The Trouble with Human Evolution: Part Two

When it comes to the standard model of how modern humans evolved from our primate ancestors, be prepared to ask the tough questions and see if they get answered to your satisfaction. Questions like can you really go from primates to what makes you, the reader, you, via natural selection in 6 to 7 million years. So, if you think the standard model is unlikely, and you reject any supernatural explanation that leaves but two alternatives: artificial selection or we’re simulated beings.

Modern humans have evolved over the past six to seven million years a number of traits that make us, Homo sapiens, a very unique species indeed. Here are some more of them.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

A VOCAL LANGUAGE

* Is an anomaly in that only humans vocalise not only everyday, routine, survival ‘language’ (all manner of animals do that) but abstract concepts (which no other animals do).

* A vocal or spoken language required to communicate abstract ideas, as apart from just making sounds, requires an evolutionary rearrangement of the relevant internal organs required; lips, teeth, tongue, hard and soft palate, larynx, etc.

C - Cats meow, lions roar, but their meow (or the lion’s roar) has nothing to do with communicating abstract concepts like basic mathematics.

TOOL USE

* Is an anomaly in that while a few other animals can make and use tools, that relative degree of sophistication relative to what humans have achieved is akin to comparing the survival skills of a day-old infant with that of an adult.

* Tool use requires an evolutionary rearrangement of the finger-hand-wrist-arm-shoulder configuration, as well as that extra-large brain thingy to figure out that a tool is required, what resources are required to make that tool, and how to manufacture the necessary implement from those resources. A lot of just-so conditions have to be met to accommodate even the most basic of tool technologies. 

* Tool use could ultimately prove our undoing as tool use, or technology, is a double-edged sword. A gun can put food on your table; it can also exterminate humans.

C - Cats are not adapted at using tools. If they could use a can opener and a spoon they could get their own meals! That would suit me just fine, but alas.

BREEDS or ETHNIC/RACIAL DISTINCTIONS

* Are anomalous in that when taking into consideration the rest of the animal and plant kingdom, breeds (groupings that look different but can still breed and produce non-sterile offspring) tend to be associated with artificial, not natural selection. Are human breeds therefore a product of artificial selection, and if so, by whom? 

* Human breeds cannot be adequately explained in the just 70,000 or some odd years since that one unique racial type of Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa and spread throughout the globe diverging into numerous racial types. Even if there were several migrations out of Africa, a wave of migrations, all those migrant waves were of one race or breed. The 70,000 year time period is very short, the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms, to achieve this uniqueness of going from a local African uni-race to a multiracial global society. Further, the evolutionary (survival of the fittest) advantage or reason(s) for ethnic distinctions are lacking any rational natural explanation, apart from in some selected races, skin colour.

C - Your standard pussycat comes in various breeds. That’s artificial selection at work, albeit the whodunit in this case is well known.

UNIQUE FACIAL FEATURES

* Are a relatively human anomaly. Apart from identical twins, no two humans from the neck up look the same, and thus this is how we tell human identities, once seen, apart. We tend to tell animals of the same species or breed (if applicable) apart by size, colour, skin/fur patterns, abnormalities, or else we don’t distinguish who’s who at all. To me, all magpie faces look the same. The question is, why humans have unique facial features and not the rest of the animal kingdom?

C - If you took 100 pure short-hair black cats, same size, same sex, same eye colour, could you tell them apart by looking at just their face? I doubt if I could.

THE WHITES-OF-YOUR-EYES

* Are anomalous in that apparently no other animal show them, and based on all the animals and birds I see around my local environment, that certainly seems to be the case.  So why do we show the whites-of-our-eyes? There would appear to be no rhyme or reason for this natural human evolutionary (if it was a natural selection) trait. The whites-of-our-eyes: how very, very odd.

C - Cats have whites-of-their-eyes, only you have to peel back the skin surrounding their eyeballs to see the whites-of-their-eyes. Looking at a standard cat, you’ll fail to see the whites-of-their-eyes.

EARLOBES

* Are anomalous in that apparently no other mammal (and certainly not any fish, amphibian, reptile or bird) have them. So why do we have them?

* Earlobes? WTF you ask? Well we all know that our earlobes serve a cultural purpose or function as a prime site as an accessory to fashion – pierced ears and earrings. However, earlobes serve no actual biological function. You could exist, survive and thrive without them. Because we alone have earlobes, and because they serve no biological purpose, they are anomalous.

* On the other hand, earlobes apparently don’t do us any harm. But, biological evolution tends to select for the positive benefit, not the neutral. Why would Mother Nature evolve them if they serve no biological purpose? WTF indeed!

C - Cats have ears; cats do not have earlobes.

RISK TAKING

* Is anomalous in that if done just for the sake of doing it, serves no positive evolutionary purpose or outcome while accenting a negative one, giving oneself a ‘Darwin Award’ for eliminating yourself from further contributions to the evolution of the human species. 

* No animal will engage in any hazardous activity that doesn’t have some connection towards its own, its immediate family brood, its community or its species survival. An animal doesn’t take risks just for the sake of taking risks and just for the thrill of it all. Humans however will often engage in extreme risky activities, without any benefit to anyone, including themselves, except to perhaps remove themselves from the gene pool. Risky behaviour might include right up to and including suicide which most decidedly removes you from the gene pool. Suicide is not a trait that tends to be shared by our animal relations, and apparent exceptions, like whales stranding themselves in shallow water, have a physiological explanation. 

C - Cats are not known to take risks above and beyond the call of their feline duty, even if they do occasionally get stuck up a tree!

PRIVACY AND EMBARRASSMENT

* Is anomalous in that no animal species, outside of the human species, seems to be the slightest bit concerned with privacy (not to be confused with territoriality or personal space, rather just privacy from being observed under certain conditions or in certain situations usually of a sexual or bodily function nature). Nor do animals, unlike humans, suffer any form of embarrassment. That suggests that there is no evolutionary or survival aspect to the need for privacy or the suffering of being embarrassed. Somehow, in humans alone (but not yet in babies or infants), these concepts have been imprinted onto our collective psyche. Imprinted by whom? What is the ultimate origin and how far back does it go? Why is it so? Who knows! But the upshot is that this has to be a cultural quirk; it’s certainly not a biological one.

* There are apparently two real taboo places in human society where intruders are not welcome: the bedroom and the bathroom, or put another way, sex and bodily functions, where privacy is paramount and when violated, embarrassment ensues. The latter especially is puzzling in that bodily functions are universal. Every human has to go to the bathroom, all women have ‘that time of the month’, so why these should be embarrassments if witnessed by others is anomalous. That’s also highlighted in that sex and bodily functions are not biological events which animals find requires privacy or causes embarrassment to them if witnessed by others.

* Nudity per se doesn’t seem to be the root cause, as people seem to be way less shy of appearing nude in fairly standard social situations than when engaged in more personal bedroom/bathroom matters that require exposure.

* Embarrassment in humans can be caused by many other oops events, maybe comical, like wearing mismatched socks, maybe somewhat more serious like splitting your pants in public. But if an equivalent event happens to an animal, no such reaction comes to the fore. For example, if you stumble and fall down, piss your pants, or vomit in public, you’re embarrassed. If an animal does the equivalent, it just picks itself up and acts like nothing unusual transpired. Animals don’t blush.

