Like wolves, tigers, bats, sharks, bears, I mean, physically, with rare exceptions, it will be tough to wrestle one of them within short distance and come out victorious, right?
shareNot sure about the bats but all the other beasties would kill us with ease - it's probably always been so. Individually we're just not impressive as predators.
Our advantage is our brain, the ability to weaponise, minimise risk and work together.
Just think - if the monolith hadn't appeared before moonwatcher and his friends we'd probably be extinct by now.
some twitter rando tried to argue with me that he could take out a chimpanzee hand to hand.
that is a level of self-delusion i have a hard time wrapping my head around.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/NINTCHDBPICT000453604234-e1543852310346.jpg
Jeez, look at that beast!
Encourage the twitter idiot to have a go at the local zoo๐
Yeah I watched a chimp at the Honolulu Zoo once karate chop a hole in the 6 inch safety glass when some kids were staring at him too long. Those things are built DENSE. Their bones are more dense than ours, their muscles are more dense than ours and their connective tissues are more dense.
It's possible humans are an aquatic ape. We do like water a lot. Chimps and gorillas sink like rocks in the water while we float.
the aquatic ape theory is considered by most anthropologists to be unsupported. but here's an article outlining a story where water may have played some role.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-new-aquatic-ape-theory-67868308/
there are alternative hypotheses about the origin of bipedalism. gibbons & orangs are all bipedal when walking on land.
our last common ancestor with the chimps & gorillas probably looked more like a gibbon than either of the others, imo.
That's why I only wrote it is possible. Thanks for the article.
A common ancestor with the gibbon predates that with chimps and gorillas who also share a common ancestor with gibbons. Did you mean bonobos?
As far as intelligence goes orangutans are pretty close to humans. They pick locks for example.
yes, the gibbons diverged from the great apes, including us, around 17 mya, the chimps probably somewhere around 11-9mya.
my point is that chimps, gorillas and humans all diverged in their own lines after those divergences. so the inference, mine anyway, is that at the point of that later divergence of the great apes, including us, the last common ancestor looked more like a gibbon than what they ultimately adapted into - gorillini, pan, or homo.
Interesting hypothesis but I'd disagree. It's not like the differences between other great apes and humans are as wide as new world monkeys and old.
sharegibbons are apes, as well. our bipedalism is closer to a gibbon than either of the others, which implies hominins are apomorphic wrt gibbons in that property, while pan & gorillini are synapomorphic. this informs the inference of the LCA which dates all the way back, as far as we know, within a few million years of our lines divergence from pan, to being closer to the gibbon than the knuckle-walkers.
the knuckle-walking, iow, is a later adaptation of the pan & gorillini lines, imo. its either that or a gibbon precursor adapted to knuckle-walking and later, back again into a more gibbon-like bipedalism, within the space of a couple of million years.
stated another way - the LCA of homo, pan & gorillini was either bipedal, in some style reminiscent of the gibbon, or a knuckle-walker. which scenario do you think makes more sense ?
That's why I wrote GREAT apes. Gibbons are a lessor ape that both we and chimpanzees share a common ancestor with. Bipedalism isn't a genetic trait. It's more functional. Flightless birds are also bipedal but we have little relation to them. Like bats fly and birds fly but they aren't related.
share"bipedalism isn't a genetic trait." ?? you probably need to rethink that one. i think our discussion is about over.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skeletal_changes_due_to_bipedalism
No it's not. It's Convergent evolution. Convergent evolution creates analogous structures that have similar form or function but were not present in the last common ancestor of those groups.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution
( I don't need to rethink anything. I know this. Remembering how to educate you on it is a little tougher. It's been a few years.)
Both of you were right and wrong.
The statement "bipedalism isn't a genetic trait" seems to say that you're not bipedal because of your DNA but because some other reason, which is obviously wrong. However, that wasn't what you meant: you meant there wasn't necessarily a genetic link between two bipedal animals just because they're both bipedal. Your statement was correct (if interpreted that way), but it was misleading.
On the other hand, he answered with a derogatory comment, instead of simply asking "what did you mean by that?". Internet... why try to understand what other person said when you can put him down?
