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Author Topic:   why is the lack of "fur" positive Progression for humans?
Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 61 of 202 (484446)
09-28-2008 4:56 PM
Reply to: Message 59 by arrogantape
09-28-2008 4:38 PM


You can't really be taking the horse as a defeat all premises we are of aquatic origin.
No. I'm taking the horse as an example of how sweating is not an indication of aquatic origins. Either sweating indicates aquatic origins, or it does not.

Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 62 of 202 (484447)
09-28-2008 5:08 PM
Reply to: Message 56 by arrogantape
09-28-2008 2:58 PM


Hello arrogantape, and welcome to the fray.
The problem with the savannah explanation is it is merely conjecture, ...
The "Savannah" theory at least has some evidence from the change in climate to support it, however this evidence is now seen to contradict it. Why? because the fossil evidence now shows that bipedalism evolved before the Savannah developed.
What we have is a pre-adaption to bi-pedalism from living in an open forest environment that allowed mixed walking and climbing behavior, and then when the trees went away, the apes that survived the transition were already walking.
Curiously fur and sweat are NOT good arguments for the savannah life: almost all other animals that live there have fur. Some of these animals are also cursorial hunters (jogging and walking down prey that they track over long distances).
Again, it could be argued that bipedalism enable cursorial hunting rather than the other way around, and that sweating evolved as a result.
... as is the aquatic origin. ...
Which fails to explain why animals that have been aquatic for a lot longer than humans have existed are still furry: seals, otters and the like, animals that also maintain a living ashore, nor why (some) pigs and elephants have less hair than humans, and as you say, horses sweat, and they are not naked. Thus we can establish no link between any specific behavior and the degree of fur, and claiming it is due to an aquatic phase is just post hoc ergo propter hoc assumption.
What you have to do in this case is line up points of evidence.
Here are some hints:
(1) sexual dimorphism shows that females are more naked appearing than males. This is particularly devastating to the "Savannah" theory because the ones doing the cursorial hunting were the males while the females stayed in brush gathering fruits and tubers (or we got that all backwards eh?). It also is devastating to the "Aquatic" theory because we see no dimorphism in fur cover for any other semi-aquatic animals.
(2) sexual selection account for sexual dimorphism as a general rule, and Fisherian Run-away Sexual Selection accounts for some otherwise bizarre features, like peacock tails.
(3) two adaptations to changing temperatures (night-day, summer-winter) are fur and subcutaneous fat. The fat is an adaptation for controlling body temperature not to water.
(4) the climate back then in Afar and surrounding area was very different from today, much milder and much less temperature swings.
Personally I think that the bipedal apes were already adapted to bareness via sexual selection and that Lucy was likely naked. I also think that clothes and body painting developed from camouflage for hunting and hiding, and later became converted for mating behavior (I believe we still see some examples of this). I also believe that the maximum sized brain evolved as a result of mating behavior and sexual selection. However, these are my personal opinions.
See Sexual Selection, Stasis, Runaway Selection, Dimorphism, & Human Evolution for another thread on this topic.
Enjoy.


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Edited by RAZD, : clarity

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
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This message is a reply to:
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arrogantape
Member (Idle past 4641 days)
Posts: 87
Joined: 09-26-2008


Message 63 of 202 (484448)
09-28-2008 5:23 PM


chiroptera, I'm with you on your philosophy. I live for the next scientific discovery. I want to know it all.
I just think taking one out of place example like the horse, and decide since it sweats and is not aquatic, then people who also sweat aren't aquatic either. The fact is Hippos and dugongs are related to the horse and are aquatic. Perhaps the horse split from a common aquatic ancestor. Horses have gone through some dramatic evolution after all.