C - Cats don’t care if you or another cat sees them mate or go to the litter box. They don’t suffer embarrassment and they don’t blush.

CATS

C - Its only fair to ask in regards to my feline comparison, does a cat have any anatomical or physiological or behavioural feature unique to them and only them? The surprising answer is yes. Cats purr, and the reasons why and how are still not well understood. Humans don’t purr. No other animal purrs. Their big cat relatives don’t purr, but then again lions and tigers, etc. roar, and your pet pussy cat doesn’t. So perhaps the two vocalizations are related from way back when they all had a common ancestor! But purr or roar, there appears to be no evolutionary drawbacks, just positive survival benefits like warning off rival lions (my roar is louder than your roar) or mother/kitten bonding in cats.

CONCLUSIONS

* There are four possible explanations for the various anomalies associated with the existence of the modern human species relative to our alleged ancestral stock which goes right back to the chimpanzees. In descending order of probability, IMHO, there’s the simulated universe scenario inhabited by us as virtual entities (created by ‘persons’ or things unknown and probably forever unknowable); there’s artificial selection (the ancient astronaut theory); there’s natural selection (the Darwinian biological evolution concept); and way, way last, by a wide, wide margin, there’s supernatural creation (the dust-and-rib theory and variations thereof).

* Why this ordering of probabilities? There are many paths to a simulated universe, from wetware to software, via extraterrestrials or maybe a future ‘human’ society, that it borders on the near inevitable. There’s but one pathway to the artificial selection scenario, though that too is just about inevitable. There are many issues to be had with natural selection as this essay demonstrates, though that’s the standard model. Lastly, the concept of an all-perfect supernatural deity who would screw up things so royally is laughable – as is the concept of a supernatural deity in the first place.

* The interesting bit is that a virtual reality simulation could easily be a simulation of an ‘ancient astronaut’ generated artificial selection, or Darwinian natural selection, or even a supernatural creator deity! Truth be known, only the simulated universe scenario makes any real sense, IMHO, because therein, “anything goes”, and when it comes to the problems with human evolution, one needs an “anything goes” explanation.

The Trouble with Human Evolution: Part One

When it comes to the standard model of how modern humans evolved from our primate ancestors, especially apparently the chimpanzee, you should be prepared to ask the tough questions and see if they get answered to your satisfaction. Questions like can you really go from chimpanzee stock to what makes you, the reader, you, via natural selection in 6 to 7 million years? That’s not just a little change, but a massive change and on several broad physiological, anatomical and behavioural fronts. Contrast your society, lifestyle and body-plan with that of the chimpanzee. So, if you think the standard model is unlikely, and you reject any supernatural explanation, that leaves but two alternatives, an artificial selection by ancient aliens, or we’re akin to characters in a video game – we are simulated beings.

Modern humans have evolved over the past six to seven million years a number of traits that make us, Homo sapiens, a very unique species indeed. We alone of all the mammals (as well as all invertebrates, amphibians and reptiles) have a bipedal gait. We alone of all of our primate cousins are for all practical purposes hairless. Of all the animals that are, or have ever been, we’re top of the pops with respect to brain size as a function of body size, and in terms of intelligence, king of the hill full stop. And while animals can communicate via vocalizations and body language, none can communicate the extremely wide range of practical and especially abstract concepts that we can. Last, but not least, humans are nearly unique in making and using external tools, tools unique in terms of their sophistication.

All five major traits noted above, and a lot more that’s related besides, don’t seem to be a requirement for basic survival, since other species survive and thrive without them, and in fact all these major five defining traits (and more) seem to have some actual evolutionary drawbacks, not the least of which require very serious modifications to basic primate anatomy for apparently no increase in that Darwinian phrase “survival of the fittest”. The proof of that pudding is that our ultimate primate ancestor still survives – the chimpanzee; their ultimate descendent survives – the modern human; yet all those in-betweens hominids who were presumably adapting via natural selection resulting in all those evolutionary changing improvements, went kaput – over twenty species of them. If these “survival of the fittest” evolutionary adaptations were all that crash hot and necessary, then why was their demise? Any ancestral hominoids that went extinct prior to 200,000 years ago can’t have Homo sapiens as the villain. Those 20 plus extinct hominid species aside, why aren’t many of those natural selection improvements really so crash hot for us modern humans either? Here’s the trouble with human evolution. But first consider this.

THE ROOT CAUSE & DRIVING FORCE

The current standard model of human evolution explains the ‘why’ question due to rapid and extreme shifts in climate in continental Africa over that six to seven million year period. The central problem there IMHO is why these shifts failed to drastically produce evolutionary changes in the rest of the animal populations like elephants, lions, hyenas, giraffes, zebras, wildebeests and other African landlubbers as the Dark Continent went from jungle to forest to savannah to arid deserts and back again.

Now of course environmental change is a major driving force behind biological evolution, at least when it comes to natural selection. But one has to look at the Big Picture, the entirety of the bio-realm and not just isolate one changing species and link the two and ignore all else. The environment changes and hominoids change but all the other species seemingly don’t change. That makes for an anomaly. 

One of the key phrases in evolution is that “there is a price to pay” for change – no free lunch or get out of jail card is authorized. That “no pain, no gain” price applies whether you’re dealing with natural or artificial selection. But I sometimes wonder whether one is getting a fifty-cent gain return on a dollar investment worth of pain. Consider the following. 

OUR BIPEDAL GAIT

* Is an anomaly in that human beings, alone of all the mammals, walk routinely on just two legs.

* It called for a complete redesign of our musculoskeletal system vis-à-vis our chimpanzee ancestors.

* That results in an increase in all our various painful bad back trials and tribulations.

* And it also requires a rearrangement of our internal organ attachments.

* A bipedal gait needs a harder working heart to pump blood up to our now higher upper reaches, like the head and neck, instead of mainly sideways. A bipedal gait means having to fight the better fight against gravity.

* A bipedal gait results in an increase in difficulties in maintaining an upright balance (especially as one grows older) because the centre of gravity has shifted dramatically. It’s much easier to push over a standing human than say a standing dog.

* A bipedal gait further results in a decrease in survival value due to the ever possible loss of or injury to a leg, foot, ankle, etc. Lose the use of a leg and in the wilderness, you’re nearly helpless.

* A bipedal gait has to the best of my knowledge only arisen once before, and that was in the theropod dinosaur branch, like T-Rex, etc. That was the branch that gave rise to the birds, therefore they are also bipedal, but it originated with an early, early ancestor of T-Rex. Some may argue that kangaroos and their relatives like the wallabies are bipedal, but they don’t put one leg in front of the other in a left-right-left-right-left-right fashion. They hop, which doesn’t quite put them in the same category as humans or even birds. Further, the theropod dinosaurs, the birds, and even the kangaroos all have tails to help keep their centre of balance, well, balanced. That’s cheating!!! Humans lack that support structure (a rather sad tale I’m sure), so I’ll argue that the human bipedal gait is still unique among all animals, past and present. Humans remain the one and only really bona-fide bipedal entity. Okay, a few tailless primates can ‘walk’ for brief intervals, but their normal locomotion is via their four limbs on the ground when not swinging in the trees.

