Re: Faster Than A Hyena?

<pgarrone@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:200d8275-66c5-44ef-971f-1afb6653e941@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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.

Leakey is just another savanna fantasist.

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.

The issue of the kinds of trees in which
Apiths slept is never discussed within
standard PA -- since the whole notion
is tacitly recognised as nonsensical.
Other primates (especially larger ones)
are highly particular about their choice
of sleeping trees. They have two main
considerations -- comfort and safety
(from attack by predators, e.g. leopards).
The few trees on open savanna would
have been even less useful to a hominid
than any of the very wide range of those
in the forest.

I back down from having any opinion on whether Homo and
A'pith were mortal enemies.

Of course they were mortal enemies.
They occupied an almost identical
niche. One line went extinct -- for very
obvious reasons.

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?

The 'reasoning' is childish. There are
dozens of other factors -- many of far
greater significance. On this 'reasoning',
pandas must be far more intelligent than
pigs, and sloths far more intelligent than
foxes.

The only good information we have on
the Apith (and Homo) rate of reproduction
is what we can see in their close relations:
extant hominids, chimps and other large
hominoids. Apiths (and Homo) were
presumably not too different.
[..]

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.

Agreed. And taxa do not swap out of
one ecosystem into another. Forest
animals do not move into deserts, nor
onto savanna, nor into lakes, nor into
the sea. Desert animals do not move
into forests, etc., etc.

All creatures have evolved, and Homo, quite
spectacularly. You seem to have a problem with this.
It comes across as irrationality.

'Fantasy evolution' is commonly seen
among those who have no (or very little)
understanding of the natural world. AAT
theories provide the most conspicuous
examples. A land animal is supposed to
have become something like mermaid, and
then (a couple of million years later) hopped
out of the water to resume its existence on
land (never leaving a trace of its former
existence). This kind of thing is UNKNOWN
in the rest of nature. And THAT should be
the main criticism of AAT theories. But
you never see it from PA types. They are
as ignorant of the basic rules of evolution as
are AAT proponents. They are themselves
as guilty of the same kind of nonsense --
with animals hopping from forest to savanna
to whatever and back again -- never leaving
any trace of their former existence.

Now you might know the rules of evolution
and claim that the hominid line is a striking
exception -- and give detailed justifications
for your claim. BUT you will never see that
argument from PA types. They simply do
not know the rules. They never mention
them. Their (implied) claim that the hominid
line is an exception to nature is based
entirely on a total ignorance of the general
rule.

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.

What has that got to do with anything?
There is not much of a market for
rotten meat.

'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.

Dogs often hunt at night. They
can get much closer to their prey.
Unlike humans. they can get by
on low levels of light (e.g. from a
partial moon).

"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.

Which animals do you count as
'cursorial hunters'?

Ever heard of a fox-hunt at night? Your arguing is laughable.

Fox-hunting is done by humans.
They can only operate by day
(without lights, etc.,). That is my
point. In case you do not know,
early hominids did not ride horses.

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.

All predators do this -- identify the
weakest animal. Hominids were far
less able than all other predators of
time (such as wolves or hyenas) to
follow herds and perform this task.

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.

That is a laugh. Were hominids better
able to move quietly and unobserved
by prey than wolves or other quadrupeds?
Could they do it at night -- and for days
and nights at a time.

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

The is ridiculous PA fantasy. Hominids
were at the bottom of any list of predators
capable of doing such things.

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.

An absurd conclusion. When Columbus
and other explorers first went around
world 'discovering' tens of thousands of
different human tribes, how many existed
on resources obtained by cursorial hunters?

For what strange reason do you conclude
that HE occupied a radically different niche
from all these tribes?

As for snares and traps, early pre-acheulean Erectus couldn't even
envisage a tear-drop hand axe

This is a joke -- since (despite our huge
brains) we have not the faintest idea what
hand-axes were used for.

let alone imagine a snare or lasso.

You have no idea. IMHO snares are
not far beyond the capacity of a chimp,
and were quite likely in use by Apiths.

[..]
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

More PA fantasy. You forget that
Apiths would have been something
like chimps and humans, and highly
dependent on the strength of their
immediate (family or quasi-family)
group (versus other apith groups).
As with chimps, a decline in the
number of adult males would threaten
the survival of the whole group.

due to the dominant-male/related- females A'pith organization.

From where do you get this crazy idea?


Paul.



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