Salt glands
Mario Petrinovich
Sorry for wasting your time, but I had problems finding reliable
info.
Last time we were talking about Aquatic Ape Theory. Well, I have
problems with those salt glands. Can somebody tell me - do we or don't we
have salt glands; and if we do, is some terrestrial mamma (primate?) having
something similar?
Why am I asking this? Because some guy (Jim Moore) who is attacking
AAT very much, wrote on his site that we have them.
Thanks in advance
Mario
J Moore
the salt to water balance is the kidneys, just as it is in all mammals.
This is the closest thing to a "salt gland" that humans have, unlike marine
and desert birds and reptiles. That is what I state on my site, as I also
have in close to a decade of newsgroup posting. It is various AAT
proponents who inaccurately claim that humans have a "salt gland" other than
the kidneys. Please do not say I said something on my site when I actually
said the exact opposite.
J Moore (www.aquaticape.org)
Mario Petrinovich <mario.pe...@zg.tel.hr> wrote in message
news:btfuph$1br0$1...@darwin.ediacara.org...
Mario Petrinovich
> You are mistaken. I clearly state that in humans the organ that regulates
> the salt to water balance is the kidneys, just as it is in all mammals.
> This is the closest thing to a "salt gland" that humans have, unlike
> marine and desert birds and reptiles.
Technically, yes. But, tried to prove that our tear glands aren't
salt glands by comparing them with "salt glands" of terrestrial birds and
reptils. You've said that our tear glands cannot be salt glands because they
are doing what salt glands are doing in terrestrial birds and reptils. Well,
if you ask me, by that you actaually said that we have salt glands, and not
v.v..
Then, at the end of article, you've said that glands of terrestrial
birds and reptiles evolved in amphibians. A reader could presume that you
don't know of any other way of evolution of salt glands (and, definitely you
didn't mention it). So, we didn't inherit our glands from reptiles, and the
only way of evolving the glands which are doing what salt glands are doing
in terrestrial birds and reptils, that you know of, is at the water edge.
I concluded (from your words only), we have glands like those of
terrestrial birds and reptils, which evolved at water edge. So, you stated
facts, and said that those facts present the proves that these aren't salt
glands, when they actually prove that they are. The only thing, in the whole
text, that "proves" that these aren't salt glands, is your renaming them
into "tear glands".
And so, I am poor with knowlage, I actually am happy that I could
read your article, which states a lot of facts, and this article is my main
source of infromation. And this article is saying tha we have salt glands.
So, I came here to clear this confusion. It has to be something that tells
that they aren't salt glands (since you are so sure about it), but all I
could read from your article (my main source of information), is that they
are salt glands.
And, yes. Marine iguana has salt glands that extract potassium. A
seaweed that it eats is reach with potassium. Which is classic AAT scenario.
Why I am so interested in those salt glands, to come here to bother
you with this, now?
Because, we at AAT community, just introduced new things that can
strenghted our theory. We found out that we have the adaptations of
plunge-divers: covered nostrils and straight posture. So, with added salt
glands this would be it. And if you add SC fat to this, this could be IT,
lol. Discussion about this you can find in sci.anthropology.paleo newsgroup,
as well as in Yahoo! group AAT. -- Mario
J Moore
now where you made your mistake. Although I think my page on tears is
pretty clear, you've made a fundamental error in assuming something that I
did say means something else. However, since I now can see where you made
your mistake, I'll explain further here.
First, I didn't try "to prove that our tear glands aren't salt glands by
comparing them with "salt glands" of terrestrial birds and reptils. (sic)"
I showed that they aren't because they are incapable of doing what a
regulatory organ like a salt gland must be capable of -- accurately regulate
the level of that mineral to water balance. In humans, as in all mammals,
this can only be done by the kidneys, which I am at pains to say in several
places on my site. This is true of all mammals -- every single mammal --
and humans are no exception to this, despite the AAT claim to the contrary.
You said:
"So, we didn't inherit our glands from reptiles, and the only way of
evolving the glands which are doing what salt glands are doing in
terrestrial birds and reptils, that you know of, is at the water edge. I
concluded (from your words only), we have glands like those of terrestrial
birds and reptils, which evolved at water edge."
This is wrong, and I didn't say that the potasium-secreting glands of
terrestrial birds and reptiles "evolved at water edge (sic.)"; I said they
evolved in very dry desert conditions. The salt-excreting glands of marine
birds and reptiles evolved in sea or shoreline dwelling birds and reptiles.
These are pretty darned different conditions, and frankly, that should be
pretty darned obvious. They do share one feature, that of a lack of fresh
water, which is why these animals have had to develop these organs to
conserve water while they expel salt (in the case of marine birds and
reptiles) or potassium (in the case of desert birds and reptiles).
There are, in birds and reptiles, glands which can regulate mineral to water
balances in the body. They are the same sort of gland, that is an active
excretion gland, but differ dramatically between marine birds and reptiles,
where they excrete salt, and terrestrial (specifically desert-dwelling)
birds and reptiles, whose glands excrete potassium. Because of this
difference, you could check the glands of these animals and tell what sort
of environment they evolved in. If they evolved in a marine environment,
their glands can hypertonically excrete salt. If they evolved in a very dry
terrestrial environment, their glands can hypertonically excrete potassium.
As I said on my site (and this is where you went astray) if the excretions
of human tear ducts (which can hypertonically excrete potassium but not
salt) indicate anything about our environmental background, it indicates a
dry terrestrial rather than an aquatic marine background. If our tears'
mineral composition arose as a result of environment, it would take only
that initial change to be from a terrestrial enviroment; but if it were as a
result of an aquatic marine environment it would take two dramatic changes,
the second change leaving no trace whatever.
However, the composition of our tears may not have arisen as a direct result
of environment, and even if they did, they still are not a regulatory gland
as are the glands in birds and reptiles. Let me explain that again a bit
further:
Salt glands, or the potassium-secreting glands of terrestrial
(desert-dwelling) birds and reptiles, always have the characterisitc that
they can secrete a solution of water and salts that is hypertonic, more
salty than body plasma. They must be able to do this to be a "salt" gland.