C - A bipedal gait isn’t a lifestyle walk-the-walk gait that is commonly noted in cats – in fact it isn’t noted at all. Why cats? Why not cats? C is for Cat; C is for Comparison. So as a comparison, let’s take cats, who have a multitude of feline relatives (tigers, lions, etc.) and who have survived and thrived for quite some considerable time. Why cats? Firstly because I’m familiar with cats and secondly because they are an advanced multicellular relatively sophisticated mammalian species, much liken to us. Cats share a great deal with us humans apart from being warm-blooded mammals. Cats, like humans are curious, playful, tend to look after number one, are territorial, like to sleep, dream, have a good memory, show emotions, and like humans have colonized the globe – except Antarctica – either as domestics or as ferals or as wild animals, etc. But, they don’t walk-the-walk on just their two hind legs!

A LARGE HUMAN BRAIN

* Is an anomaly, along with that associated brain thingy high IQ or intelligence we have, relative to the rest of the animal kingdom, which collectively aren’t quite, by any stretch of the imagination, in Einstein’s league. Humans have the largest brain size as a function of body size in the entire animal kingdom, again, apparently both past and present. .

* A large human brain makes for an increasingly hazardous childbirth. The relatively large head of the foetus at childbirth, having to pass through the space available via the hip opening, has resulted in not just a rather painful experience for the mother (and presumably the infant too) but has often led to the premature death of a lot of said newborns and/or their mothers. Now another anomaly here is that if the human body has accommodated all the massive anatomical changes required for a bipedal lifestyle, you’d think an increase in the birth canal hip opening size would have been relatively evolutionary child’s play. 

* The human brain takes years to develop fully, nearly two decades worth in fact, leaving infants totally dependent on others for survival. Infants need care not just for a few weeks or months or seasons, but for many, many years, extending right through their teens, thus cramping the lifestyle of the parents. This length of time for brain development and associated acquiring of survival skills to fully develop is unprecedented in all other primates.

* A large human brain is a very energy-intensive organ. In fact 25% of our energy requirements are required to fuel our upstairs grey-matter wetware. That in turn puts additional pressures on hunting and/or gathering for that extra in food resources required to supply that energy need. Apparently the increase in those energy demands is what drove us to begin to hunt down and eat meat and invent cooking (to make the meat easier to digest). Well, maybe.

C - Cats, however endearing, are not a little feline version of Einstein.

A LACK OF FUR

* Is an anomaly since humans alone of nearly 200 species of our primate cousins are considered a “naked ape”.

* Our relative lack of fur makes us dependent on sweating for temperature regulation, also making us highly dependent on sources of freshwater and salt.

* Our relative lack of fur has the apparent advantage of enabling humans to become long distance endurance runners since we can continually keep cool, even while running, by sweating, yet what we are running after (prey), or from (predators), don’t sweat and therefore are quickly overcome by heat exhaustion. We get a meal, or escape from being one. Well that’s the standard scenario. I think it would have made more sense to have used our social group numbers, increasing IQ and tool making abilities to hunt and ambush game rather than running them down. As for escaping predators, perhaps we should have retained our tree climbing abilities, and if no trees were available, there are always rocks to throw and sticks to club predators with. I’m not convinced loss of fur in order to sweat in order to run marathons in order to eat or avoid being eaten are related in a cause-and-effect way. In any event running is also very energy consuming and it isn’t normally sound practice to expend more energy than you have to, especially when you don’t know where and when your next meal is coming from. And if it is advantageous for evolving hominoids to lose fur, take up sweating, take up jogging, and run to exhaustion large prey animals, then it should also be advantageous for other predators, like the lion, to do the same. But that hasn’t happened. Why not?  

* Our relative lack of fur requires the need, as a substitution, for clothing in cooler environments. Why a human, originating in and adapted to a tropical climate without need of fur, therefore without need of clothing, would migrate into cooler, even cold habitats where fur, or now a clothing substitute instead, is a near requirement, is itself an anomaly. You swap fur for clothing, but clothing in itself requires a whole lot of special skills to produce – fur doesn’t.

C – Cats, as well as their wildlife big cat cousins, do not lack a natural covering of fur. 

To be continued…

Whodunit: What Killed Off Our Ancestors? Part Two

“Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?” was one of those top-notch mystery comedies from 1978. Who killed the ancestors of modern day humans isn’t quite so funny, but it’s still a top-notch mystery. I propose one rather unconventional answer, our creator ‘gods’, the extraterrestrials.

Modern humans (Homo sapiens) evolved from other primates, most probably from chimpanzee stock in Africa when DNA relationships are analysed. We have a 98% compatibility with chimpanzee DNA. However, there was a long chain of in-betweens twixt chimpanzees and modern humans, the two key transitions being a bipedal gait (Australopithecus) and tool use (Homo). The interesting things are that while all the in-betweens have gone extinct, the ancestral primate stock didn’t; the transition to modern humans was so fast that it reeks of artificial selection, not natural. Are the in-between extinctions and the extremely rapid transition to modern humans linked? 

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Conveniently enough each species of Australopithecus and Homo lasted long enough to give rise to the next species of Australopithecus or Homo before going ‘poof’. Now to paraphrase Ian Fleming’s James Bond adversary Goldfinger, ‘Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; three times [or more] is enemy action’. Now one or two, even three in-betweens – those in-between ancient chimpanzees stock (roughly 8 to 6 million years ago) and modern man - that went the way of the dodo might be explainable. That EVERY such in-between species went ‘poof’ is begging for a natural explanation, an explanation that I find lacking.

Over an up to eight million year period, from initial evolution to eventual extinction, all those parental links in our ancestral chain and kissing cousin branches has had that eventual going kaput scenario happen to them. As far as any one of them is concerned, that cradle to grave history was over a fairly short timeframe as geological eras go. I mean many species exist for millions of years; some for tens of millions; even some for hundreds of millions.

Lots of species, say of ants, tuna, frogs, snakes, bears, felines, monkeys, etc. coexist, share common territory, yet of all the hominoid species, Australopithecus and Homo, there remains now just one. Only one currently exists as that lone species, that of course being Homo sapiens – how very odd. Why should modern humans, and modern humans alone, having this long chain of in-betweens leading up to us, yet which no longer exist, be the ‘last man standing’ as it were?

If any and all links in the chimp – modern human chain evolved naturally (the standard model), then you’d expect those adaptations that evolved in the first place to last a spell. The African continent (action city and ground zero for the most part) and African environment wasn’t fluctuating that drastically that no sooner had you evolved to fit in with that environment than it did a total flip-flop and rapidly somersaulted back and forth again and again causing endless extinctions (no species could survive for long under such circumstances) and new opportunities for our next generation of ancestors (soon to go extinct in turn). Alas, that doesn’t wash since other animal species made it continuously through that up to eight million year period, in that same environment, without a care in the world, including, other primates, like the chimpanzees, while apparently a dozen or so of their naturally evolved descendent species were in constant strife! That’s all the more puzzling because all of these links in the chain leading to Homo sapiens were “smarter than the average bear” and chimpanzee too. Even if Africa were a killing zone, how come the same scenarios played out in Asia and Europe too?

