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Foraging humans, mammals and birds who live in the same place behave similarly

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Re: Foraging humans, mammals and birds who live in the same place behave similarly

#11

Post by Melting_Harps »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #4

It's always interesting to see how the press office paints these things as historic eureka moments. These results, while fascinating, are basically in line with what we call Behavioral Ecology and more specifically, Human Behavioral Ecology. The latter has emerged as a pretty strong framework in the past few years. This sort of support is nice to see (and there's been a decent bit of buzz about this particular paper!…

> It's always interesting to see how the press office paints these things as historic eureka moments. These results, while fascinating, are basically in line with what we call Behavioral Ecology and more specifically, Human Behavioral Ecology. The latter has emerged as a pretty strong framework in the past few years. This sort of support is nice to see (and there's been a decent bit of buzz about this particular paper!), but it's evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

It's almost like Man finally accepted that it is part of Nature, isn't?

It's sad, as Biologists we wasted so much time memorizing archaic data, experimental designs, mechanisms often based on the observations (Evolution and inheritance via genetics) of aristocrats who dropped out of Society (Darwin) or Monks (Mendel) with no real formal 'scientific education' instead of going out and falling in love with Nature and trying to utilize it's methods into our 21st calamity and increase it's use cases.

Irony and reminder of Man's infinite folly when it comes to Nature: Father of modern theory of Evolution (Charles Darwin) also practiced incest.

Re: Foraging humans, mammals and birds who live in the same place behave similarly

#12

Post by throwaway2245 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

So, if we want to influence human behaviour in the modern world (first child at 20 or 30? Is aggression linked to desire / see to hunt?) can we take the lessons here and apply them to urban design?

It seems to me that changing the environment to manipulate human behaviour ultimately creates stress (in a very literal sense), which is likely to undermine the goal.

Re: Foraging humans, mammals and birds who live in the same place behave similarly

#13

Post by lifeisstillgood »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #6
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

So, if we want to influence human behaviour in the modern world (first child at 20 or 30? Is aggression linked to desire / see to hunt?) can we take the lessons here and apply them to urban design?

Short answer: No. You should always be wary of trying to apply evolutionary models to achieve specific real-world goals. Given the past history here, I'll go out on a limb and say that it's always a mistake. Even if it was the right choice, these sorts of things have a dizzying array of unintuitive results and even the academics involved are still working out a lot of the implications. In particular, we don't have a…

Fairy Nuff.

I think we do know of plenty of anti-patterns (ie concrete monstrosities, lack of local walkable amenities) so urban planning is still a Good Thing. If done right.

Re: Foraging humans, mammals and birds who live in the same place behave similarly

#14

Post by Ygg2 »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #11
AlotOfReading wrote: post #4

It's always interesting to see how the press office paints these things as historic eureka moments. These results, while fascinating, are basically in line with what we call Behavioral Ecology and more specifically, Human Behavioral Ecology. The latter has emerged as a pretty strong framework in the past few years. This sort of support is nice to see (and there's been a decent bit of buzz about this particular paper!…

> It's always interesting to see how the press office paints these things as historic eureka moments. These results, while fascinating, are basically in line with what we call Behavioral Ecology and more specifically, Human Behavioral Ecology. The latter has emerged as a pretty strong framework in the past few years. This sort of support is nice to see (and there's been a decent bit of buzz about this particular pape…

> Irony and reminder of Man's infinite folly when it comes to Nature: Father of modern theory of Evolution (Charles Darwin) also practiced incest.

That is a non sequitur. The article is same constraint lead to same outcomes. Humans as we know don't forage. If we did, there would be a Great extinction of edible species, followed by a famine.

Darwin had no hard proof inbreeding is a problem. We do now. He acted rationally based on his data.

Re: Foraging humans, mammals and birds who live in the same place behave similarly

#15

Post by foxhop »

lwhi wrote: post #7
fogihujy wrote: post #2

Interesting, but is it surprising? I would expect most species to adapt to surroundings, and if something works well for one, then surely there is a large chance it may work for other species too?

I came away with a different take away. Perhaps a sustainable ecosystem is more likely to thrive if those at the top follow the same model patterns of interaction. .. and perhaps, the fact that there's an evolutionary biological precident suggests that we were in step with a sustainable model for longer than we've been out of step.

Join permaculture channel on matrix or IRC over at freenode. We agree.

Otherwise here is an old but free book which lays out a sustainable path to grow healthy humans and planet by working with nature:

https://archive.org/details/permaculture1adesignersmanualbyb...

Re: Foraging humans, mammals and birds who live in the same place behave similarly

#16

Post by lmm »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #12
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

So, if we want to influence human behaviour in the modern world (first child at 20 or 30? Is aggression linked to desire / see to hunt?) can we take the lessons here and apply them to urban design?

It seems to me that changing the environment to manipulate human behaviour ultimately creates stress (in a very literal sense), which is likely to undermine the goal.

Not necessarily - the change might be to make an environment that's less stressful to humans (e.g. humans might like an environment where they can see what's coming and avoid being ambushed).

Re: Foraging humans, mammals and birds who live in the same place behave similarly

#17

Post by lwhi »

lwhi wrote: post #7
fogihujy wrote: post #2

Interesting, but is it surprising? I would expect most species to adapt to surroundings, and if something works well for one, then surely there is a large chance it may work for other species too?

I came away with a different take away. Perhaps a sustainable ecosystem is more likely to thrive if those at the top follow the same model patterns of interaction. .. and perhaps, the fact that there's an evolutionary biological precident suggests that we were in step with a sustainable model for longer than we've been out of step.

*precedent

Re: Foraging humans, mammals and birds who live in the same place behave similarly

#18

Post by burlesona »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #12
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

So, if we want to influence human behaviour in the modern world (first child at 20 or 30? Is aggression linked to desire / see to hunt?) can we take the lessons here and apply them to urban design?

It seems to me that changing the environment to manipulate human behaviour ultimately creates stress (in a very literal sense), which is likely to undermine the goal.

Except that environmental change to manipulate human behavior is ubiquitous. Consider traffic lights, fences, handrails, etc.

The only question is what behavior we’re trying to achieve and how we’re manipulating the environment to achieve it.

Re: Foraging humans, mammals and birds who live in the same place behave similarly

#19

Post by im3w1l »

For me, this is very surprising.

> For example, when obtaining food, there are environments where humans get a significant proportion of their calories from hunting. In these locations it was shown there are much larger proportions of carnivorous mammals and birds than elsewhere.

I would have expected that the hunting-niche filled up, so that it was rather anti-correlated. One species eats more meat another eats less.

For sexual behavior, I suppose I could see the geography (how big island in particular - is that where they find these "human populations who obtain most of their food by foraging in the environment where they live") playing a part. If people have to travel by water to find a mate that could change things.

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