There is no way they can be a salt gland unless they can do this, and that's
a long-established basic physiological fact. Human tears and sweat cannot
produce a hypertonic salt solution; they can't even approach a hypertonic
solution. So humans do not have a salt gland; the regulation of our bodies'
water to mineral balance is handled by the kidneys, just as it is in every
single mammal. Human tears can produce a hypertonic potassium solution,
which strongly suggests that this function was possibly an adaptation to dry
terrestrial environments, but definitely not an adaptation to a marine or
aquatic environment. However, even this doesn't make them a salt gland in
the sense that the potassium-excreting glands of desert birds and reptiles
are often referred to as "salt glands". This is because the tear ducts are
not capable of regulating this potassium discharge, as the glands of desert
birds and reptiles are. In humans, only the kidneys are capable of this,
just as in all mammals, bar none. They are the equivalent (but actually a
massive improvement on) the reptile and bird system of salt glands.
I hope this has cleared up your misunderstanding.
J Moore
Marc Verhaegen
"J Moore" <anthro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:btiptg$25es$1...@darwin.ediacara.org...
This website is completely outdated, prejudiced and irrelevant: it is mostly
about Elaine Morgan's ideas on AAT, but it does not discuss AAT as most of
its proponents see it today. For a serious discussion of AAT come to our
discussion group http://www.onelist.com/community/AAT . We still need
biologists who know a lot of comparative anatomy, physiology & DNA.
Marc Verhaegen
TWINBLUE
don't we>have salt glands; and if we do, is some terrestrial mamma (primate?)
having
>something similar?
My thinking is that many are confused about human sweat being "salty". It
occures to me that I never thought to taste any horse sweat to see if it was
also. Since other primates don't sweat they have no
"salt glands". Of course neither do humans
per se... But humans do lose salt in persperation...
TWINBLUE
J Moore
losing salt through sweat isn't a good way of managing the necessary task of
balancing our salt to water balance, because sweat is never hypertonic to
body plasma and because it isn't a regulated way to get rid of salt (in
fact, researchers find that sweat glands in humans are set up more to
conserve salt than to get rid of it). If we sweat enough to lose much salt,
we lose much more water and have to replace it. If we replace the water, we
run the risk -- a very real risk -- of upsetting our salt to water balance.
This is called water intoxication, and causes cramps and nausea which can be
quite violent, and can even lead to death. Our bodies need, as all animals
need, a method of safely maintaining our salt to water balance (homeostasis)
and our sweat glands are not capable of doing this. The kidneys, on the
other hand, can and do accomplish the task of maintaining this balance, and
are the method of doing so in every mammal.
I'll ignore Marc Verhaegen's contention that the basic principles of
physiology and homeostasis have changed in the last several years since I
put my site online.
J Moore (www.aquaticape.org)
TWINBLUE <twin...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:btsccc$14fv$1...@darwin.ediacara.org...
> >Well, I have>problems with those salt glands. Can somebody tell me - do
we or
> don't we>have salt glands; and if we do, is some terrestrial mamma
(primate?)
> having
> >something similar?
>
r norman
wrote:
This has already been answered.
Every human secretion is salty because human body fluids are salty.
Horse sweat is also necessarily salty, as is every secretion of every
animal.
In order to be considered a "salt gland", a gland must be involved in
regulating the salt content and salt/water balance (osmotic pressure)
of the body fluids. That is, the secretion must be noticeably
different from the body fluids in composition and osmotic pressure,
and in sufficient quantity to inflence whole body salt content and
osmotic pressure. Further, the secretions of the gland must clearly
and primarily be related to imbalances in salt content or osmotic
pressure of the body fluids.
The secretion of tears and sweat fail to qualify as examples of salt
glands regardless of the fact that humans lose salt by tearing and
sweating.
Marc Verhaegen
> Thank you for giving some further details of your reading of my site
J Moore, you have to adapt your website, or else to withdraw it. It's
outdated & irrelevant to AAT scenarios.
The most recent paper on AAT is probably this:
M.Verhaegen, P-F.Puech & S.Munro 2002 "Aquarboreal ancestors?"
Trends in Ecology & Evolution 17:212-7
7_05
"Aquarboreal ancestors?"
Marc Verhaegen, Pierre-François Puech, Stephen Munro
New evidence confirms the idea that human ancestors were not
savannah-dwellers at all, but instead became bipedal in swampy forests, and
evolved during the Ice Ages into coastal omnivores along the Indian Ocean.
According to biomolecular data, the great apes split into Asian pongids
(orangutans) and African hominids (gorillas, chimpanzees and humans) 18-12
million years ago and hominids split into gorillas and humans-chimpanzees
10-6 Mya. Fossils with pongid features appear in Eurasia after about 15 Mya,
and fossils with hominid features appear in Africa after about 10 Mya.
Instead of the traditional savannah-dwelling hypothesis, we argue that a
combination of fossil (including the newly discovered Orrorin, Ardipithecus
and Kenyanthropus hominids) and comparative data now provides evidence
showing that (1) the earliest hominids waded and climbed in swampy or
coastal forests in Africa-Arabia and partly fed on hard-shelled fruits and
molluscs; (2) their australopith descendants in Africa had a comparable
locomotion but generally preferred a diet including wetland plants; (3) the
Homo descendants migrated to or remained near the Indian Ocean coasts, lost
most climbing abilities, and exploited waterside resources.
Marc Verhaegen http://www.onelist.com/community/AAT
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Verhaegen.html
Mario Petrinovich
Thanks Jim (and TWINBLUE) very much. I do have further questions,
but I should clear them myself by trying to research the matter.
Unfortunatelly (or actually, fortunatelly) I don't have much time right now
because, as I said, we at AAT are now considering new things regarding our
straight posture, so, I will leave this for later.
Regarding this 'straight posture' thing, I would like to further
explain this to this list, and get your opinion. Forgive me if I don't use
all the terms correctly, I am still not quite familiar with most of them.
Straight posture would be posture in axial direction (if I am right
here), straight as a cigar. And we are also bipedal, as are the other
straight animal (penguins). How you become like that. Bipedal animals (which
are bipedal in rest) are all adapted to forces that are comming from that
direction. These are hopping animals. When they are hopping they sort of
propel their body with hind legs. I would presume that direction of that
force goes through centar of gravity. But, when they are landing, they are
also using their hind legs as a spring, for that. Here again, this legs are
adapted to cushion forces comming through center of gravity of the body (I
presume). Since they become so adapted to acquire forces from that direction
(and weight also is a force), it becomes more natural (easy) for them to
hold their body in this position. All muscles become excellently adapted for
this stance. So, were we a leapers?