Clearly modern humans, responsible for what’s been termed the most recent mass extinction event (of modern flora and fauna), didn’t exterminate their ancestors since modern humans weren’t around for most of that transition period. All Australopithecus and most Homo species went extinct before modern humans came on the scene. Did the next generation in the line of descent kill off the previous generation, in a manner akin to speculation that modern humans exterminated their kissing cousins, the Neanderthals? 

Something’s fishy. In fact physical anthropology texts just note that hominoid species W, X, Y & Z have gone extinct since they are clearly nowhere to be found alive on Earth today, but they can only speculate as to why – they don’t know. They have not the foggiest clue why the Neanderthals don’t walk the Earth today, so they just guesstimate possibilities. 

Perhaps it’s time to scrap the standard model for an alternative and highly un-standard scenario. Might there be a third party behind things? The key is that while modern humans are but one species, there are many breeds.

Once upon a time, a very, very long time ago, an extraterrestrial intelligence, by design (they detected Earth’s bio-signatures like an oxygen atmosphere) or accident, discovered and arrived on Terra Firma, and for some reason(s) or other set up shop. Maybe it was for scientific purposes; maybe a good spot for R&R; maybe as an outpost or home away from home; maybe as a colony.

Now being a high-tech sort of culture (well they did get from there to here after all), and of a curious and scientific yet practical bent, thought it a grand long-term idea to get the native earthlings to serve them, in much the same way we get some animals to serve us – horses, camels or donkeys/mules for transport; seeing-eye dogs for the visually handicapped; guard dogs to, well guard things; canaries in the mines as an early warning system for toxic gases; cats to rid the farm of grain-eating mice; birds to eat the insects; and so on. Of course, in order to get animals to serve us, it not only helps to domesticate or quasi-domesticate them, but to artificially improve on their natural abilities or looks. And so guard dogs become larger and fiercer; horses for racing purposes are bread to become faster; and aesthetics aren’t overlooked either so we breed animals to look this way or that way just because it pleases us to do so; etc. And so many a domesticated animal now comes in breeds; just like humans come in breeds – see the connection? 

One trait we employ animals for is labour – oxen pull the plough, etc. Well, perhaps our extraterrestrials had the same thoughts way back then. But of course the basic stock with which they had to work with could always be improved, like humans breeding faster horses.

The most useful traits aliens would work on or with would be things like intelligence; dexterity; a free pair of appendages with which to manipulate objects; binocular vision; all useful things masters want in their slaves. You don’t employ horses or dogs or cats or even monkeys to plant and harvest cotton – you ‘employ’ Negroes back in the golden pre Civil War days of the Deep American South. Ditto the British Navy – you shanghaied the great unwashed to serve as your basic lowest-of-the-low seamen.

Alas, way back then, the best of the best on offer were the primates. To get them up to the required standard demanded by the aliens required a bit of not natural, but artificial selection. Call it bio-engineering; genetic engineering, the goal was to engineer a life form of greater use to them.

So you start with the original best prime stock available (chimpanzees) and artificially breed and manipulate and select and alter them until you arrive at the modified next or second generation. The original stock, in this case the chimps have served their prime purpose and are of no further use, but since they were already in existence and well adapted to their surroundings and natural environment, their stock continued on, as it does to this day.

The next or second (now slightly modified) generation in turn is artificially manipulated to produce the third generation. Once the second generation has served its purpose its cast adrift and left to fend for themselves but they are NOT well adapted to their surroundings and natural environment, and their stock did NOT continue on but whether quickly or slowly but surely, went extinct.

The third generation gives rise to the fourth generation and thus the third generation go kaput as well, an artificial creation unadapted to the natural world. And so on and so on it goes until you hit the Nth generations – Homo erectus (good, but not great) and modern humans (ideal). Homo sapiens finally possessed nearly all the required attributes the extraterrestrials required, intelligence, opposable digits, bipedal gait that freed up those digits, etc. Even so, the aliens had to give modern humans a boost – the sudden arrival of human culture; the sudden transition from nomadic hunter-gatherer to settler and city dweller.

Clearly Homo erectus and Homo sapiens were the two success stories, but did they migrate out of Africa or were they transported out to selected sites by their creators, the aliens. If the former, you might expect a clear-cut fossil trail outlining and along the migration routes, especially as undirected nomadic wanderings only make progress in terms of steady distances covered over many generations. Alas, the fossil trail that should clearly delineate migration routes just isn’t. The fossil sites are so few and far between that actual migration routes have to be inferred. Transport of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens to these sites would be just as compatible with the actual fossil evidence. The aliens, having achieved artificially selected/genetically engineered species that suited their needs would clearly transport them to where they could be put to good use.

One more clue to the reality of this scenario is the extremely wide and anomalous gap between modern humans and our now nearest chimpanzee ancestors when it comes to rather basic traits. In just eight million years: we’re ‘civilized’; they’re not. We’re bipedal; they’re not; we’re a ‘naked ape’; they’re a ‘hairy ape’ (as are the rest of the primates). We’re very high up in IQ; they’re not. We come in breeds (races); they don’t. We have a sense of, as well as a culture; they don’t. Those are gigantic differences, and all in eight million years, probably less. Eight million years is just 0.2 % of Earth’s geological time – actually slightly less than that. Those are BIG differences compressed into a tiny timeframe.

In other supporting ‘evidence’ I offer up the fact that in mythologies around the world, the ‘gods’ (i.e. – aliens) created humans, including, obviously, Biblical mythology.

The ‘gods’ in nearly all mythologies ultimately give the gifts of civilization or those required for civilization in the accepted use of the term. This also helps to explain the relative sudden transition of many peoples and cultures from a nomadic hunter-gatherer existence to fixed settlements and agriculture. Nearly every culture has a deity of agriculture who gave that skill to that culture.

Mythologies around the globe speak of and illustrate all manner of hybrid creatures, both animal-animal (like the dragon or griffin) and animal-human (like the centaur or sphinx). Such creatures, if real, are either extraterrestrial, or genetically engineered from terrestrial species.

In modern times we have both the animal mutilation and the UFO abduction phenomena, both linked with ongoing alien genetic manipulation of all things terrestrial and maybe extraterrestrial too.  

Now I know what some of you must be thinking – what about all those sightings of Bigfoot or Sasquatch, the Yeti and similar hairy hominoid bipeds of unknown origin? The answer for the here and now to that is when and if these reported beasties acquire the same sort of documentation as reality-based animals, like lions and elephants, then revision will be in order. Until then speculation remains just that, speculation.

Another objection would be if aliens needed domestic manual labour why not just construct and use robots! Ah, it’s not just labour and getting others to do the work. When you think of, for example, the Biblical creation, what does God want? A prime goal of God and all those other gods is being worshiped, sort of like what we expect and take pleasure from in our pets’ adoration or their ‘worshiping’ of us – even if it’s only Fido the dog wagging his tail when you come home, or Fluffy the cat purring and rubbing against your leg. There’s no gain or self-satisfaction in programming a machine to bow and scrape unto you.