Replies to this message:
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Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 64 of 202 (484452)
09-28-2008 5:36 PM
Reply to: Message 63 by arrogantape
09-28-2008 5:23 PM


I just think taking one out of place example like the horse, and decide since it sweats and is not aquatic, then people who also sweat aren't aquatic either.
No, that is not what I am saying. I am not saying that sweating shows humans did not have an aquatic evolutionary past. I am saying that sweating does not show one way or the other whether humans have an aquatic past.
In fact, this is basically what the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis does. It takes a few unrelated out of place examples of characteristics in humans and then purports to explain them in terms of an aquatic past in our evolutionary history. It ignores the clearly terrestrial animals that share these features, and it ignores features that are associated with aquatic lifestyles that humans don't possess.
On the other hand, now that you mention it, what aquatic animals sweat?

Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

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 Message 63 by arrogantape, posted 09-28-2008 5:23 PM arrogantape has not replied

  
arrogantape
Member (Idle past 4641 days)
Posts: 87
Joined: 09-26-2008


Message 65 of 202 (484455)
09-28-2008 5:44 PM


Hi Razd, I write out of interest, and not profession. From what I have read, the female human being more hairless than the male rather shoots down the Savannah folks, but maybe not. Certainly millions of years of development can bring out interesting sexual dimorphism.
The thing is, why are we such a peculiar ape? We are so different in so many ways? We are natural swimmers. Evolving in the reach of lions and hyenas while practicing bipedal behavior just doesn't cut it for me. Our sweating, larynx migration (also found in other aquatic mammals), adipose fat, head hair, instinctual swimming, and more just makes it look like we were aquatic?
You hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the wet environs of our earliest hominids. I
I can tell you this, if I were around in those days, I wouldn't want to be protected by mixed up nudy savannah hominids over a good boisterous gang of chimps.

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Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 66 of 202 (484457)
09-28-2008 5:49 PM
Reply to: Message 65 by arrogantape
09-28-2008 5:44 PM


why are we such a peculiar ape?
How does the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis answer this question?

Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

This message is a reply to:
 Message 65 by arrogantape, posted 09-28-2008 5:44 PM arrogantape has not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 67 of 202 (484468)
09-28-2008 7:00 PM
Reply to: Message 65 by arrogantape
09-28-2008 5:44 PM


Thanks arrogantape,
... the female human being more hairless than the male rather shoots down the Savannah folks, but maybe not. Certainly millions of years of development can bring out interesting sexual dimorphism.
True, but the fossils do not show any great change in the size dimorphism, so sexual selection was already underway before the earliest bipedal hominids, similar (but not as extreme) as we see in gorilla (interestingly with bare chests on males, and chests on females that lose hair when the milk-feeding young).
Certainly sexual selection for more and more hairless females is still going on (the razor industry is alive and well, and it is a rare porn site that shows hair ...)
... larynx migration ...
Which makes vocalization possible. If we consider mating behavior to be a driving force in humans as it is in other animals, then we have to look at the possibility of song, dance, music, art, all being derived from mating behavior (mating songs are common, mating plummage is common, many animals have mating dances, etc). Selection for singing could result in larynx relocation with getting a toe wet.
Dancing also accounts for long legs. Just as a measure of possible selection systems, look at who are considered sexy today: singers, dancers, musicians, artists. Not: runners, swimmers, philosophers, mathematicians, nobel prize winners, (etc).
You hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the wet environs of our earliest hominids
One of the (many) theories of early hominids is that they migrated south along the western shores and then back to Ethiopia area, following the supply of tubers in swampy ground. Certainly they covered a lot of ground, but I don't think they were committed to any single foraging pattern, but likely to be opportunistic for wherever they were.
... mixed up nudy savannah hominids ...
Why do you assume that they would be mixed up? Or that the chimps would accept you (they have been known to kill other chimps over territory).
Enjoy.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


• • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •

This message is a reply to:
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Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 68 of 202 (484474)
09-28-2008 7:22 PM
Reply to: Message 60 by arrogantape
09-28-2008 4:43 PM