Well, there are also other animals which are straight as cigar. One
of them are fish and aquatic mammals, reptiles, whoever is traveling through
water. They have to be like that because of streamlining. When you are
traveling through the water, you better be straight like cigar. There are
some other animals, too. A plunge-diving birds are like this when they are
in water. They need to be like this because they are (very fastly) traveling
through water. When you are plunging into water, first you need to overcome
a thing called 'surface tension' of water. This can be done with pointig
object, a bill in birds' case. To cushion the inpact of bill, those birds
use their neck as a spring (I presume, just like hopping animals are using
their legs). So, here we have spring after the bill. To cushion the impact
of the body, they are using air sacs. So, in their case forces are comming
from the direction of bill, through center of gravity of the body. They have
another problem. Because of high impact speed, there is a problem of water
rushing through their nostrils. So they have covered nostrils.
So, we are also straight like cigar. Are we hopping animal, or
plunge divers. Well, we do have covered nostrils, which prevents water to
rush through them. To explain of what forces we are talking about, I will
demonstrate a jump from 10 m hight into water. In that situation human
experience forces of 20-24 G. Completly is submerged within 128-140
milliseconds after impact, by which time there has been a 53% loss of
velocity. I think that we are talking about considerable forces, here,
comming through axial direction. If we did plunge diving often, we could
adapt our body to those forces. We could break 'surface tension' with our
hands. And look at that, our hands are also straight (not bended). To
cushion inpact of our head, we could break water with our noses. Paranasal
sinuses (all around nose) also can have function here.
How I came to this idea. I've read an article about the weight we
can carry on our head. Here is the link for it :
www.positivehealth.com/permit/Articles/Regular/joel78.htm
A few excerptions :
"The weight involved can be equally impressive. For example, 66
pounds is considered the standard weight for the Sherpas of Nepal, but some,
for economic reasons, can manage up to 198 pounds - a risky business, as it
is difficult to be surefooted on steep mountain tracks with such a weight
hanging from your forehead. In Africa, the women of the Kikuyu and Luo
tribes in Kenya can carry on their heads loads that weigh as much as 70% of
their body weight."
"According to Giovanni Cavagna, studying the mechanics of walking at
the University of Milan, it has to do with the way people walk when they
have something on the top of their head. Cavagna compares walking to the
swinging of a pendulum. A pendulum transforms kinetic energy into potential
energy and back again. If it were not for the small amount of energy lost
due to friction at its point of attachment and from movement through the
air, the conversion of potential energy into kinetic energy in an ideal
pendulum would be 100%. A push will transfer sufficient energy into the body
of the pendulum to cause it to swing freely for a very long time. During
walking, the body behaves like an upside-down pendulum, albeit an imperfect
one. Heglund says that we act as only 65% of a perfect pendulum, which means
that, for each step we take, 35% of the energy has to be obtained from the
calories we burn. Carrying a load on the head seems to trigger an
energy-saving mechanism in the gait. For example, when the Luo and Kikuyu
women carry 20% of their body weight, they act as more economic pendulums,
achieving an average of about 80% efficiency. In other words, with this
weight on their head they use no more energy in walking than is expended
without such an encumbrance. The change in their gait is so subtle that it
is not visible to the human eye and, unfortunately, the exact mechanism is
not yet fully understood."
Another link :
www.positivehealth.com/permit/Articles/Regular/joel79.htm
It became obvious that we are adapted to carry forces in this
direction.
I would like to hear what are you biologist thinking of all this. If
this is true (and I don't see why it wouldn't be), this could have great
impact on the way we are looking at human past. AAT could gain recognition.
And we would prove that our view is more credible than previously thought.
Those things are now disscused in Yahoo! group AAT, so anybody interested is
welcome. As Marc said, we need biologists there. AAT is fundamental biology
stuff. After all Hardy (founder) was a marine biologist. -- Mario
Marc Verhaegen
> I'll ignore Marc Verhaegen's contention that the basic principles of
physiology and homeostasis have changed in the last several years since I
put my site online.
A nice illustration of your ignorance & your biased & outdated ideas on AAT.
Whatever the possible or past functions of sweating, the most-sweating
mammals besides humans are sea-lions at the shore AFAWK: "sweat glands on
the flippers of otariids aid in heat transfer. On hot days sealions &
furseals can often be seen fanning their flippers & increasing evaporative
heat loss at these sites" p.87-88 in AR Hoelzel ed.2002 "Marine mammal
biology" Blackwell.
Trying to explain human sweat glands by ancestors running over the hot
African plains, as some traditional paleo-anthropologists still do, is
clearly ridiculous: salt & water are scarse there, and typical savanna
mammals use totally different ways of cooling. OTOH, salt & water are
abundant at the shores where sealions & early Homo lived: early Homo c 1.8
Ma is found from Algeria to Java (amid barnacles & shells in a former river
delta at Mojokerto). No doubt they spread over the warmer parts of the Old
World at the beginning of the Pleistocene along the coasts. It is here that
we have to situate Hardy's more-aquatic past (AC Hardy 1960 "Was Man more
aquatic in the past?" New Scientist 7:642-5). J.Moore has no
counter-argument to this. He can only ignore... Very wise, Jim, very wise...
:-D
BTW, in our discussion group http://www.onelist.com/community/AAT , we still
need biologists who know a lot about comparative anatomy & physiology of
diverse mammals.
Marc Verhaegen
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Verhaegen.html
J Moore
some years now, because in my experience the proponents of the theory simply
repeat old info and ideas no matter how many times it's been discussed and
shown to have errors. It just takes far too much time and effort to go over
these things again and again. (We see this in Marc Verhaegen's insistence
that the laws of physiology and homeostasis have changed in the past few
years, rendering the information obsolete. Coupled with a link to one of
his articles which does not support this contention, that, from what I've
seen online, is the essense of his method.)
I posted here because you made some errors specifically regarding my web
site, and I wanted to correct your mistakes. However, I'll try to point you
toward the direction where you can see where you';re making mistakes, if
indeed you really want to try and correct them.
There are several problems with the ideas you're describing here. One is
talking about penguins being bipedal -- they are bipedal because they are
birds. All birds are bipedal. Really, I don't mean to be mean, but this
should really be awfully obvious, and I mean obvious to anyone with any
experience of the world, not just scientists.. The fact that it wasn't
obvious to you suggests you're not thinking as critically as you should when
confronted with these ideas from AAT proponents.