In summary, that’s my scenario as to who killed off the great ancestors of modern humans and why. It wasn’t deliberate genocide on the part of the creators, just Mother Nature culling those species that weren’t suited to their natural environment. Why they weren’t suited is, again, because our ancestors were artificially created, so when cast adrift, well the rest as they say is history.

Whodunit: What Killed Off Our Ancestors? Part One

“Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?” was one of those top-notch mystery comedies from 1978. Who killed the ancestors of modern day humans isn’t quite so funny, but it’s still a top-notch mystery. I propose one rather unconventional answer, our creator ‘gods’, the extraterrestrials.

Modern humans (Homo sapiens) evolved from other primates, most probably from chimpanzee stock in Africa when DNA relationships are analysed. We have a 98% compatibility with chimpanzee DNA. However, there was a long chain of in-betweens twixt chimpanzees and modern humans, the two key transitions being a bipedal gait (Australopithecus) and tool use (Homo). The interesting things are that while all the in-betweens have gone extinct, the ancestral primate stock didn’t; the transition to modern humans was so fast that it reeks of artificial selection, not natural. Are the in-between extinctions and the extremely rapid transition to modern humans linked? 

Review: 4.5 billion to 5 million years ago.

Divide the roughly 4.5 billion year history of Planet Earth into say five million year segments. Now imagine yourself 4.5 billion years ago jumping from one segment to the next. Even given a five million year leap, would you notice much change per leap? No, you wouldn’t. You’d notice a little change, yes, but hardly anything drastic or major. That applies as you jump from segment to segment – a little change, a little more change, even a little more change as you get further and further removed from your starting point. The composition of the atmosphere slowly, ever so slowly changes; life begins and single celled critters emerge. After many, many segment leaps, these evolve simple multi-celled critters, etc. But change is so gradual that it’s hardly perceptible from one segment to the next. The exception would be when there’s been a mass extinction event, so if you jump from 70 million years ago to 65 million years ago, yes you’d notice that, oops, where are the dinosaurs? Then things settle back down again to very slow but very sure rate of change.

Now about 90 leaps of five million years each will bring you to roughly a time five million years ago. Observe carefully the landscape, atmospheric composition, and the various life forms. If you’re in Africa you just might notice the early stirrings of the hominoid branch that will ultimately lead to us. Now do that final leap. Jump that final segment. Is the resulting change major or minor? If you answered yet again ‘minor’, put on your dunce cap. That change is the most major of all the incremental five million year leaps. Now doesn’t that strike you as odd? It’s always been a relatively slight incline of change, now all of the sudden the slope skyrockets.

Review: 5 million to 500,000 years ago.

Now divide that final five million year segment into say ten parts of 500,000 years each. Perform that same incremental jump. Not all that much changes from one 500,000 year block to the next one to the next one. But that last leap from 500,000 years ago to the present – well, there’s that exponential slope again. There a huge change from that final 500,000 years ago to the present. At the start, there were no Homo sapiens. At the end, well just look around you – billions of Homo sapiens all around you.

Review: 500,000 to 50,000 years ago.

Divide that final 500,000 year block into ten segments of 50,000 years each. By the time you reach the last of those 50,000 year blocks, a lot of Homo species have come and gone, with only a couple left - Homo neanderthalensis and of course Homo sapiens, and in isolated Java, Homo floresiensis.

Review: 50,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Consider that final 50,000 year block. At the start, Homo sapiens exist, but there’s no civilization to speak of. But we do have the first of two relative sudden advances. 50,000 years ago, give or take, modern humans ‘invented’ culture. Cave art and rock paintings appear; also carved figurines; humans began to bury the dead along with grave goods.

Now divide that final 50,000 block into five parts of 10,000 years each. At the end, with only 10,000 years left to go, we now have only one hominoid species left, Homo sapiens. In just that final 10,000 year period, you’ll see the transition, in that relative short period of time, in diverse parts of the world; humans go from a nomadic hunter-gatherer existence to domestic settlements.

Review: 10,000 to 1000 years ago.

If you divide that final 10,000 year block into ten parts, then you go from civilization to a technological civilization.

Review: 1000 to 200 years ago.

Divide that final 1000 block into say five parts, and you go from a technological civilization to a high-tech civilization, and the progress is still undergoing an exponential expansion.

Okay, let’s return back to roughly 5 million or so years ago, perhaps a shade more.

Somewhere around 8 to 6 million years ago, our lineage split off from the chimpanzee lineage. Our lineage is composed of lots of links, about 20 species known so far, some direct (like your grandparents and parents); some just branches off the main and aren’t direct (like your cousins, aunts and uncles). 

Here are the starting links in that chain that we know about.

Sahelanthropus tchadensis came on the African scene about 7 to 6 million years ago. We’re not sure if this hominoid species was a parent or a cousin.

Orrorin tugenensis was slightly more recent, dating to roughly 5.8 million years ago. Again, parent or cousin isn’t clear.

Ardipithecus ramidus and Ardipithecus kadabba were known to strut their stuff 5.8 to 4.3 million years ago and are credited with being in a direct linear chain to ourselves.

Here are the next links in the chain starting with the advent of the bipedal gait.

AUSTRALOPITHECUS (hominoids with an undoubted bipedal gait) had their origins from roughly that 4 to 3 million years ago era, give or take.

*Australopithecus anamersis existed down Africa way some 4.2 to 3.8 million years ago, an apparent ancestor to Australopithecus afarensis.

*Australopithecus afarensis is well known thanks to Lucy (of “in the sky with diamonds” fame). Australopithecus afarensis were around from roughly 3.6 to 3 million years ago though it seems there’s a gap in the fossil evidence of some 200,000 years twixt Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus anamersis. When hominoid fossils are as few and far between as they are, such gaps aren’t surprising.

*Australopithecus bahrelghazali has been documented from about 3.5 million years before the present.

*Kenyanthropus (or Australopithecus) platyops (depending on who you talk to) was a contemporary of Australopithecus bahrelghazali and Australopithecus afarensis dated again to 3.5 million years ago.

*Australopithecus africanus: If Australopithecus afarensis faded out of the picture some 3 million years ago, they were replaced by this mob, who reigned from about 3 million to 2.5 million years ago.

*Australopithecus garhi comes upon the scene just as Australopithecus africanus fades away in turn at about 2.5 million years before today.

Our Paranthropus cousins branch off around that 2.5 million year mark. First up was Paranthropus aethiopicus at 2.5 million years ago. Now there is some dispute about names.

*Australopithecus boisei or Paranthropus boisei? Whether parent or cousin, they were around from about 2.3 to 1.4 million years ago, and thus evolved before, and went kaput after, Australopithecus robustus or Paranthropus robustus.

*Australopithecus robustus or Paranthropus robustus? What’s in a name anyway, The fact of the matter is that this African species is dated to 2 to 1.5 million years ago.

HOMO (tool makers) had their origin somewhere from 2.5 to 2 million years ago.

*Homo Rudolfensis (species akin to Homo habilis) inhabited Africa 2.5 to 1.9 million years ago.

*Homo habilis hit the scenes about 2.3 million years ago and lasted until roughly 1.6 million years ago.

