No One Knows Why Humans Can Walk
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No One Knows Why Humans Can Walk
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Re: No One Knows Why Humans Can Walk
#2I do. I'm just not telling.
But quite a lot of birds walk, and a lot more of their dinosarian relatives did. Ostriches and emus favor it, when they are not running. Faster than we can.
Orangutans do it too, though not very often.
Re: No One Knows Why Humans Can Walk
#3> The young and gracile protohuman famously known as Lucy... was hardly the sort of presence to intimidate a lion or cheetah.
And look at us now
Re: No One Knows Why Humans Can Walk
#4I do. I'm just not telling. But quite a lot of birds walk, and a lot more of their dinosarian relatives did. Ostriches and emus favor it, when they are not running. Faster than we can. Orangutans do it too, though not very often.
So do bears, and even dogs & cats can walk. Not well, but acceptably.
Re: No One Knows Why Humans Can Walk
#5I like the water ape theory. ie we had a period of time in our history where we spent a lot of time in low lying water that encouraged us to stand upright. There's a few things which point in this direction. iirc we're the only primate which can control its breath; good for swimming under water. Our fingers wrinkle when we spend time in water; good for picking things up in water. And we lost our hair; hair may have gotten caught on underwater objects drowning the hairiest amongst of us.
Re: No One Knows Why Humans Can Walk
#6Too hard to chew gum crawling on all fours
Re: No One Knows Why Humans Can Walk
#7It would be more difficult to use tools if we had to use all members for locomotion. The ones who started walking straight got an advantage for being able to fight with spears and bows.
Re: No One Knows Why Humans Can Walk
#8> Most large animals can’t run for more than about nine miles before they drop.
Feels like they are implying something here ... Can't figure out if I'm offended
Re: No One Knows Why Humans Can Walk
#9I do. I'm just not telling. But quite a lot of birds walk, and a lot more of their dinosarian relatives did. Ostriches and emus favor it, when they are not running. Faster than we can. Orangutans do it too, though not very often.
Birds (especially large birds) inherited a long line of large, fast-moving, bipedal predator ancestors. We don't really have that; primates evolved ~55Mya, and before that we were mostly rodent-ish animals which depended on being small and hidden to survive rather than running fast or long distances.
There's a lot to be said for parallel/convergent evolution, but it's certainly not hard & fast rule.
Re: No One Knows Why Humans Can Walk
#10I like the water ape theory. ie we had a period of time in our history where we spent a lot of time in low lying water that encouraged us to stand upright. There's a few things which point in this direction. iirc we're the only primate which can control its breath; good for swimming under water. Our fingers wrinkle when we spend time in water; good for picking things up in water. And we lost our hair; hair may have g…
Seems like a stretch. We suck at swimming (compared to bears for speed or distance). The breath thing seems unlikely, polar bears for instance seem quite adept at swimming underwater. Hair doesn't seem an issue either, hair (assuming it's not knotted) doesn't easily catch on things, and hairy bears seem quite adept under water. Sure whales used to be hairy (and has some residual hair today), but that's more the lack of need than any lethal hair+water problem that kills them off before they reproduce.
I've seen numerous speculation on the finger wrinkles, possibly an adaption.... or possibly just happenstance. Sure today's fingers prune significantly, not sure they would do the same if heavily callused by a decade or two of hunter gathering for all your food. In any case it's not unique to humans, macaques have similar and I suspect it's noticed because they bathe. Couldn't find any information on other primates.
[edit for minor spelling/grammar tweaks]