I know that AAT proponents like to point out that penguins are bipedal, and
that they talk about diving birds and other animals as being "straight" or
similar terms. They tend to avoid the fact that all primates use bipedality
as part of their locomotive repertoire, and that some, such as gibbons, use
it whenever they are on the ground (several other primates, such as spider
monkeys, also usually are bipedal on the ground). This isn't so strange
when you realise that all primates tend to use a lot of upright posture, not
only during their periods of bipedalism but during sitting. We are, as
primates, pre-adapted to use bipedalism; we just use it a lot more than
other primates and that has helped shape our physique. There is no
consensus on whether the last common ancestor was a brachiator such as
gibbons, a leaper/climber such as some lemurs, or a knuckwalker like our
closest relatives the chimps, bonobos, and gorillas (this last is still
argued as a possibility). In fact, it's quite possible, since whenever we
get an earlier hominid fossil they are bipedal, that the last common
ancestor was bipedal and it's our closest relatives who've changed most in
that regard. That's an interesting thing that will probably not get
resolved until we get a good line of fossils stretching back to 10 million
years ago and maybe before that. It is an example of many things which the
AAT, in various versions, says would be due to one cause at one period but
which are either known to be or strongly suspected to have arisen at wildly
different periods.
We don't seem well-adapted to diving -- we can do it if we practice a great
deal (although many people have severe physical problems with any sort of
diving, which you really wouldn't expect to see in an animal supposedly
strongly adapted to such behavior). But there are many things we CAN do
which we aren't really ADAPTED to do (some more thoughts on that below).
The example of the nostrils is often given, and many people also use the
example of proboscis monkeys along with that as evidence. But of course
when proboscis monkeys dive into the water, they actually jump feet first,
which if anything would drive water up the nose -- if this really were a
huge problem. (If it weren't a problem there would be no selection pressure
for it.) But in fact when you jump in the water feet first, you don't get
lots of water up your nose if you don't breath in. Ths is because it just
won't fit, because that space is full of air -- basics physics saves us
there, unless we breath in, which is a problem for untrained swimmers
(again, you wouldn't expect to find such a problem in an animal supposedly
long adapted to such a lifestyle).
I wouldn't say we are adapted to carrying great weights at all; sure we can
do it if we practice hard, just as we can leap and swim if we practice
(although we do all those things rather poorly compared to a great many
animals -- even the fastest Olympic swimmers are pitifully slow compared to
most aqauatic animals).
When you look at humans at their "core", really, you see a mammal that's
adapted toward walking a fair amount and sitting around most of the time,
much like our ape relatives. Not all that dramatic, and maybe not what we
want to put on our resumes, but that's the truth of it. :)
J Moore
Mario Petrinovich <mario.pe...@zg.tel.hr> wrote in message
news:btup6s$1pf5$1...@darwin.ediacara.org...
Mario Petrinovich
J Moore :
> There are several problems with the ideas you're describing here. One is
> talking about penguins being bipedal -- they are bipedal because they are
> birds. All birds are bipedal. Really, I don't mean to be mean, but this
> should really be awfully obvious, and I mean obvious to anyone with any
> experience of the world, not just scientists.. The fact that it wasn't
> obvious to you suggests you're not thinking as critically as you should
> when confronted with these ideas from AAT proponents.
When I was talking about bipedal animals, I was talking
predominantly about hopping animals (because of connection between their
bipedality - holding forces in axial direction - and ours.). I mentioned
only penguins of all birds because they are bipedal as well as straight
(vertical). Their legs are below their bodies. This is just like us, and not
like all the other birds. Is this called comparative evidence? They aren't
like other birds. They are SIMILAR to us. So, you could say that they aren't
like all the other birds, and they are similar to us because they accomodate
similar conditions. As I saw from pictures (I don't have info),
plunge-diving birds also tend to be more vertical in posture. And for them
you could also say that they aren't completly vertical because they are
birds.
When we get fossil we will know for sure. We don't need scientiests
for this. A little child will figure this out when it sees the evidence.
But, we still don't have evidence, and this is because we searched on wrong
places. Maybe rift valey has a good climate, and Leaky family doesn't want
to move from there for centuries but, if we don't start to think before we
dig, it would need another 10 million years for us to gain that knowlage,
lol.
> We don't seem well-adapted to diving -- we can do it if we practice a
> great
> deal (although many people have severe physical problems with any sort of
> diving, which you really wouldn't expect to see in an animal supposedly
> strongly adapted to such behavior). But there are many things we CAN do
> which we aren't really ADAPTED to do (some more thoughts on that below).
> The example of the nostrils is often given, and many people also use the
> example of proboscis monkeys along with that as evidence. But of course
> when proboscis monkeys dive into the water, they actually jump feet first,
> which if anything would drive water up the nose -- if this really were a
> huge problem. (If it weren't a problem there would be no selection
> pressure
> for it.) But in fact when you jump in the water feet first, you don't get
> lots of water up your nose if you don't breath in. Ths is because it just
> won't fit, because that space is full of air -- basics physics saves us
> there, unless we breath in, which is a problem for untrained swimmers
> (again, you wouldn't expect to find such a problem in an animal supposedly
> long adapted to such a lifestyle).
And we can jump legs first, no problem. But, if we jump head first,
we are safe. Why would we jump head first? In my scenario we were rocky
coast dwellers. We would jump head first to gain distance (just like
swimmers are jumping on competition). We need distance if we run from
predator. Another bipedal animal, a kangaroo, when it flees from dingos, run
into water whenever it can. There it drowns dingos. We need distance so that
we as apes (who are bipedal in water) can come to water depth where predator
cannot anchor itself at the bottom, anymore. In this situation we are
advantageous, and I bet, although on land we are much weaker, in water we
could drown a leopard. Even if it bites us, we could still keep it in water
until it loses air and dies, and we could keep our head out of water. We
would be wounded, but leopard would be dead. This is the basic idea of my
scenario. We also need distance if we feed on shellfish (the only meat we
can eat uncooked). It is advantageous if you can reach further shellfish
with least effort.
A proboscis monkey's nose? It is definitely sure that we have
similar noses. Our noses can serve two aquatic purposes. The other one is a
diving bell. Try to dive upside-down, and air will leak out of your nose. A
diving bell saves air in nose. Proboscis monkey, as far as I know, doesn't
have cartilage. A cartilage is good for braking water. And plunge diver
birds have covered nostrils, and they dive head first.
> I wouldn't say we are adapted to carrying great weights at all; sure we
> can
> do it if we practice hard, just as we can leap and swim if we practice
> (although we do all those things rather poorly compared to a great many
> animals -- even the fastest Olympic swimmers are pitifully slow compared
> to most aqauatic animals).