*Homo ergaster: In one telling of the tale, Homo ergaster was post Homo habilis but pre Homo erectus and existed from about 2 million years ago to 1 million years ago. Other anthropologists assign the name Homo ergaster just to the African version of Homo erectus. That’s because a hominoid species was about to flee the coup!

*Homo erectus was that species that flew the African coup. It was the first such ancestor of ours to migrate out of Africa (though not all did of course). They ended up in western, eastern, and South-Eastern Asia. Fossil remains have been found in Java for example. Homo erectus survived and thrived more as an Asian species than an African one, surviving until roughly 200,000 years ago in Asia after their 2 million years ago origins in Africa, and as Homo ergaster, died out 800,000 years before their Asian equivalents.

*Homo floresiensis (Java only) was an isolated offshoot of Homo erectus who has the distinction of being our most recent ancestor to go extinct. Homo erectus did so 200,000 years ago, but that isolated community hung on until a very short 12,000 years ago. That’s nearly modern times!

*Homo heidelbergensis: Homo erectus also spawned another out-of-Africa species, Homo heidelbergensis who spread out over Europe from 700,000 to 300,000 years ago, presumably via migration from their ancestors in western Asia.  

*Homo antecessor is the Homo erectus species who colonized Europe, sometimes known as another European version of Homo heidelbergensis. Homo antecessor lived in Europe from about 1 million years ago to roughly 300,000 years ago.

*Homo rhodesiensis is the same as Homo heidelbergensis, only the African version. So, presumably Homo ergaster gave rise to Homo rhodesiensis just as the out-of-Africa version of Homo erectus gave rise to Homo heidelbergensis. Like Homo antecessor, Homo rhodesiensis hung around for only 700,000 years – 1 million years ago to 300,000 years past.

*Homo neanderthalensis, being a west Asian and European species is the obvious descendant of those other European hominoids, Homo antecessor and Homo heidelbergensis. Of all our extinct ancestors (600,000 to 35,000 years ago), Neanderthals are the most famous, but we still don’t the exact degree of interaction, even breeding (if possible) between them and the last and final species on the list – us.

*Homo sapiens (takes shape 400,000 to 200,000 years ago, but probably closer to 200,000 than 400,000, at least that’s the consensus. Another consensus is that Homo sapiens were only the second African native to migrate out of Africa after Homo erectus, some 60,000 to 50,000 years ago.

There are probably still lots of undiscovered species that form additional links and branches in the chimp – modern human chain, but the above are enough to illustrate the point. A heck of a lot of our ancestors went extinct – cause or causes unknown.

To be continued…

The Uniqueness of a Human Being: Part Two

There’s just something really special about Homo sapiens relative to all the other animal and plant life forms we share Planet Earth with. Well actually every life form is special in one way or another*, but still humans stand out from the crowd. Many people will attribute that to the alleged ‘fact’ that we were created in God’s image, although IMHO the concept of a supreme, supernatural creator being carries so much dead (philosophical baggage) weight as to have as close to zero credibility as makes no odds. Therefore, I suggest something’s screwy somewhere.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

That brings up some interesting observations. Privacy (which is not the same thing as having your own personal space or your own territory) and embarrassment seems to have no obvious evolutionary advantage. That’s obviously the case because such concepts are not shared by any other animal life form currently on Earth, and that probably equates to past animal life forms as well. Did T-Rex care about being naked before doing battle with an equally naked Triceratops? - Probably not. Did T-Rex hide behind a tree before doing a pee? – Probably not.

Question: Why do we feel the need for privacy and feel a sense of embarrassment? Where did these concepts come from if they have no obvious survival (evolutionary) advantage?

Privacy and embarrassment tends to be associated with restroom and mating activities. Yet, from firsthand observations, my cats can go to about their litter box business in full sight of me, and of each other, without the slightest qualm. When animals mate, they don’t give a tinker’s damn if the whole darn world is watching. An animal’s gotta do what an animal’s gotta do. Further, each and every animal is in a sense strutting around in their birthday suit. Do they look the slightest bit uptight about this? Hell no.

When it comes to embarrassment, if you look at things logically and objectively, the skin around your private parts isn’t any different from the skin on your face and hands, so what’s the big deal? You don’t tend to be embarrassed over your ear lobes or your knees or which toe on your foot is longest; so why, in theory should your sex organs be singled out for cultural attention, actually inattention since they tend to be covered up?

So, there are a few more bits and pieces that make humans stand apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. But, there still has got to be a logical reason why. If embarrassment is a cultural trait as it appears to be (it’s certainly not biological) how did it ever get its start?

Sense of humour: Nearly all of the higher animals play – it’s preparation for the serious work of making a living. But play itself isn’t humour. Humans of course tell jokes, make puns – we’ve all seen people laugh in a conversation when someone says something amusing -all that’s a function of our higher intellect and our language capabilities. You wouldn’t expect animals without that sort of language ability and comprehension to connect the dots and laugh. I can tell jokes to my cats for hours on end; they’ll never understand the punch lines. However, part of our sense of humour isn’t based on language. There are the physical jokes and pranks we pull. Now some animals do have the physical ability to pull practical jokes on their peers, but I’m not aware that that happens in actual fact. My cats could if they wanted to, pick up in their teeth and hide my house keys from me as their version of a feline practical joke. Cats don’t play practical jokes. Overall however, when examining the human sense of humour,                                                        I have to ask what possible link can there be with regards to a natural evolution of a sense of humour and survival-of-the-fittest?

Blood types: To the best of my knowledge, humans are pretty unique in having about twenty different blood groups or types. That makes medical blood transfusions somewhat risky unless checks are carried out beforehand for compatibility. Not every human can receive blood from every other human.  I checked with my vet, and apparently any dog can give a transfusion to any other dog; any domestic feline’s (cat’s) blood can be transfused into any other domestic feline. I suspect much the same applies throughout the animal kingdom.

Blood types might make a bit of sense if each type of human breed had their own unique type. Maybe they once did but breeding between the races has distorted and diluted that so that now all races have all types of blood. Even so, if other animals can get by with just plain blood, just one blood type, albeit a blood type unique to that species, I don’t see why humans evolved a large variety of blood types. 

Emotions: Nearly all animals show emotions, even many of the ‘lower’ invertebrates. However, though other animals can weep - shed water from their eyes (my cats are examples here), only one animal, man, actually cries apparently as a response to an emotional state. I’m not sure what the evolutionary survival-of-the-fittest bit is about crying. I mean if you’re about to be pounced on by a sabre-tooth cat, will crying make the predator feel sorry for you; put the cat off it’s game and save you? Crying might promote bonding between humans, but there’s lots of bonding in the animal kingdom without the need for tears. So, why should there be crying in response to an emotional state. It’s a mystery to me.

Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC): The number of documented cases of humans, for some totally unknown, maybe unexplainable reason, bursting into flame which quickly kills and consumes the victim, has reached such numbers as to no longer reside in the realm of the paranormal/pseudoscience. What’s really unexplainable is that, relative to humans, to the best of my knowledge, no other life form has ever been witnessed and documented as having had their demise via spontaneous combustion. SHC certainly confers no advantage vis-à-vis passing on your genes. You’ve been handed a Darwin Award through no fault of your own.