Hi, arrogantape.
arrogantape writes:
It has been proven that all babies do instinctually know to hold their breath under water, and swim. Odd but true.
Care to throw your baby in the water to prove it?
On the website linked by Chiroptera earlier (Aquatic Ape), there is a page that addresses the reason why people think babies can swim. Basically, it is a misreading of an old (1939) scientific paper recording the behavior of mammals in water, which concludes that human infants move in the water in exactly the same manner as other young quadrupeds. Moore (the website guy) has this to say about it:
quote:
So that's the sad secret of the drowning infants; what we actually find here is not so much "swimming babies" as infant mammals slowly drowning without a struggle.
-----
arrogantape writes:
Our subcutaneous fat is plentiful compared to any other ape.
Also not true. Again, see the site Chiroptera linked for a refutation of this idea.
-----
Anyway, the topic of the thread is "fur/hair," not swimming or adipose tissue, so, let's talk about hair:
arrogantape writes:
There is the ornamental side of head hair. We also have hair wherever it can gather body scent.
And this tells us that there are other factors that are more important in regards to hair than aquatic streamlining. You yourself have put "body odor" as more important than hydrodynamics.

-Bluejay
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
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arrogantape
Member (Idle past 4641 days)
Posts: 87
Joined: 09-26-2008


Message 69 of 202 (484477)
09-28-2008 7:43 PM


Chiroptera, I am going to back off a bit on the particulars. It is interesting reading back on dialogs over the net concerning aquatic apes. I find fault in both camps. It seems the chief defender of the aquatic origin hypothesis reaches afar for animal mirror attributes. These are, in turn, easily refuted. On the other hand, the antagonists bring up ridiculous refutations that are far off anything to do with hominids.
Still, I am not wavering in my favoring the aquatic origin. Just look at the known fossil record. Don't you think it very strange we are looking at bipedal hominids dangerously close to the split geneticists have postulated of 5 million years?
It seems there must have been some real strong environmental forces acting on an isolated population. I just don't buy the pelvis, legs, spine, appendage specialization and head articulation changes appeared what looks like all at the same time any other way.
The fossils are being found in and around water. Lucy and her gang seems to have been in the midst of water.
We are not anything like seals, and whales. But, we are definitely confident in the water. Anyone getting wet clothed wants to shed that clingy wetness. Wet terrestrial fir just isn't something I would want to wear swimming.
In the savannah, speed to the tree is the way to survival. Baboons and chimps are good at that, and they fully utilize all fours.
In an aquatic environment, a lot of predators would not venture there. I am talking of flooded plains. That helps. Creatures to eat under the water are more plentiful, and easier to capture than the small pickings on the savannah.
It is just plain easy for me to digest our evolutionary leap from our simian brethren.
Edited by arrogantape, : No reason given.

Replies to this message:
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arrogantape
Member (Idle past 4641 days)
Posts: 87
Joined: 09-26-2008


Message 70 of 202 (484478)
09-28-2008 7:44 PM


RAZD,
The chimp vs. hominid protector comment was meant tongue in cheek.

  
arrogantape
Member (Idle past 4641 days)
Posts: 87
Joined: 09-26-2008


Message 71 of 202 (484481)
09-28-2008 7:56 PM


Bluejay, we all have seen lots of film depicting babies swim. They may have had coaxing, but they do it, and a lot sooner than their first step.
The sexual hair on our bodies are out of the way. They produce almost no drag, unless you are counting the hundredths like Phelps.
Speed swimming was not Lucy's goal anyway. She just wanted to collect some tender water weeds and morsels then dry quickly. Obviously the early terrestrially slow hominids were somehow very successful in surviving.
I like the idea of head hair naturally staying in place while the rest sheds hair for practical reasons. Toddlers would find it handy.

