notion that
geographic
isolation is the engine of speciation. You seem blissfully ignorant of
what
an amateurish and unsophisticated approach you have assumed.
> > The second problem is that there is no benefit to becoming
> > bipedal in the scenario.
> Eh? Those apes on the island that become
> bipedal can live where there are no sleeping
> trees, carry weapons, and wipe out all those
> that don't. What better advantages do you
> think there can be?
They couldn't do this quadrupedally? Chimps currently fight each other
without weapons. Not much incentive for such a tremendous shift in
morphology. This is hardly better than AAT logic.
> > Lack of predators also means a lack of a very important
> > selective factor
> The (temporary) absence of predators allows
> a drastic change in niche, since the constraints
> that had enforced stasis for millions of years
> are (briefly) removed.
Why bipedalism and other hominid traits? Where's the selective
factors?
We're supposedly suppose to believe that once the obstacles are remove
then
human evolution is inevitable. This is a very unscientific assumption
on
your part.
> > (not to mention lack of ability to explain the
> > fossil evidence which indicates A'pith being preyed upon by large
> > felines).
> When the newly-bipedal apes return to the
> mainland they will, of course, occasionally
> be preyed upon -- especially when they leave
> the confines of their protected home sites.
> Famine, war, and the routine dispersal from
> successful expanding populations will all
> result in susceptibility to predation.
Extraneous nonsense. Paul, your model is contrived. And it hardly
explains
the social adaptations that are apparent in ourselves. Your selective
scenario is lacking in selective factors.
> > At best it still leaves open the question of what benefit
> > did they recieve as a result of becoming bipedal.
> The new species became able to exploit a niche
> not before previously occupied, in sites formerly
> not available to apes: sites without sleeping
> trees, but defensible against predators.
This couldn't be achieve quadrupedally?
> The idiotic standard-PA 'theory' (and the one
> to which you subscribe)
Shut up, idiot. You obviously have no idea to what I subscribe.
maintains that this
> extraordinary new taxon came into existence
> to exploit EXACTLY the SAME sites in the
> SAME habitat in the SAME way as its ancestral
> species!
Surreal. Your ignorance is overwhelming.
> Have you ever heard of a set of more foolish
> theories?
> > It runs against the grain of the natural efficiency of evolution.
> > Why would the process of evolution put, in effect, them
> > through the trials and triblulations of achieving such a dramatic
> > new form of posture and locomotion unless there was some
> > considerable and obvious benefit to it?
> The "considerable and obvious benefit"
> was that which drives ALL evolutionary
> change: the ability to live a new form of life
> (often in a set of new locations).
Vague nonsense.
The new
> taxon clearly did NOT live in the habitat of
> its ancestral species (mostly dense forest).
No duh. Paul, Jason's right, your arrogance inspired ignorance renders
you
feckless.
Jim
.
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