humans

[Phi for All]

3 hours ago, Moontanman said:

Walking out my front door I could conceivably run into one animal that could kill and eat me within about 100 meters. Stretch that to around one kilometer and you might turn up one more. 

This is the way I was thinking, and I don't have alligators. Tell you the truth, I think an alligator would be more potentially fatal to me on dry land than a bull moose, but it would scare me more to know the moose was in the vicinity. Is it the height? I'd be looking down on the alligator, but the moose would be looking down on me. Waaaaay down.

Many folks tend to think of the nastiest places to meet up when they think of large predators (cornered by a lion, surrounded by a pack of dogs, in the water with a gator or shark, between mama bear and her cub, etc), but our high intelligence allows us to avoid many dangers just by staying away from encounters like that, or by taking major precautions. 

We can also tend to invest some of our human traits in animals, imagining them to be tenacious, unrelenting, vengeful critters. Very few animals besides humans are willing to die for anything, and none are willing to do so on principal alone.

[druS]

Where I sit in Sydney (potentially) lethal animals it would be statistically high that you could meet within 100m would be a very small number of spiders. Fatality rate unlikely to be high though, certainly with modern medicine. In the harbour of course there are untold species of sharks, though realistically only the bull shark should be considered an actual risk.

Further north in Brisbane you'd add the deadly brown snake, and in outer suburbs Taipan, red belly black etc. North again add the salty (crocodile), irukanji (and a small number of other jellyfish), add tigers and hammerheads (sharks). Continue north to add cassowary if you are foolish enough to disturb a male on a nest or protecting young.

BUT at that point we have strayed, no deviated completely into the world of infotainment. Add a throbbing sound track and an American accent commentary along the lines of "a wild boar on three legs gorged my brother!". You'll find it on fox and time of the week.

None of this has any statistical chance of impacting human evolution.

In the mean time as a subjective observation from living here for decades, our gene pool now has statistically a much higher influence from the people of Asia, people live longer and are more healthy. Our rate of natural population increase is steadily on a downtrend, made up by migration. People stay in education longer. Technology in our lives seems on an exponential increase.

Also note that the first nations of Australia lived here during the time of the mega fauna. Giant crocodiles, giant carnivorous kangaroos, giant wombats that followed annual migration patterns following annual rains through the grasslands of internal Australia. (WHich had already changed form the rainforests of Gondwanaland with plenty of earlier species that did not adapt.) These species failed to adapt quickly enough to the drying of the continent and no longer exist. The only megafauna left today would be the salty, emu, cassowary, possibly the grey kangaroo (at 6 feet tall). And the introduced camel. The first nation people adapted and survived. Differences to the extinct mega fauna? Surely agility, adaptability, resilience, mobility and intelligence.

[beecee]

1 hour ago, druS said:

Where I sit in Sydney (potentially) lethal animals it would be statistically high that you could meet within 100m would be a very small number of spiders. Fatality rate unlikely to be high though, certainly with modern medicine. In the harbour of course there are untold species of sharks, though realistically only the bull shark should be considered an actual risk.

Further north in Brisbane you'd add the deadly brown snake, and in outer suburbs Taipan, red belly black etc. North again add the salty (crocodile), irukanji (and a small number of other jellyfish), add tigers and hammerheads (sharks). Continue north to add cassowary if you are foolish enough to disturb a male on a nest or protecting young.

BUT at that point we have strayed, no deviated completely into the world of infotainment. Add a throbbing sound track and an American accent commentary along the lines of "a wild boar on three legs gorged my brother!". You'll find it on fox and time of the week.

None of this has any statistical chance of impacting human evolution.

In the mean time as a subjective observation from living here for decades, our gene pool now has statistically a much higher influence from the people of Asia, people live longer and are more healthy. Our rate of natural population increase is steadily on a downtrend, made up by migration. People stay in education longer. Technology in our lives seems on an exponential increase.

Also note that the first nations of Australia lived here during the time of the mega fauna. Giant crocodiles, giant carnivorous kangaroos, giant wombats that followed annual migration patterns following annual rains through the grasslands of internal Australia. (WHich had already changed form the rainforests of Gondwanaland with plenty of earlier species that did not adapt.) These species failed to adapt quickly enough to the drying of the continent and no longer exist. The only megafauna left today would be the salty, emu, cassowary, possibly the grey kangaroo (at 6 feet tall). And the introduced camel. The first nation people adapted and survived. Differences to the extinct mega fauna? Surely agility, adaptability, resilience, mobility and intelligence.

