Re: Faster Than A Hyena?

On Feb 24, 11:16 am, "Paul Crowley"
<slkwuoiutiuytciu...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<pgarr...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:b5bd76a6-efac-4175-808d-d418edff1183@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Luckily, you did not have to compete
with lions, hyenas, cheetahs, wild dogs,
smilodon, dire wolves, giant carnivorous
bears, and all he other predators around
with HE.

The point I was making was that it is definitely possible and
straightforward for humans to engage in cursorial hunting.

The point I was making is that your
'argument' tell us nothing about what
was possible for HE.

Considering your predators with respect to the emergence of Erectus :

- Dire wolves and giant carnivorous bears were uninvolved, as they are
American. (Erectus emerged in Africa)
- the felids such as lions, cheetahs, and Dionfelis (rather than
smilodon, which again is American) are not cursorial hunters. Lions
were not around until 1.5 mya.

OK, some of my examples were silly --
but there were plenty of large predators
and scavengers around at the time of HE.

This leaves the African hunting dog, Lycaon Pictus.

A lot more was 'left'.

While these are
formidable cursorial predators, it is not difficult to envisage Homo
having advantages such as posture, vision, and intelligence, as well
as an alternate food supply when game was sparse.

Homo were certainly not an obligate
carnivore -- and probably often not
much of a carnivore at all.

It takes a certain intelligence to cope with the hunted animal's
various strategems. So its still an option. However any sensible
person would obviously just lay a trap and save all that unnecessary
energy expenditure.

Very likely. So why all the supposed
selection for speed and endurance?

A cursorial hunter needs to eventually run down it's prey, as well as
out-think it, so both endurance and intelligence are required.

You seem to have missed my point.
Someone who can set traps will not
bother to run.

Running -- after prey -- is only possible
(and effective) when (a) trapping is
difficult (e.g. since game is rare),
(b) when the country is so sparse that
there is little or no shelter for a wounded
prey animal to hide, and
(c) where tracking is feasible.

These conditions match desert and
semi-desert -- the habitat of the Kung
San.

As to why the A'piths went extinct? Leakey says they were under
pressure from Homo on one side

Homo were in a different habitat --
according to you and to standard PA.

What different habitat?

Why ask me? It's your theory. I gather
that the notion is that Apiths were
supposedly in forest and Homo was on
the savanna.

When you advance a concept, perhaps you should explain exactly what
you mean, as you have many offbeat ideas.I won't defend points I
haven't made, as I have little enough grasp to support the points I
have made.


and Baboons on the other.

They'd been competing with baboons
from day 1. Why evolve at all if they
did not have some distinct advantages?
Baboons will always survive in dense
jungle (where no one maintains
hominds lived). Apiths must have
had some edge in more open habitat.

"We know that Homo Erectus was an extremely successful species, since
it was the first human to expand its range beyond Africa.

Poor logic. Leaving Africa does not
mean it was doing well there.

It is
therefore likely that early Homo grew rapidly in numbers, thus
becoming a significant competitor for a resource essential to
Australopithicene survival: food.

Even worse. If Apiths were in a different
habitat, they were eating different food.

Moreover between 1 and 2 million
years ago ground-living monkeys - the baboons - were also becoming
highly successful and burgeoning in numbers, and would have competed
with Australopithecines for food. The Australopithecines might well
have succumbed to a twofold competitive pressure- from homo on one
side and baboons on the other."
Leakey 1994 "The origin of Humankind" p 58

This dreadful 'reasoning' is best described
as 'fantasy'.

Leakey is rather famous, you know.


It seems unlikely that "baboons were there from day 1" as you say.

Baboons have been around for many
millions of years. Unlike chimps and
gorillas, they have left a rich fossil
record.

However I do tend to disagree with Leakey in the sense that the
biggest enemies of the A'piths would have been Homo, rather than
baboons, because only robust A'piths evolved after Homo appears. As
Homo had the speed, endurance, and intelligence, the only A'pith
advantage was size

They lived in a different habitat. Apiths
are supposed to sleep in trees, and
homo not. (All nonsense, of course)
But standard theory says they did not
occupy the same habitat.