No, this is the point. Please read the links I've provided in
previous post. We can carry a lot of load without much practice. And more,
we are efficient in walking carrying load, than not carrying load. It was
mentioned in one of those two articles I provided.
Bottom divers doesn't have to be adapted for speed. Speed in water
is only needed if you are chasing fish.
> When you look at humans at their "core", really, you see a mammal that's
> adapted toward walking a fair amount and sitting around most of the time,
> much like our ape relatives. Not all that dramatic, and maybe not what we
> want to put on our resumes, but that's the truth of it. :) JMoore
Our speed is less than that of other, non-terrestrial apes. Our
speed is comparative to land speed of aquatic mammals, which is just enough
to be able to jump into water when it notices predator. This being
mentioned, it is probably that we lived closer to our sanctuary (water in
this case) than they lived to theirs (trees). Or that predatos were more
easy noticable in our case (or, possibly, less frequent).
All in all, I think that this scenario has enough elements (I
believe much more elements than any other) to become accepted as
legitimate. -- Mario
Marc Verhaegen
> We see this in Marc Verhaegen's insistence that the laws of physiology and
homeostasis have changed in the past few years, rendering the information
obsolete.
?? Lying & misrepresenting what we said is apparently the only "argument"
of people like you. I never said such a thing. Try to read. And be honest
before you "discuss" something. Bah! Disgusting.
The essence is this: you are incapable of explaining why humans & chimps
differ. A coastal past in our history (probably end-Plio-,
begin-Pleistocene, for some time) nicely explains a lot of these
differences. Alister Hardy in his paper "Was Man more aquatic in the past?"
(NS 1960) described how a sea-side life - beach-combing, wading, swimming,
collecting coconuts, fruits, shellfish, turtles & turtle eggs, bird eggs,
crabs, seaweeds etc. - explains many human traits (absent in our nearest
relatives the chimps) a lot better than dry savanna scenarios do: very large
brain (but reduced olfactory bulb - totally unexpected in the savanna),
excellent breath-hold control (up to minutes), greater diving skills,
well-developed vocality, extreme handiness & tool use, reduction of climbing
skills, reduction of fur, more subcutaneous fat, very long legs, more linear
body build, high needs of iodine, sodium & poly-unsaturated fatty acids etc.
We now know Hardy was wrong in thinking his seaside phase happened ~10 Ma
(not his fault, but due to the general opinion of paleo-anthropologists at
the time). More likely the waterside phase (we don't know how long this (or
these) lasted) happened during the Ice Ages: early Pleistocene Homo fossils
or tools have been found in Israel, Algeria, Iran, Kenya, Georgia, Java,
always near large bodies of water. When sea levels dropped, H.ergaster
apparently followed the Mediterranean (>antecessor>neandertals) & Indian
Ocean coasts (>erectus). Pleistocene coasts during the glacial periods were
some 120 m below the present sea level, so many fossil & archeological finds
show the inland Homo populations that entered the continents along the
rivers & wetlands. In spite of this, Homo remains (but not
australopithecine) have frequently been found amid shells, corals, barnacles
etc., throughout the Pleistocene, in coasts all over the Old World (eg,
Mojokerto, Terra Amata, Table Bay, Eritrea), even on islands that could only
be reached by sea (Flores 0.8 Ma
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/outthere.htm ).
William Morse
news:bu17ch$2g6m$1...@darwin.ediacara.org:
>
> "J Moore" <anthro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:btvpal$243l$1...@darwin.ediacara.org...
>
>> We see this in Marc Verhaegen's insistence that the laws of
>> physiology and
> homeostasis have changed in the past few years, rendering the
> information obsolete.
(snip Marc's accusation)
> The essence is this: you are incapable of explaining why humans &
> chimps differ. A coastal past in our history (probably end-Plio-,
> begin-Pleistocene, for some time) nicely explains a lot of these
> differences. Alister Hardy in his paper "Was Man more aquatic in the
> past?" (NS 1960) described how a sea-side life - beach-combing,
> wading, swimming, collecting coconuts, fruits, shellfish, turtles &
> turtle eggs, bird eggs, crabs, seaweeds etc. - explains many human
> traits (absent in our nearest relatives the chimps) a lot better than
> dry savanna scenarios do: very large brain (but reduced olfactory bulb
> - totally unexpected in the savanna), excellent breath-hold control
> (up to minutes), greater diving skills, well-developed vocality,
> extreme handiness & tool use, reduction of climbing skills, reduction
> of fur, more subcutaneous fat, very long legs, more linear body build,
> high needs of iodine, sodium & poly-unsaturated fatty acids etc.
One of the basic problems, as J. Moore pointed out, is that we are not in
fact particularly well adapted to a fully aquatic existence. Diving from a
height of 10 meters for humans is absurd (have you ever stood on a 10 meter
board and looked down?) Repeated diving in humans from even a low board
leads to sinus problems (as I have learned from experience). Our
subcutaneous fat is nowhere near enough to allow us to spend any
significant time in cold water (and water below the thermocline is always
cold). Even in warm water our skin rapidly swells and becomes easily
subject to abrasion and puncture. We are so poorly adapted to truly deep
diving that the well-developed vocality is unlikely to be due to the
development of conscious breathing control, as it may be in birds and truly
aquatic mammals. It is more likely that the breath-hold control is a
byproduct of speech.
We
> now know Hardy was wrong in thinking his seaside phase happened ~10 Ma
> (not his fault, but due to the general opinion of
> paleo-anthropologists at the time). More likely the waterside phase
> (we don't know how long this (or these) lasted) happened during the
> Ice Ages: early Pleistocene Homo fossils or tools have been found in
> Israel, Algeria, Iran, Kenya, Georgia, Java, always near large bodies
> of water. When sea levels dropped, H.ergaster apparently followed the
> Mediterranean (>antecessor>neandertals) & Indian Ocean coasts
> (>erectus). Pleistocene coasts during the glacial periods were some
> 120 m below the present sea level, so many fossil & archeological
> finds show the inland Homo populations that entered the continents
> along the rivers & wetlands. In spite of this, Homo remains (but not
> australopithecine) have frequently been found amid shells, corals,
> barnacles etc., throughout the Pleistocene, in coasts all over the Old
> World (eg, Mojokerto, Terra Amata, Table Bay, Eritrea), even on
> islands that could only be reached by sea (Flores 0.8 Ma
> http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/outthere.htm ).
