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Author Topic:   Why Did Homo Erectus Not Retain a Tail?
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 9 of 68 (734218)
07-26-2014 9:24 PM


As someone has already pointed out, no apes have tails, which not only makes the question of choosing any particular 'homo' species quite poor, but it also brings into question the rest of the question in the OP.
Monkeys have tails, so the idea that those tails provide a useful advantage by providing balance for larger animals does not seem to be correct either. This is not a complete answer thought, because many large animals do have tails that serve non balancing functions like swatting flies.
And why is natural selection eliminated as an answer. My guess is that mram10 really wants to explore what the factors are that might make not having a tail advantageous. I am rejecting more negative guesses that do not reflect well on the OP.
I would suggest that tails on apes/monkeys are not a huge advantage for monkey/apes not primarily living in trees, so a deleterious mutation that resulted in those animals losing their tails after they had changed to a life style living below trees would not be only slightly deleterious. Tails do interfere with sitting down so maybe there was a slight advantage. So perhaps a combination of natural selection and drift is the explanation.
At any rate a quick search on google turned up a link to this paper, whose abstract seems to propose an explanation that might just as well be in Sanskrit for me. I have no idea what they are talking about.
Mutational tail loss is an evolutionary mechanism for liberating marapsins and other type I serine proteases from transmembrane anchors - PubMed
ABE:
I see this question in another thread: "Where did natural selection get it's intelligence?", so perhaps I am giving mram too much credit.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

Replies to this message:
 Message 10 by Coyote, posted 07-26-2014 9:43 PM NoNukes has seen this message but not replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 23 of 68 (734569)
07-30-2014 8:39 PM


Who dealt this mess?
Where is mram10?

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 25 of 68 (734574)
07-30-2014 10:40 PM
Reply to: Message 24 by subbie
07-30-2014 9:30 PM


I'm going to have to object here to the Derrick and Peg jokes. Either they have no point or they are just too high brow. As for the rest, I can still remember the foul mouthed fifth grader whom I heard tell those jokes for the first time. Last I heard, he was the pastor of a large church in Atlanta.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 24 by subbie, posted 07-30-2014 9:30 PM subbie has seen this message but not replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 35 of 68 (735525)
08-16-2014 10:02 PM
Reply to: Message 26 by mram10
08-16-2014 3:05 PM


If we were in the same room, I guarantee you would be more respectful.
If we were in the same room, hopefully when you asked a question as poorly phrased as this one, the question would get rephrased in short order. In this case, we can note that your question was answered multiple times.
Point is, why is it so easy to give credit to the natural selection process, but not be able to give credit to something putting that process into motion?
This appears to me to be a question easily answered by considering what can be confirmed by the scientific method. But perhaps this is just another poorly phrased question. Should we wait for you to rephrase the question or should we attempt to answer?

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 26 by mram10, posted 08-16-2014 3:05 PM mram10 has not replied

  
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