Hi, I'm also from Sydney near Maroubra Beach...I do though think it should be said, considering the amount of talk etc among over seas visitors to our country that everything is out to kill them, is greatly exaggerated. Firstly I have yet in my many years living in Sydney, ever come across the deadly Funnel Web spider in the wild...as you rightly say though, anyone that is unlucky enough to be bitten, has a far greater chance of survival with the anti venom in all hospitals and many Doctor's surgeries. The danger with the Funnel Web of course is their built in aggression that they will show. Common sense and care obviously needed when one is in the bush particularly with regards to snakes......Aggressive? yeah possibly if threatened. I often go for a body surf at Maroubra beach and have never seen a shark, although on numerous occasions over the years, the Life Savers have found it necessary to sound the shark alarm. Again, care and common sense...avoid swimming or surfing at night or dusk, swim between the flags. While crocoiles are certainly plentiful up north, one in reality would be a ratbag to go swimming or camping near a river or billabong,  particularly with signage every hundred mtrs or so warning of such dangers. Stingers and jelly fish etc are mainly found up north near the Great Barrier Reef area, and again common sense and care need to be considered. One really only needs to check out the rarity of how many people are unfortunate enough to be a victim of our wildlife, ending in death to understand how sometimes this aspect of our great country is exaggerated.

 

ps: Personally I'm like a big girl and sook with any type of creepy crawlies, and always spray my home and surrounding areas with spider, cockroach, ant killers every year.  

Edited May 12, 2018 by beecee

[druS]

I'm astounded that you haven't seen a funnel web. And I wont run through sharks as it is a thing that perhaps I will cut across more often than people who don't spend much time on the water. Nor how far south irukaji actually travel.

In the mean time - can't see how it impacts the human genome, which is where we started.

 

[sci-man]

On 5/7/2018 at 11:22 AM, zapatos said:

Citation

they cant control the release of their venom yet and they could

On 5/7/2018 at 2:11 PM, Moontanman said:

 

Walking out my front door I could conceivably run into one animal that could kill and eat me within about 100 meters. Stretch that to around one kilometer and you might turn up one more. 

Killing me is another matter, within that same distance limit you might find three or more capable of actually killing me but not eating me. I'd like to know what species you are talking about and where you live so I can avoid that place. I live near a huge swamp, the animals capable of killing and eating me are alligators and black bears, the animals capable of just killing me are two species of rattlesnake, copperhead, cottonmouth, and very rarely a coral snake. Are you counting insects? 

How about a list of the dangers you might face? 

im just talking about how we are comparatively weak to other animals that can kill us in an instant we could have evolved with fangs and claws and things like that but instead we have intelligence on a planet where no other creature can do the things that we do it was a miracle evolution and i just want to understand why.

[Phi for All]

19 minutes ago, sci-man said:

im just talking about how we are comparatively weak to other animals that can kill us in an instant we could have evolved with fangs and claws and things like that but instead we have intelligence on a planet where no other creature can do the things that we do it was a miracle evolution and i just want to understand why.

Why is not a science question. But if you look at available evidence, one could put together a decent argument that a planet with life on it needs at least one species that can leave to spread life to other planets. 

[sci-man]

4 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

Why is not a science question. But if you look at available evidence, one could put together a decent argument that a planet with life on it needs at least one species that can leave to spread life to other planets. 

ok how?

[zapatos]

24 minutes ago, sci-man said:

they cant control the release of their venom yet and they could

That is not a citation. It is another unsupported assertion.

Quote

im just talking about how we are comparatively weak to other animals that can kill us in an instant we could have evolved with fangs and claws and things like that but instead we have intelligence on a planet where no other creature can do the things that we do it was a miracle evolution and i just want to understand why.

I don't believe you've proven your point that we are comparatively weak. People kill more snakes than the other way around. I could kill most dogs before they could kill me. We may not be the most physically deadly animal on the planet, but you still only have a list of 50 that could beat us in a fight. Most animals should fear us.

[Phi for All]

1 hour ago, sci-man said:

ok how?

Really? Traits that allowed high intelligence to thrive became more and more refined (tool use, for example), the body adapts over time (bigger craniums requiring bigger birth canals, etc), skills like communication and cooperation find a ripe environment full of intelligence, and then more emergent phenomena happen (consciousness, for example). 

Probably the best thing about intelligence, imo, is that it's a bit like having a crystal ball that lets us see the future. When you understand anything to a high enough degree, you can make predictions about what will happen with that thing in many scenarios. Figuring out migratory patterns of various prey animals, planning for weather events, and making traps are just a few of the ways we can predict behavior so we can overcome it. Predictive power is also one of the greatest assets of the scientific method.

 

 

[Velocity_Boy]

3 hours ago, sci-man said:

they cant control the release of their venom yet and they could

im just talking about how we are comparatively weak to other animals that can kill us in an instant we could have evolved with fangs and claws and things like that but instead we have intelligence on a planet where no other creature can do the things that we do it was a miracle evolution and i just want to understand why.

The evolution of us homo sapiens to the Pinnacle of this planets food chain probably falls just a tad short of being worthy of labeling it a miracle.