Having said the above, a quick look at real estate prices for waterfront
property makes a convincing case without any other evidence that we are
adapted to life _near_ the water. Given our relatively high behavioral
plasticity, even a relatively recent (0.8 ma would qualify as recent in my
book) period of development primarily in a coastal setting might well make
sense in explaining our love for water. However this will not account for
bipedalism, hairlessness (have you looked at otters and seals?), brain
size, control, long legs, vocality, or tool use. As for climbing ability,
AFAIK we are more adept at climbing than we are at swimming - but that
isn't saying much. On the whole I agree with Mr. Moore - what we are well
adapted for is walking and talking. And long walks along the beach - well
what could be more romantic than that?
Yours,
Bill Morse
Marc Verhaegen
"William Morse" <wdm...@twcny.rr.com> wrote in message
news:bu3s7l$oeu$1...@darwin.ediacara.org...
> > The essence is this: you are incapable of explaining why humans & chimps
differ. A coastal past in our history (probably end-Plio-,
begin-Pleistocene, for some time) nicely explains a lot of these
differences. Alister Hardy in his paper "Was Man more aquatic in the past?"
(NS 1960) described how a sea-side life - beach-combing, wading, swimming,
collecting coconuts, fruits, shellfish, turtles & turtle eggs, bird eggs,
crabs, seaweeds etc. - explains many human traits (absent in our nearest
relatives the chimps) a lot better than dry savanna scenarios do: very large
brain (but reduced olfactory bulb - totally unexpected in the savanna),
excellent breath-hold control (up to minutes), greater diving skills,
well-developed vocality, extreme handiness & tool use, reduction of climbing
skills, reduction of fur, more subcutaneous fat, very long legs, more linear
body build, high needs of iodine, sodium & poly-unsaturated fatty acids etc.
> One of the basic problems, as J. Moore pointed out, is that we are not in
fact particularly well adapted to a fully aquatic existence.
Who speaks about fully aquatic?? Seaside. Hardy: "more aquatic."
> Diving from a height of 10 meters for humans is absurd (have you ever
stood on a 10 meter board and looked down?)
Possible. So?
> Repeated diving in humans from even a low board leads to sinus problems
(as I have learned from experience).
If so, so what? It's irrelevant to our scenario, see above.
> Our subcutaneous fat is nowhere near enough to allow us to spend any
significant time in cold water (and water below the thermocline is always
cold).
Whatever the function of SC fat, humans can stay all day in water of
tropical seas c 27°C without problems of onver- or underheating.
> Even in warm water our skin rapidly swells and becomes easily subject to
abrasion and puncture.
People in some tribes in Indonesia stay all day in the water.
> We are so poorly adapted to truly deep diving that the well-developed
vocality is unlikely to be due to the development of conscious breathing
control
1) I didn't say that, see the scenario above. There's no doubt IMO vocality
as in gibbons played an important role in the development of human vocality.
Otters (waterside) are more vocalic that weasels. Arboreal mammals are usu.
more vocalic than related species in more open milieus. Savanna mammals
generally have less variation in vocality.
>, as it may be in birds and truly aquatic mammals. It is more likely that
the breath-hold control is a byproduct of speech.
Then you can't explain speech. You can't explain why human can speak & why
chimps couldn't evolve this skill.
> > We now know Hardy was wrong in thinking his seaside phase happened ~10
Ma (not his fault, but due to the general opinion of paleo-anthropologists
at the time). More likely the waterside phase (we don't know how long this
(or these) lasted) happened during the Ice Ages: early Pleistocene Homo
fossils or tools have been found in Israel, Algeria, Iran, Kenya, Georgia,
Java, always near large bodies of water. When sea levels dropped, H.ergaster
apparently followed the Mediterranean (>antecessor>neandertals) & Indian
Ocean coasts (>erectus). Pleistocene coasts during the glacial periods were
some 120 m below the present sea level, so many fossil & archeological finds
show the inland Homo populations that entered the continents along the
rivers & wetlands. In spite of this, Homo remains (but not
australopithecine) have frequently been found amid shells, corals, barnacles
etc., throughout the Pleistocene, in coasts all over the Old World (eg,
Mojokerto, Terra Amata, Table Bay, Eritrea), even on islands that could only
be reached by sea (Flores 0.8 Ma
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/outthere.htm ).
> Having said the above, a quick look at real estate prices for waterfront
property makes a convincing case without any other evidence that we are
adapted to life _near_ the water. Given our relatively high behavioral
plasticity, even a relatively recent (0.8 ma would qualify as recent in my
book) period of development primarily in a coastal setting might well make
sense in explaining our love for water. However this will not account for
bipedalism
Evolved gradually: first (hominoid) wading-climbing in swamp forests (short
legged bent-knees-bent-hips-bipedality, still partial suspensory), later
(seaside early Homo) loss of climbing & evolution of straight body (for
streamlining, regular swimming), still later (sapiens LCA) exclusively
walking.
>, hairlessness (have you looked at otters and seals?
These species are not tropical. The very large male elephant seals & Steller
sealions & walruses are furless in cold environments, but other pinnipeds &
also sea otters are too small to be hairless. A tropical middle-sized
semi-aquatic is the baburusa: furless.
> ), brain size, control, long legs, vocality, or tool use.
All not unexpected at the seaside (cf. tool using sea otters, long legs for
wading, etc.)
> As for climbing ability, AFAIK we are more adept at climbing than we are
at swimming - but that isn't saying much. On the whole I agree with
Mr.Moore - what we are well adapted for is walking and talking. And long
walks along the beach - well what could be more romantic than that? Yours,
Bill Morse
Yes: another indication of a seaside past.
What book have you written, Bill?
J Moore
> predominantly about hopping animals (because of connection between their
> bipedality - holding forces in axial direction - and ours.). I mentioned
> only penguins of all birds because they are bipedal as well as straight
> (vertical). Their legs are below their bodies. This is just like us, and
not
> like all the other birds. Is this called comparative evidence? They aren't
> like other birds. They are SIMILAR to us. So, you could say that they
aren't
> like all the other birds, and they are similar to us because they
accomodate
> similar conditions. As I saw from pictures (I don't have info),
> plunge-diving birds also tend to be more vertical in posture. And for them
> you could also say that they aren't completly vertical because they are
> birds.