Here’s a weird one – our signs of aging. All life forms age; all complex life forms can die from old age, that’s obvious and a given (however, elementary particles, like electrons, don’t age). Humans show obvious signs of aging – greying hair (or losing our hair) and wrinkles and liver spots. It’s easy to tell a 20 year old human from a 40 year old from a 60 year old from someone 80 years old. In most of the rest of the animal kingdom, visible signs of age and aging aren’t obvious. In some life forms, the only visible sign of age is size – trees, fish, and reptiles – organisms that continue to grow throughout their lifespan. Frogs don’t seem to get wrinkles as they grow older! How do you tell a 10 year old elephant apart from a 30 year old elephant? My 12 year old cat looks identical to what it looked like as a two year old. No grey hairs; no pussy cat wrinkles. Yet a 12 year old domestic cat is getting on towards pensioner status given a human analogy. Why should evolution seemingly single us out for acquiring grey hair and wrinkles?

In conclusion, if these traits can not be adequately explained by good old fashioned Darwinian natural selection and evolution, then its back to the drawing board and proposing either a supernatural deity or accepting an explanation of artificial selection. The only real candidate for applying artificial selection to humans to would be an extraterrestrial intelligence. Exactly what their motive(s) might be in most of the above cases isn’t clear cut, but the ‘why’ in terms of Darwinian selection is equally unclear.

*All animals are unique or different in their own way. Felines can purr; bats have radar and dolphins have sonar; some animals can see into the infra-red or ultraviolet part of the EM spectrum; some animals can hear higher or lower frequencies than us humans.

The Hairy Tale of the Naked Ape

Zoologist/Anthropologist Desmond Morris authored his best selling book “The Naked Ape”, which was all about us humans, in 1967. We’re the naked ape. According to Wikipedia, “The book was so named because out of 193 species of monkeys and apes only man is not covered in hair.” The 64-cent question is why we are naked (as opposed to being a nudist), as in why don’t we too have a natural fur coat? Extreme exceptions to the rule require explanation(s). I wish I had one for something’s screwy somewhere!

Fur, like feathers, is a very good temperature regulator. In cold weather it traps your body heat next to your body; in hot weather it can loosen or fluff up a bit and allow your body heat to escape into the environment. Further, fur (or a considerable hairy covering) is excellent protection from ultraviolet (UV) radiation. UV rays as we know can cause tanning, a painful sunburn, and ultimately skin cancers. On balance, fur has a positive evolutionary survival value as witnessed by the large number of mammals that have a natural fur coat.

While not all species of mammals wear a natural fur coat, our primate ancestors, past and present, did and do. Since humans are their naturally evolved descendents, it would be logical to expect Homo sapiens to also have a natural fur coat. We don’t. Where’s our fur coat gone?

Any ‘Age of Mammals’ or physical anthropology text will show our hominoid ancestors (like Australopithecus from roughly 3.2 million years ago) as being quite the hairy critters we once were, even while we were well on the evolutionary road to the modern human of today. Somewhere between then and now we lost our fur, but our primate relations (those 193 species of chimps, gorillas, monkeys, etc.) didn’t – yet we shared the same environment way down Africa way with many of those furry primates. Why one (us humans) and not the many (them primates) lost and retained respectfully their hairiness is mystery number one. 

It makes relatively little sense for humans to have lost their fun covering, migrate to cooler climates, then have to invent clothing when the original fur covering would have adequately served the same purpose. That’s mystery number two. Having to invent clothing carries with it a whole host of other required skills and technologies that would have needed to have been discovered and learned and passed on generation to generation like skinning, and curing, and sewing, making threads, the concept of buttons, and belts and ability to tie knots – all unnecessary if we had just kept our fur. There are primate cousins of ours that survive and thrive in colder, even snowy climates with just the benefit of fur.

Now one reason we lost our hairiness might be that we evolved sweat glands to rid us of unwanted heat. However, sweating in hot, humid weather would make for soggy fur, so by-by fur. Yet fur is a good heat regular. So why, if sweat glands are so superior, didn’t other primates evolve sweat glands? [Actually, like cats and dogs, primates can sort of ‘sweat’ and lose heat through the non-hairy parts of their body, like the pads on their feet/hands, their naked noses or via panting.]

So why did we trade our ancestral fur coat for sweat glands, which, by the way, is only a cooling mechanism and not overly efficient in humid conditions (“it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity”), and further force the need to invent the totally unnatural concept of clothing which no other animal species makes any use of?

A New York Times (19 Aug 2003) article made the suggestion that it was an advantage to lose fur because it rid humans of the parasites that inhabit fur. However, all furry critters have parasites. Cats can have ticks and fleas. So why aren’t my cats naked? In other words what’s so damn unique about humans with parasites that we lose our fur, yet other furry animals with parasites didn’t – lose fur that is?

Another possible reason we lost our fur is that we’re large. Larger animals have greater difficulty in getting rid of excess body heat relative to smaller animals. As one grows larger, body volume (which generates heat) increases faster than body surface area, from which heat escapes.  Perhaps that’s why really large animals like cattle and horses and elephants are way less hairy than cats and rats and mice.

However, while humans are large relative to many primates, some primates are roughly our size, and furry, so that’s not the be all and end all of explanations. We should be roughly the right size to be covered in fur as many other mammals roughly our size, even larger (like bears or lions) are fur covered.

Of course even very large mammals living in extremely cold climates still require fur, like your Ice Age woolly mammoths. Speaking of the Ice Ages, they should have provided an evolutionary incentive for us to reacquire our furry cover – but strangely we didn’t. Which reminds me; fur is a good insulator and protector against snow - Snow on fur – no big deal; Snow on skin – well talk about chilling out. And fur also offers some protection against the wind-chill factor. Cold is one thing; cold when the wind is blowing really feels extra cold and can rob you of body heat quick-smart. 

Speaking of larger hairy animals, specifically potential primates, there’s the often reported (never proved) Sasquatch, Big Foot, Yeti, Yowie, (and a host of other cryptozoological bipedal hominoids reported from around the modern world). If these beasties really do exist, and a lot of people, even scientists give that more than just some credibility, the most likely candidate is the now not so extinct giant hominoid ape Gigantopithecus (traditionally considered to exist only from 1 million to 300,000 years ago). One characteristic of the modern sightings, from anywhere in the world, is an ape-like being covered in a lot of fur. So, Sasquatch (if it exists) matches us in being bipedal, but kept its fur. We’re still the odd one out. 

Of course you might argue that we haven’t lost all our heavy covering of fur – we have a head full of hair (or at least most of us have). Maybe our hair is to keep the brain warm, but it’s not much comfort in having a warm brain when the rest of your body is experiencing hyperthermia. In any event, there appears to be a critical difference between our head (and facial) hair and real fur. The difference is that we need hair cuts because our hair growth doesn’t know when to quit growing! We’ve all seen women with hair lengths down to their waist; men with beards a bird could build a nest in. If that sort of uncontrolled hair growth happened in the natural world, it might look, but ultimately wouldn’t be, comical. Extrapolate a woman’s waist length hair to your pet cat or dog and your pet (or any equivalent wild animal) couldn’t function. I mean we’ve all heard shaggy dog stories, but not that shaggy!

