Re: A More Reasonable Interpretation of the Evidence

Will in New Haven wrote:

Come come, now. That's a ridiculous assertion. Why would they not
want to eat A'pith. (And this directly contradicts the evidence that
indicates feline predation on A'pith (lucy).)

They were geared for giant slow moving creatures.

So you theorize a slow moving feline? How do you expect anybody to
take this seriously?

If he is talking about Smilodon

There it is. That's what I meant when I was referring to sabertooth.

and its near relatives, he is talking
about an animal that cannot, judging from its skeleton, have been
anywhere near as fast as a lion.

There is no reason to assume it was not as fast, almost as fast, or
even faster. It was about the same size as modern lions, but more
muscular.

The saber-toothed cats were
closely-coupled, short-leged ambush hunters. It is easy to imagine one
hunting the way a Black bear hunts deer, except much more often and
much more efficiently. It would crouch in concealment and rush out at
the last instant. It would be a very poor strategy for any of them to
rely much on catching small game, such as apiths.

Obviously, you're just making this up. There is no reason for smilodon
to avoid apith. And it is generally believed that they were social
hunters, like lion. This fits perfectly with the dry-season, predatory
siege, massacre (feeding frenzy) assumptions that are part of my
hypothesis. Accordingly, in the event an A'pith community became
desperate and the predators had revealed to the predators their
desperation during the dry season the predators would realize that all
they had to do was hang around and eventually every last member (or
almost every last member) of the community would come out of the trees
for water or food and they'd be an easy meal at that time.

The scimitar-toothed cats were somewhat more gracile and smaller, both
things making them MORE dangerous to a primate away from the trees.
Also, they are present in the African fossil record, while the true
saber-tooth is not. Still, we are talking about a hulking monster, much
less gracile than a jaguar, the least gracile modern cat, without many
of the qualities that say "cat" to the modern person.

Leopards were undoubtedly more of a danger. Although they hunt alone
and are not much danger to groups of armed men, leopards are very
dangerous to individual humans in the brush, to this day. And a modern
human in good shape would be more of a challenge to a leopard than an
a'pith.

The problem here is that treed environments are not very good
protection from leopards while hanging around in as large a group as
possible IS. Treed environments would be a wonderful defense against
scimitar-tooth cats, just as they are against lions, but hanging around
in groups would be a terrible defense for people without spears and the
mass to use them effectively. In fact, it would the recipe for a
massacre if lions were involved or if scimitar-tooth cats hunted in
groups. I don't believe that they did but there is an argument there.

A'pith had to either stay in treed environments and try to mob
leopards, accepting that they would lose individuals to leopards, or
move into more open environments and avoid the scimitar-tooth cats AND
the leopards, which are at home in the open. Leopards are especially at
home in open country where there are no lions.

I'll defer to you when it comes to the specifics of late miocene and
pliocene predation. From my perspective it doesn't make a lot of
difference which of these cats were involved in my theoretical
predatory massacres.



They had
bob-tails, further indication they were slow ambush hunters. The only
way they would be a threat to a hominid is if hominids were wandering
around in tall grass or thick bush, otherwise they could be seen a
mile away and would never be able to catch Lucy.

Obviously you're just making this up as you go along. As I explain in
my hypothesis, they would have been especially vulnerable to predation
in the dry season. As inidcated there, these would often result in
predatory massacres.

Neither of those statements is really objectionable. Certainly there is
some truth to both of them. However, unless your hypothesis is that we
became extinct thereby, I don't know what it proves.

The difference doesn't involve proof, it involves explanatory power.
My hypothesis explains something that conventional theorists pretend to
ignore: the selective origins of the communal adaptations that are so
plainly apparent in our species and which so thoroughly (and
indisputably) distinguish us from other mammals of the same size.

He is not,
however, making up anything about the saber-toothed cats. The consensus
is that they were as he describes them.

And it's irrelevant. Nothing he stated is inconsistent with the
dry-season, predatory massacre behavior that is so essential to my
hypothesis.




As long as she stayed
out of the ambush zones (and stayed near trees), saber-tooths would
have been no problem. Lions weren't around early, so no matter how
fast they were, what early apith would care?

True or false, Apith were preyed upon by feline predators?

Of course they were. Humans still are.

I know what you mean, but for all practical purposes humans are no
longer preyed upon by felines.

It's rough to be the victim but
not a problem for the species. That it was a worse problem for Apiths
is clear. How MUCH worse is not clear.

It's also not clear as to whether or not the dry-season, predatory
massacre behavior that I hypothesize in the earliest years of hominid
evolution did or did not happen. And I suspect it will never be clear.
But if it was true it sure does explain a lot.

I appreciate the level-headedness of your response.

.

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