No, penguins are NOT similar to us, and I'm not talking about the many ways
they are dissimilar other than their walking posture and their pelvis. They
do not hold their legs in a very straight line directly under them as they
walk, but rather more like most quadrupedal mammals do when they walk
bipedally (like monkeys for instance). From their hips, their upper leg is
generally held forward and bent a lot at the knee; so the lower part of
their legs are vertical -- to see this you have to look at a skeleton. When
you do, you also see that their pelvis is also extremely unlike ours; for
one thing, like most swimming animals, it's very narrow, while ours and that
of our hominid ancestors is rather wide. (In fact, the pelvis of a penguin
isn't all that different from that of a pigeon, although other parts -- esp.
the breastbone and wing/flippers are quite different due to the different
needs of flying and swimming creatures.) OTOH, we have near relatives we do
hold their legs in the manner you think penguins do (gibbons and siamangs,
and to an extent, orangs and spider monkeys). I'm not saying that we
necessarily had ancestors who behaved just like those apes and monkeys, but
doesn't that seem far more likely than us being like penguins, especially
when you consider that in reality, as opposed to the musings of AAT
proponents, penguins's pelvises and walking posture are very different from
ours?
You're making the mistake of taking what AAT proponents say as if it were
true, when frankly, you just can't rely on their research. I have to write
up a post now regarding Marc Verhaegen's "sweat and sea lions" claim, which
is phoney even though he claims to have researched it. Relying on people
like that for your information will leave you awash in "false facts" and the
poorer for it.
> advantageous, and I bet, although on land we are much weaker, in water we
> could drown a leopard. Even if it bites us, we could still keep it in
water
> until it loses air and dies, and we could keep our head out of water. We
> would be wounded, but leopard would be dead. This is the basic idea of my
> scenario. We also need distance if we feed on shellfish (the only meat we
> can eat uncooked).
Another wrong statement. Humans actually do eat various types of meat raw,
especially various internal organs, although as a rule, we eat most meats
cooked.
And don't try that with a leopard, really -- it's not a good plan, to say
the least. In fact, it's common for some predators, large cats among them,
to drive their prey into the water where the cat, because of the way it can
leap, has a big advantage. As a hominid, one would probably be far better
doing almost anything other than running into water to escape a terrestrial
predator.
> A proboscis monkey's nose? It is definitely sure that we have
> similar noses. Our noses can serve two aquatic purposes. The other one is
a
> diving bell. Try to dive upside-down, and air will leak out of your nose.
A
> diving bell saves air in nose.
No, proboscis monkey's nose are not the same as humans, although they have a
superficial resemblance. I know this has been pointed out in newsgroups you
frequent, so really you have no excuse for repeating this inaccurate
statement. And the proboscis monkey's nose does not act as a "diving bell",
no matter how many times AAT proponents repeat that inaccurate statement --
you need to learn for yourself, or you will continue to be taken in by
people repeating these "false facts". The nose of the proboscis monkey is
rather obviously a sexually selected feature. Further, if you look at how
probocis monkeys dive and swim, you'll see that the position their noses are
in as a rule would drive water up their noses, if that actually were a
problem. However, as I mentioned before, simply holding one's breath keeps
water out of primates' noses, no matter which way it's oriented. The
orientation of the nostrils is similar in all Old World monkeys, btw --
that's how they got their scientific name, in fact.
> Bottom divers doesn't have to be adapted for speed. Speed in water
> is only needed if you are chasing fish.
Or escaping aquatic predators, which even the fastest Olympic swimmers (in
the fastest events) would be utterly incapable of, even if they spotted them
before they attacked, which one usually doesn't.
> Our speed is less than that of other, non-terrestrial apes.
You know, it bothers me when I continually see statements like this from AAT
proponents with absolutely no evidence to back it up. Is it true? It
certainly would not be true of all but possibly chimpanzees and bonobos, but
even there -- do you have any evidence for this statement whatever?
--
For a scientific critque of the aquatic ape theory, go to www.aquatic.org
J Moore
> Whatever the possible or past functions of sweating, the most-sweating
> mammals besides humans are sea-lions at the shore AFAWK: "sweat glands on
> the flippers of otariids aid in heat transfer. On hot days sealions &
> furseals can often be seen fanning their flippers & increasing evaporative
> heat loss at these sites" p.87-88 in AR Hoelzel ed.2002 "Marine mammal
> biology" Blackwell.
> Trying to explain human sweat glands by ancestors running over the hot
> African plains, as some traditional paleo-anthropologists still do, is
> clearly ridiculous: salt & water are scarse there, and typical savanna
> mammals use totally different ways of cooling. OTOH, salt & water are
> abundant at the shores where sealions & early Homo lived: early Homo c 1.8
Actually, other primates sweat quite a lot, and in much the same way as
humans. Phil Nicholls has just recently reposted a lot of info on this (1
Jan 2004 in sci.anthropology.paleo) so I won't clutter the space here with
it. Other mammals, such as horses, are also rather well-known for sweating
a lot, although unlike primates, they don't sweat via eccrine glands. Sea
lions do indeed sweat, but not all that much or all that effectively. I dug
out that info by looking at the reference Marc gave here, and by, unlike
Marc, actually doing the work behind reading a couple of sentences in a
general reference. (Would-be paradigm smashers please note: you have to
look at primary references; grabbing a quote from the first book you see
just doesn't cut the mustard, it will lead you into error even if you;re not
inclined that way to start with.)
So here's the thing: first, the statement that Terrie Williams and Graham
Worthy (the authors of Chapter 3 in the book Marc references above) make
about seals flapping their flippers is "supported" by what can only be an
error, since the article they refer to makes no such claim and is in fact
only about how newborn harp seals manage to keep from freezing since they're
born on ice floes in the wintertime (short story on that: they shiver a
lot). But I know from actual sources that seals do in fact wave their
flippers when they get hot. Sweating? Partly; they also have some really
nifty blood vessels that shift warm blood out to the flippers when their
bodies are hot, where the flippers act as raditators. That has nothing to
do with sweating, except that it starts up for the same reason. Next it
seems Marc has pulled one of those "Duane Gish moments" (who famously said,
"After all, you have to stop quoting somewhere.") It seems the very next
section is very apropos to Marc's thesis, but he doesn't mention it. Are
you wondering why? It turns out that it directly contradicts his claim that
seals are among the premier sweaters of the mammalian kingdom. Allow me:
"Evaporative cooling resulting from both sweating and respiratory losses
accounts for less than 20% of heat production in California sea lions
studied under experimental conditions (Masuura & Whittow 1974; South et al.