Yet....I think most evolutionary biologists and anthropologists would admit that a vast amount of luck was involved.

If you took 100 identical scenarios, of our planet in the exact form and with the exact numbers and types of Flora and fauna and climatalogical conditions as it had, say. 200 million years ago....and then set all those replica scenarios in motion again, there's every chance that not in one of those 100 replays would we again enjoy an ascendance to the top. Nor would we outlive and prevail over the two dozen other subspecies of primate bipedal hominids.

A full 99% of all the species that ever enjoyed a day of life on this planet are gone. For good.

One doesn't transcend all those long odds without a good dose of luck or fortuitous occurrences.

[Strange]

14 minutes ago, Velocity_Boy said:

The evolution of us homo sapiens to the Pinnacle of this planets food chain

Except we are not. We have a position in some fairly short food chains (grass - cows - humans ...) but we are not at the end of any of them. There are apex predators that would happily eat us. There are scavengers and microbes that will equally happily consume us after we are dead. (And others that will eat them.)

It is not even clear that humans are apex predators:

Quote

These [human trophic level] values are comparable to those of non-apex predators like anchovy or pig.^[22]

...

In [some marine ecosytems], humans mainly eat predatory fish and have a fractional trophic level of 4.65 and 4.5 respectively, making them "apex predators in those systems."^[23]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apex_predator#Human_trophic_level

[StringJunky]

43 minutes ago, Strange said:

Except we are not. We have a position in some fairly short food chains (grass - cows - humans ...) but we are not at the end of any of them. There are apex predators that would happily eat us. There are scavengers and microbes that will equally happily consume us after we are dead. (And others that will eat them.)

It is not even clear that humans are apex predators:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apex_predator#Human_trophic_level

It's not called 'The circle of life' for nothing. I can't see where the "apex" is in a circle. 

[Ten oz]

On 5/14/2018 at 6:24 PM, Velocity_Boy said:

Yet....I think most evolutionary biologists and anthropologists would admit that a vast amount of luck was involved.

Luck is a relative thing. Considering the amount of live which has gone extinct every living thing is lucky. 

Quote

 

More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species,^[1] that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction

 

 

[sci-man]

thank you guys for helping me with this I understand now.

[Phi for All]

2 hours ago, sci-man said:

thank you guys for helping me with this I understand now.

What conclusions have you come to? For future readers, please share some understanding.

[sci-man]

On 5/17/2018 at 11:28 AM, Phi for All said:

What conclusions have you come to? For future readers, please share some understanding.

i have came to the conclusion that humans are only this way so that we could have the intelligence that we have

[Moontanman]

On 5/3/2018 at 11:24 AM, NimrodTheGoat said:

Everyone forgets about the poor Neanderthals. 

You do make a point, several other species of humans did at one time exist, why were we successful and they are gone? 

On 5/3/2018 at 4:03 PM, Ten oz said:

I disagree with this. Humans are not "just good enough". Prior to creating agricultural and large civilizations Humans spread out and successfully inhabited every continent on earth. Humans have very high level of dexterity. Thumbs and ball & socket joints are every bit useful as fur, sharp teeth, horns, or etc. The diversity of our diet, what we can eat, is/was also a major evolutionary advantage. Our dexterity and diets allow(ed) us to eat food collected from underwater up to food located atop trees. Human also have tremendous endurance and mobility. We can cover very large amounts of ground in a day. Our eyesight has depth and is in color. That is much better than merely "good enough". A lot of animals have poor color vision and depth. The list goes on and on. Humans are excellent swimmers, we are able to vocalize (trick prey or intimidate predators), we are naturally great at carrying things thanks to being bipedal, and etc, etc, etc.

Evolution does indeed favor organisms that are just good enough, all you have to do is be able to reproduce, no one on one battles with cave lions except in Conan novels... 

4 hours ago, sci-man said:

i have came to the conclusion that humans are only this way so that we could have the intelligence that we have

WOW! I'd like to see the flow chart on that conclusion... 

On 5/7/2018 at 12:16 PM, sci-man said:

i said now not in  my overall research just now and tiny baby rattlesnakes can kill multiple elephants with one bite and would have no problem taking us down meaning our size does not matter

This is such bullshit, I live where i can drive to a large game lands area and see adult eastern diamondback rattlesnakes. I have caught enormous rattle snakes, well over six feet long, huge fangs, huge venom glands, and yet living after being bitten even without anti venom is more likely than not. Corals snakes are tiny in comparison and I am far more cautious with them than I am with the rattle snakes. Rattlesnakes can BTW control the amount of venom they inject and dry bites are not uncommon... A big venomous snake is always far more dangerous than it's babies, it's just an old wives tale... In the interest of full disclosure we do have a pygmy rattlesnake here that looks like a baby snake but packs a wallop in it's bite.  