  
AnswersInGenitals
Member (Idle past 151 days)
Posts: 673
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 72 of 202 (484503)
09-29-2008 1:48 AM
Reply to: Message 68 by Blue Jay
09-28-2008 7:22 PM


Water babies.
Care to throw your baby in the water to prove it?
That's just what we did with both our babies when they were but two months old. They held there breath, up to about 30 seconds, and while they could not lift their heads above water to breath, they made effective swimming motions and swam to us. Most amazing, they thought this was all fabulous fun. There was at that time a public recreation program called 'Water Baby' that promoted this type of training. They are now both excellent swimmers and love being in the water and have raised their children the same way with the same results. It would be interesting to know if any other primate infants would react the same way to being introduced to the water.

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arrogantape
Member (Idle past 4641 days)
Posts: 87
Joined: 09-26-2008


Message 73 of 202 (484529)
09-29-2008 9:52 AM


new babies can instinctually swim
""""""That's just what we did with both our babies when they were but two months old. They held there breath, up to about 30 seconds, and while they could not lift their heads above water to breath, they made effective swimming motions and swam to us. Most amazing, they thought this was all fabulous fun. There was at that time a public recreation program called 'Water Baby' that promoted this type of training. They are now both excellent swimmers and love being in the water and have raised their children the same way with the same results. It would be interesting to know if any other primate infants would react the same way to being introduced to the water.""""""
Nothing like first hand evidence
Now, I'd say why on earth do our naked babies know how to swim, and love it, while no primate, other than the wading Japanese monkeys, have anything to do with water.
My premise is there had to be a seriously strong evolutionary forcing major morphology changes on our ancestors over a relatively short period of time.
Our closest relative, the Bonobo chimp, has all the tools it needs to survive in a dangerous world. It is hot where they live, yet they are well furred. They don't swim. There are nasty predators that stalk them, and so they still can use all limbs for running and climbing. This is a successful survival strategy employed by all arboreal mammals. None are naked.
We are so so climbers. Lucy might have climbed better, but like us, she had her long trailing legs to slow her down. Not good. Lucy was no brainiac. She made no tools. Yet, her species survived millions of years. Homo Habilis most likely evolved from Afarensis, and so on to us eventually.
I ask everyone, what do you think this slender upright brachiate, Anfarensis, have that made it so successful?

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Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 74 of 202 (484560)
09-29-2008 1:20 PM
Reply to: Message 69 by arrogantape
09-28-2008 7:43 PM


I find fault in both camps.
Funny. The only fault I find in either camp is that the Aquatic Ape supporters have no actual evidence to support their claims. The traditionalists do -- all fossil hominids are clearly terrestrial. There is no example of an "aquatic ape" of the type that the AAH supporters insist must exist -- either extant or in the fossil record.
-
The fossils are being found in and around water. Lucy and her gang seems to have been in the midst of water.
What? Are you claiming that Australopithecus afarensis was aquatic? Are you aware that you are now moving beyond even Elaine Morgan and Marc Verhaegen's position? The AAH postulates an as yet unknown ancestor that was aquatic, not A. afarensis. Are you claiming that anthropologists are too incompetent to be able to determine whether a fairly complete fossil animal is aquatic or terrestrial?
-
Still, I am not wavering in my favoring the aquatic origin.
Sounds religious in nature to me.

Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

This message is a reply to:
 Message 69 by arrogantape, posted 09-28-2008 7:43 PM arrogantape has not replied

  
arrogantape
Member (Idle past 4641 days)
Posts: 87
Joined: 09-26-2008


Message 75 of 202 (484567)
09-29-2008 2:16 PM


By aquatic I mean hominids that used water born resources for their survival, not that they lived in the water. There is no evidence how any of the individuals that left their remains in fossil form lived.
It is just too hard for me to imagine any other survival strategy for slow moving, slow climbing creatures, with nothing to defend themselves with. They would have been taken by a multitude of predators as easily as those predator's undefended babies could be snatched.
Add to that our peculiar naked bodies, blubber floats, elongated body, AND a natural swimming instinct, and no wonder some of us question our origins. Think of how many naked creatures are out there? The very big elephant is one...... the rest utilize nutrition found in water.

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