The definition of savanna incorporates trees, just without enclosed
canopy. So where they slept is irrelevant as to whether territories
overlapped. I back down from having any opinion on whether Homo and
A'pith were mortal enemies.


and possibly numbers, as breeding an A'pith would
have been faster than a Homo.

A silly point. The rate of reproduction
would have been very little different.


Homo has high intelligence. This comes at a high biological cost:
- extra food for the brain itself
- extra play for programming the brain. Players and supervisors
require feeding.
- extra risk from play.
A relatively more intelligent animal has to be correspondingly more
productive to compensate, otherwise it will produce fewer descendants
and eventually become extinct. Logical, is it not?

as if fills the criteria of small gradual steps,

Gradual steps? Nonsense. The
adaptation to cope with rotten meat
is huge. All cats are carnivores, but
none will touch rotten meat -- even
though they must encounter it all
the time. Much the same applies to
carnivorous birds. Only those with
special adaptations (e.g. vultures)
will eat rotten flesh.
Where you accuse me of fantasy, and you do not present any arguments
against the scenario's outlined, then you are simply engaging in
personal attack, and you make no point at all.

To call a statement 'fantasy' is NOT to
mount a personal attack. Perhaps I
make no argument, but I make my
stance clear.

Only in your own mind.


You accuse me of ignoring the rules of evolution, but do not outline
which rules are being broken.

The rules are broken with 'niche-swapping'
(as should have been clear). What other
taxon has indulged in one tiny fraction
of that, over the past 6 million years or
so? You can claim that hominids were so
exceptional that they could things far
beyond the capacity of other taxa -- but
it is not a trustworthy argurment.

Evolution can only occur by having existing animals adapt to different
roles in an ecosystem. All creatures have evolved, and Homo, quite
spectacularly. You seem to have a problem with this. It comes across
as irrationality.


With respect to the absurdity of primates leaving trees and
scavenging, Baboons and chimps hunt, and all hunters scavenge when
they can and hunt when they must.

Not true. Cats do not scavenge -- in
any real sense of the word. Chimps
do not scavenge. They will not touch
meat they do not kill themselves.
Baboons are (almost certainly) the
same. Scavenging involves (indeed
requires) the acquisition of a taste
for rotten meat. We do not have it.

While I do not agree with you, I have moved somewhat on the
scavenging.

As for the taste for rotten meat, in this era of refrigeration, their
is still a vast market for salted and preserved meats.


You say scavenging is impossible because homo cannot eat rotten meat.
Yet it is possible to scavenge meat that is not yet rotten, most
likely by stealing a kill. You just have to be smart, and quick.

'Stealing a kill' is not scavenging.
In any case, nearly all kills are at
night. There's no future for a 'super-
predator' which does not do it by
night.

Cursorial hunters do not hunt at night. The prey would find escape
much easier.


"We are hopeless in the dark". No one is claiming Homo was a nocturnal
ambush predator.

If Homo had ever begun to rely on
carnivory, the taxon would, almost
necessarily, have become largely
nocturnal -- after the manner of
nearly all carnivores. The only
exception to this rule are cheetahs,
which rely on great speed -- never
available to Homo.

Ambush predators often hunt at night. Cursorial hunters, no. Ever
heard of a fox-hunt at night? Your arguing is laughable.


I am growing tired of your ad-hominem, your mindless and un-sustained
accusations of fantasy and ignorance, when you make such stupid
mistakes as inferring american predators such as smiledon, giant
bears, and dire wolves, would interfere with the emergence of Erectus.

You should find a gentler occupation
-- maybe pressing flowers.

Paul.

Where you assert Erectus is an ambush predator and also a constructor
of snares, that is indeed the picture Leakey paints, at least 10 years
ago. Writing about an imaginary Erectus band:

"For much of the day the men had been silently stalking a small herd
of antelope., noting that one of the animals seemed slightly lame.
Repeatedly this animal was left behind by the herd and had to make
tremendous efforts to rejoin them. The men recognized the chance to
bring down a large animal. Hunters who are equipped with the minimum
of natural or artificial weaponry, as our group is, need to rely on
cunning. The ability to move quietly and to blend into the environment
and the knowledge of when to strike are these hunters most potent
weapons.