A behavior is not a genetic trait. The genetic trait would enable bipedalism, however my dog has hopped on her hind legs like a gibbon, that doesn't mean she has the genetic trait to do so. I wasn't misleading anyone.
sharei'm not wrong. jesus. you think any part of your anatomy is not genetically determined ?
try knuckle-walking for a day or two, see how you feel.
genes -> anatomy -> method of ambulation
Independent evolution of knuckle-walking in African apes shows that humans did not evolve from a knuckle-walking ancestor
https://www.pnas.org/content/106/34/14241
It's Convergent evolution
share
That guy is an idiot!
๐
yea, chimpanzees are slightly stronger (1.5x) than humans. there used to be the perception that chimps were far stronger, but that has been amended :
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40405026
That's "pound for pound", but proportionately they are much stronger when the same size.
sharesome more detail - there is a significant divergence between humans v chimps on distribution of slow v fast twitch muscle nerve fibers :
Muscle fibers mostly come in two flavors: myosin heavy chain (MHC) I, which are slow-twitch fibers, and MHC II, or fast- twitch fibers. The latter contract more quickly and generate more force in quick bursts, but fatigue more quickly than slow-twitch fibers. The researchers found that whereas human muscle contains, on average, about 70% slow-twitch fibers and 30% fast-twitch fibers, chimpanzee muscle is about 33% slow-twitch fibers and 66% fast-twitch fibers.
The team ran its data through a computer program that built virtual muscles corresponding to the fiber compositions of humans and chimps, then simulated how much power each muscle could theoretically generate during a single burst. The chimp muscle, they learned, was about 1.35 times more powerful than the human one, they report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
...
OโNeill says though fast-twitch fibers might give chimps and other mammals an advantage during high-intensity strength tasks like lifting heavy rocks or climbing a tree, humansโ slow-twitch fibers are better suited for endurance tasks like distance running. The researchers propose that early homininsโ muscles gradually became dominated by slow-twitch fibers as they gave up arboreal life and adapted to traveling across long distances to hunt and forage. Another benefit of slow-twitch fibers is they consume less metabolic energy, he adds, potentially freeing the body to devote more resources to other adaptations, like bigger brains.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/how-chimps-outmuscle-humans
Looks like one of the new arrivals to my town.
shareI have heard that a chimpanzee can rip the arm off a man.
shareit's not just that they're incredibly powerful - as laid out above, they're strong, but they're not superhumanly strong.
it's that if they truly are in battle mode, they will likely have no reservations about going full out, ripping skin off, going for soft parts, meaning clawing into your stomach and genitals and all that.
so my advice to the world is do not pick random fights with chimpanzees.
A while ago a woman got her face and both hands ripped off by her friend's pet chimpanzee. Chimpanzees are very strong.
https://www.the-sun.com/news/870352/horror-injuries-woman-face-hands-ripped-pet-chimp/
Wolves and bats? OK. Now I finally know the answer.
shareBecause humans are pretty damn weak. We only survived through cooperation.
sharethe human is the most dangerous animal because of the brain size. this brain is more deadly than any muscles since it creates weapons and smart hunting techniques. human evolution is all based around a smart monkey brain. more nutrients and energy spent on a large brains causes weaker muscles. the larger brained humans killed and took over the large muscled humans with there weapons and social skills creating this cycle of smaller and smaller muscles and larger and larger brains. after all this time our brains are so huge and the main focus of our body system that our muscles have non of the resources wild animals have to make the super strong. the brain makes physical strength unnecessary. like chris rock said "i love guns cause it means i dont gotta workout"
shareDoes nothing for us if we are bare handed. We are very weak alone.
How do you get "their" spelled wrong while writing of being brainy anyway?
my brain is so large and absorbs so much important knowledge that i have no room to remember with form of their to use
shareMost animals aren't stronger including predators like a skunk, fox, piranha, some snakes, spider, owl,
skunk, hawk, weasel, opossum, mosquito, mantis and dragonfly.
Among primates, we're not the strongest or weakest.