It should also be said that you don't need to be superman to reproduce, a human smart enough to avoid all contact with those cave lions is more likely to survive than the guy who looks for trouble to impress the ladies... too kool four skool... 

 

[mistermack]

On 5/14/2018 at 7:16 PM, sci-man said:

im just talking about how we are comparatively weak to other animals that can kill us in an instant we could have evolved with fangs and claws and things like that but instead we have intelligence on a planet where no other creature can do the things that we do it was a miracle evolution and i just want to understand why.

You need to go back to our starting point, on the road to being human. About five or six million years ago, our ancestors were much like modern chimps. Why we eventually differed so much isn't known, but there's lots known that might HELP to explain it.

There are three major developments that happened to our species. Firstly, upright walking. Secondly, an extremely rapid expansion of our brains. And thirdly, speech. 

The upright walking bit indicates that we didn't rely on tree climbing to escape ground living predators. Since we are relatively weak compared to those predators, we must have had some form of defence, and it's likely that it was done by working together in tight groups, with the bigger males wielding weapons as a bunch and working as a team, protecting the young and females as they foraged. Working as a tight team works a lot better with increased brain power, so higher brain power becomes a survival advantage in those circumstances. The same goes for language.

Meanwhile, chimps and bonobos stayed in heavily wooded areas, had an easy escape route from most predators, and so didn't need the same degree of cooperation and communication to stay safe.

That's really just background stuff. There are so many possibilities that the full story will probably never be known.

[sci-man]

On 6/4/2018 at 3:43 PM, mistermack said:

The upright walking bit indicates that we didn't rely on tree climbing to escape ground living predators. Since we are relatively weak compared to those predators, we must have had some form of defence, and it's likely that it was done by working together in tight groups, with the bigger males wielding weapons as a bunch and working as a team, protecting the young and females as they foraged. Working as a tight team works a lot better with increased brain power, so higher brain power becomes a survival advantage in those circumstances. The same goes for language.

but how would this have happened only for one species with no others near what we can do??? I would like to believe that there would be at least one other that would be near our level. honestly, I think that we were as I stated before a miracle species.

[mistermack]

10 minutes ago, sci-man said:

but how would this have happened only for one species with no others near what we can do??? I would like to believe that there would be at least one other that would be near our level. honestly, I think that we were as I stated before a miracle species.

I would say a freakish species, certainly not miracle. Would you call Chimpanzees a miracle species? We have greater mental gifts than Chimps, maybe freakishly so, but not miraculously so. On the face of it, the difference is enormous. But that's mostly down to the evolution of language. If we didn't have language, we would probably be living in much the same way as Chimps are, even with our bigger brains. If you can't learn through language, you are restricted to copying what you see. It wouldn't have got us very far.

There have been other species of humans, alongside our own ancestors. We weren't alone. It's just that all the others have died out, such as Neanderthals, Denisovans, Hobbits etc. Although modern humans have dna from the first two, indicating we interbred before they died out. 

[sci-man]

6 minutes ago, mistermack said:

I would say a freakish species, certainly not miracle. Would you call Chimpanzees a miracle species? We have greater mental gifts than Chimps, maybe freakishly so, but not miraculously so

yes, I do realize the difference but I just like the word miracle :). also, I meant why is there not another species with us today.

also also dolphins are on the way to revolt against humanity. lol.

 

 

for: moontanman

On 5/25/2018 at 5:06 PM, Moontanman said:

This is such bullshit, I live where i can drive to a large game lands area and see adult eastern diamondback rattlesnakes. I have caught enormous rattle snakes, well over six feet long, huge fangs, huge venom glands, and yet living after being bitten even without anti venom is more likely than not.

btw adults can controll the amount of venom ya doof

Edited August 27, 2018 by sci-man

[mistermack]

Neanderthals and Denisovans died out as a separate species because of the last major glaciation making their homes unlivable. They were so reduced in numbers that they just got outbred and interbred by the incoming modern humans, who came up in bigger numbers from the south. Maybe modern humans wiped out the competition, but I doubt it myself, as we have that dna from them showing that we interbred.

We do have a record of wiping out some of our own species in war, so I suppose it happened with Neanderthals and Denisovans in small scale conflicts, in similar ways.

Dolphins are not really ahead of Chimpanzees in the mental stakes, and even if they evolved language skills to match ours, they haven't got the manual dexterity to get into advanced tool use. 

So why didn't other species evolve mental abilities to our level? I think it's because we are freaks, and it's a mystery why WE did. I think there's probably an upper level that species reach, and generally there's no advantage in going any higher. (mentally). 

Gorillas, Orangutans, Chimps and Bonobos have stayed static for the last 7 million years. We didn't. I think they are the norm, and we are the freaks.

Edited August 27, 2018 by mistermack

[sci-man]

yea 

the dolphin thing was a joke tho haha