Of course there are other means of temperature regulation apart from fur. One can warm up in the sunshine; cool off in the shade regardless of having skin or fur, but at night it’s all shade, and if it’s already cold and you’re naked in your skin, there’s not much temperature regulation you can do, except shiver.

Quite apart from the heat regulation issue, fur colourations and patterns are useful as camouflage. Some mammals even change their fur colour with the seasons – for example a white fur coat in the snowy winter. Soldiers on the other hand have to wear ready-mades, having lost all natural furry camouflage they may have once had.

In conclusion,  the question is, did we lose our fur because we evolved sweat glands, or did we have to evolve sweat glands because we lost our fur, fur which again seems to provide a perfectly good means of heat regulation as we note in our cats and dogs and many other mammals? Translated, there was no real environmental reason to lose our fur unless we evolved sweat glands, but then it’s back to the question why our kissing primate cousins didn’t evolve sweat glands if they provide a more efficient means of losing heat – which they don’t (recall humidity). And that provides no explanation for retaining heat; an ability we lost without fur and requiring the invention of the garment industry as a replacement.

I don’t know the answer to why we lost our fur; it certainly is a biological anomaly of the first order. However, I need to stress the word “ape” in that ‘naked ape’ phrase of Desmond Morris least anyone attribute this puzzlement solvable by saying it’s all due to man (and woman) being created in God’s image. That’s only attributable should ‘God’ be a flesh-and-blood extraterrestrial IMHO. To be consistent with my point of view that humans were created in ET’s image via genetic engineering and artificial selection, well, maybe ET wanted a naked ape as a subject and not a walking, talking hairy carpet!

Humans Have the Intelligence; Animals Have the Smarts: Part Three

There’s no question that of all species on Planet Earth, modern humans, Homo sapiens, are top of the pops when it comes to intelligence (IQ). All other species, however close they might be in evolutionary terms to modern humans, pale in comparison. BUT, and there’s always a BUT, animals are way smarter, which raises questions about our actual relationship to them. Here I give numerous examples where animals are top of the pops when it comes to pure smarts.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

MENTAL CONCEPTS

Birth, Death & Deities: Animals have no concept of their own death, hence an afterlife. They have no remembrance of their conception and probably their birth and of the concept of creation. Animals therefore have no need of religion and deities. Animals therefore have to carry around a lot less philosophical baggage. Humans however are obsessed with these concepts, really all unnecessary philosophical baggage IMHO.

Economics & Finance: No animal jumped out of windows at the start of the Great Depression. They lose no shuteye over the tax man, and bills are something on ducks.

Lifestyle: Animals don’t need to go to the ‘beauty’ parlour for a quick pick-me-up. The whole idea of a social scene – the right venue, the in-crowd, being seen with the ‘right’ people – is totally foreign to them. What to wear is a non-issue. The current must have fashions (doomed to be out of date within months if not less) is just so much ho-hum. There’s no need or desire for tattoos and body piercing. The latest celebrity scandal in the tabloids is a non-event. Collectables aren’t. A snazzy sports car or any other boy toy is boring. Animals don’t suffer from information overload. Because animals don’t purchase any products, they can’t be held responsible for any litter that arises (of which there is plenty). Humans however engage in this ever ongoing, never ending, pursuit in quest of the ‘good life’ and are usually never satisfied. Animals just enjoy life as best they can one day at a time – they live for the moment. 

Drugs: Animals do not wilfully harm themselves with substances foreign to their day-to-day survival. Humans – well there’s caffeine, smoking, drinking alcohol, all sorts of recreational drugs with varying degrees of mental addiction and artificial ‘stimulation’. Need one say more!

Harmful Habits: Animals do not engage in habits harmful to their wellbeing other than what’s required for basic survival, like say a predator taking on prey way larger than itself, defending your offspring from attack, or herds crossing a raging river on an annual migration. Then there are head-butting type contests over mating rights, but they usually result in a back-down, not death or extreme injury. Of course animals are still hardwired for the natural environment. Their eons ago development and evolution hasn’t caught up with our modern civilization yet, and so dogs may chase cars, and the road kill is additional evidence of how humans put animals in harms way – they don’t do it because they are suicidal. Humans, well from tattoos to body piercing to baking in the sun for an unnecessary suntan to extreme sports, humans like to take on risk without any possible actual additional benefit. Habits aside, humans, usually young macho males with way too much testosterone, like to put themselves in harms way – demonstrate the ‘right’ stuff. Pity more of them didn’t end up with a Darwin Award and remove themselves from the gene pool! I’ll drink to that since such self-destruct events wouldn’t bother me one iota.

Mental Health: Animals, left to their own devices, are in no need of a shrink. It’s only when humans try to force a (square) companion animal into their requirement of a (round) behavioural hole that problems arise. Companion animals under the influence of their human associations have ‘need’ of pet psychologists, or at least some of them apparently do according to the human, and really it’s ultimately the human’s fault. Do you think any wild animals have any such need of a shrink? No? I didn’t think so. Humans of course are often on the couch for counselling and therapy of one sort or another; the list way to long to detail in a short essay.

Isms: Animals do not discriminate on the grounds of gender or appearance. A ginger male cat will accept or reject a black male cat on grounds that have nothing to do with fur colour. A white female cat might pick and choose between lots of male cats and reject them all – that doesn’t mean she’s sexist or prefers female cats. Humans on the other hand, accept or reject other humans on just such distinctions, plus a whole host of other ‘isms’ that animals have no conception of in the first place. 

Opinions: Animals ask no questions; tell no lies; mind their own business; take everything at face value. Humans – can you say the same about you and the rest of the human race? Let’s face it; humans do anything but mind their own business. They happily pass judgements on any other lifestyle (especially one involving sex in any shape manner or form) that doesn’t conform to their own moral standards.

HUMAN-ANIMAL INTERACTIONS I’D LIKE TO SEE

What about jockeys carrying the horses around on their backs as they run around the race track! Now that would be worth watching!

How about a human three-ring circus with an animal audience!

In fact, just about any human-animal role reversal would be interesting.

CONCLUSIONS

So what does this analysis tell us about the differences between humans and ‘mere’ animals? We’ve seen there are many fundamental differences between way overrated humans (overrated by our own human opinions of ourselves of course) and way underrated animals (again, underrated according to the relatively biased opinions of humans). If the human-animal differences are due to natural selection, then there is a puzzlement in why did the rest of the animal kingdom take the ‘smart’ and commonsense road while humans took the intelligence road? While I’m sure there is an evolutionary connection between animals and the human animal, I also think there is some hidden variable(s) that caused the human branch to head off into uncharted territory (and go off the rails). If these differences (the hidden variables) are due to God, what does that tell you about what God is like?  Nothing good, that’s for sure! If it’s artificial selection, but not due to anything supernatural, then things get interesting.

The celebrated astrophysicist/cosmologist Stephen Hawking, among many others, is a strong advocate of humans boldly going and colonizing space as the only viable way of ensuring our long term survival. The Big Question however in my mind is should humanity infect the wider cosmic scene? Isn’t it enough one ‘pale blue dot’ has to suffer our lot? So, ET, if you are out there; be afraid, be very afraid!