Finally, an opportunity presented itself, and, with unspoken
agreement, the three men moved into strategic positions. One of them
let loose a rock with precision and force, striking a stunning blow;
the other two ran to immobilize the prey. A swift stab with a short
pointed stick released a fountain of blood from the animals jugular.
The animal struggled but was soon dead."
Leakey, "The Origin of Humankind", 1996, p 76

and:

"The rejection of hunting in early Homo has been too assidious. I find
it significant that Shipman's analysis of the distribution of cut
marks shows so many bones with little meat. What can be obtained here?
Tendons and skin. With these materials it is quite easy to make
effective snares for catching quite large prey." P73

However if Homo was a part-time hunter, then he has to fit into the
mix of predators already existing. No two animals can exist in the
identical ecological niche. The cats have the ambush predator market
tied up. The dogs are competitors in the cursorial end of the predator
spectrum. Homo's adaptions to endurance running place him as the most
cursorial of hunters. As is clear from other posts in this thread,
Erectus ran better than we do now. This extreme adaption, compared to
other species, proves Erectus specialised as an endurance runner, and
being a cursorial hunter is the only conceivable niche.

Comparing African Wild Dogs to an Erectus:

- Erectus has a more reliable food supply, from gathering, because he
is a non-obligate carnivore, so has a supply of food when game is
sparse.

- Both dogs and Erectus have a large proportion of the band, children,
mothers, the sick, the old, unable to hunt. Erectus, with his amazing
arms and hands, can carry food back. Dogs have to eat and vomit it
back.

- Dogs, being quadrupeds, can only attack by grasping with their jaws
and pulling or ripping. Erectus, with arms, hands, and tools, has much
more potent weaponry, and can keep his head, with its vulnerable brain
and sensors, at a safer distance from a prey animal.

So Erectus has a distinct niche in the predator spectrum. Dogs are
faster, up to 70 kph, with hunts extending to "several kilometers".
Erectus has more endurance, but is slower, with longer hunts

As for snares and traps, early pre-acheulean Erectus couldn't even
envisage a tear-drop hand axe, let alone imagine a snare or lasso.
Leakey has him casting rocks rather than even using a javelin. It
takes more than a rock to bring down most conceivable prey species.
Once an animal is run to exhaustion though, it is easy prey.

Actually applying this same exclusion logic to the OT scenario, of
A'pith evolving into Habilis by out-scavenging the Hyena, does not
work for me. Hyenas are awesome animals. Spotted Hyenas have been
clocked at 64 kph in short bursts, with one chase going for 24
kilometers, according to wikipedia. Although apparently at the time
Hyenas lived on the left-overs from the sabre-tooth cat, they still
appear to be incredibly well adapted scavengers. Their droppings
consist of powdered bone, everything else is digested. Their
intelligence approaches that of some Apes, which would put them in the
A'pith class. Moreover the hyenas are still here; they did not become
extinct because Habilis moved in on their niche. Instead Habilis is
extinct. Therefore Habilis could not have taken the hyena's niche.

I cannot recall but somewhere I read the theory that A'piths could
have started stealing the kills of saber-tooth cats that were stored
up trees, safe from hyenas. Being primates, they would still have
retained the ability to climb trees. Obviously the cats would have
objected and a slow A'pith would be a dead A'pith. Spare male A'piths
were probably biologically expendable due to the dominant-male/related-
females A'pith organization. Stone tools would help them process the
stolen catch. The stolen meat would have added evolutionary potential
because it was probably readily exchangeable for a mating opportunity,
behind the dominant male's back. Certainly Habilis lasted until "at
least" 1.6 mya, and Dinofelis 1.4 mya, so they were suspiciously
contemporaneous. Perhaps Homo started as a daring thief rather than a
scavenger.




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