1976)." This is exactly the sort of thing one needs to look at, especially
when it contradicts what you're claiming -- Marc. The two studies are
slightly different in their goals; the South et al. study was aimed at
finding out much of the heat that sea lions did lose was due to evaporative
cooling (not just sweating but panting, and other techniques I'll mention
later) and how much due to simple radiantion and conduction-convection. The
Matsuura and Whittow study was aimed at finding out how much of the heat the
animals needed to lose actually could be lost through evaporative cooling.
I'll start with the South et al. article: Sea lions, like other otariid
seals (eared seals) just can't get rid of the heat they produce and absorb
even through panting and sweating COMBINED -- under fairly typical
conditions of 15-20 degrees C (about 60-70 deg F) those two methods COMBINED
can only lose about 20% of what they do lose and in fact in really hot
conditions they do a sort of ersatz "sweating" by drooling all over
themselves and urinating on themselves (hey, it's not easy for other animals
to stay cool) and even with that to help out they can't do the job with
evaporative cooling (it can nudge them up toward 50% of the total they lose
but only under pretty hot conditions -- 28 degrees C, or about 80 deg F).
Even with all that -- panting, sweating, AND drooling and urinating on
themselves -- the test animals just can't lose enough heat (more on that in
the next article) and so had a "precipitous rise in body temperature" which
resulted in stopping the experiment. The seals were lying prone and panting
heavily -- they didn't want to kill them. By contrast, we see that
non-human primates, and horses (and certainly humans) certainly manage much
hotter conditions than that without taking to the water, which is ultimately
how sea lions and other seals ordinarily handle a high heat load -- they hit
the water before they hit the temperatures used in that test.
The other article referred to in the quote Marc gave also measured sea lion
evaporative cooling, in this case to see how much was due to panting and how
much to sweating and how much of the total they needed to lose could
actually be lost through this combined method. They measured the sea lions
at temperatures between 13 and 30 deg C (about 55-85 deg F) and found that
the heat loss due to evaporation (both panting and sweating) was a bit under
20% of the heat produced by metabolism, which they note was "relatively
ineffective" (The harbor seal they tested did even worse) The South et al.
article emphasized that this amount was at least SOMETHING, even if it
wasn't nearly enough. The Matsuura and Whittow study showed that about 16%
was due to sweating and about 2.5% due to panting. The conclusion has
several statements that are directly appropos to Marc's claim, which makes
it a pity he didn't look at either of these primary sources which would've
showed him his error. Let me quote:
"The total evaporative water loss from the sea lions in a warm environment
could account for the dissipation of less than 20 per cent of the heat that
the animals were producing. In contrast, many terrestrial mammals and birds
are able to lose heat equivalent to their entire heat production by
evaporation of moisture (Dawson & Hudson 1970; Hart 1971; Dawson 1973). If
the minor sweating responses of pinnipeds are the legacy of their carnivory
ancestry (see above), then the ineffectiveness of evaporative cooling
mechanisms largely represents the absence of panting or of saliva spreading,
in pinnipeds as opposed to terrestrial carnivores." (pp.18-19)
and:
"The absence of effective evaporative cooling mechanisms in sea lions has
been discussed elsewhere (Whittow et al. 1972; Whittow 1973). Teologically,
sea lions may attempt to conserve water rather than to maintain a constant
body temperature. In the course of their adaptation to the sea, dehydration
may have had a role in supressing the evaporative cooling mechanisms that
ancestral pinnipeds may have possessed." (pg. 19)
As for further arguments, I've already outlined in this thread the info
regarding the fact that in humans neither sweat glands or tear ducts can
have evolved to maintain homeostasis, and that this necessary job is handled
in humans by the kidneys, just as it is in every other mammal on earth. Let
me point out that in all marine mammals, such as the sea lions which Marc
refers to here, have very large and/or heavily lobulated kidneys to deal
with the salt load in that environment. Humans, of course, do not, which is
further evidence that they did not evolve in such an environment.
Refs:
"Evaporative heat loss in the California sea lion and harbor seal", D.T.
Matsuura and G.C. Whittow, Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology 1974,
vol. 48A, pp. 9-20
"Air temperature and direct partitional calorimetry of the California sea
lion (Zalophus californianus)", Frank E. South, R.H. Luecke, M.L. Zatzman
and M.D. Shanklin, Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, vol. 54A, pp.
27-30
"Some aspects of temperature regulation in newborn harp seal pups", Arnoldus
Schytte Blix, Hans J. Grav, and Keith Ronald, American Journal of Physiology
1979, vol. 236B (Jan-Jun) pp. R188-R197 (not apropos to this discussion as
it's about baby seals staying warm rather than anything about cooling)
Chapter 3: "Anatomy and Physiology: the Challenge of Aquatic Living", Terrie
M. Williams and Graham A.J. Worthy, (relevant pages, cited by Marc,
pp.87-88, In Marine Mammal Biology, A. Rus Hoelzel, ed., 2002 Blackwell
Publishing
J Moore
Mario Petrinovich
> One of the basic problems, as J. Moore pointed out, is that we are not in
> fact particularly well adapted to a fully aquatic existence. Diving from a
> height of 10 meters for humans is absurd (have you ever stood on a 10
> meter board and looked down?)
Whenever I am on some higher place, I am getting unexplainable wish
to jump down. I thought that something is wrong with me, until I heard that
other people have this, too. I would be very interested to know if other
animals can jump from that hight without consequences.
> Repeated diving in humans from even a low board
> leads to sinus problems (as I have learned from experience).
It is from infected water.
> Our
> subcutaneous fat is nowhere near enough to allow us to spend any
> significant time in cold water (and water below the thermocline is always
> cold).
Please take a look at people in Patagonia. There are two types.
Coastal ones and inland. The coastal ones feed on shelfish, and are naked. I
am talking about Patagonia. Inland ones need to be clothed. And they are
living one next to the other.
> Even in warm water our skin rapidly swells and becomes easily
> subject to abrasion and puncture. We are so poorly adapted to truly deep
> diving that the well-developed vocality is unlikely to be due to the
> development of conscious breathing control, as it may be in birds and
> truly
> aquatic mammals. It is more likely that the breath-hold control is a
> byproduct of speech.
Speach is communication. Communication is exchange of information.
On land you exchange information by the mean of smell, sound, and visualy.
Smell - you cannot do this living coastal life. Sound - the sound of sea is
covering all suptile noises. BTW, did you see a human/chimp gene comparation
data. There are four major differences : smell, hearing, digesting, disease.
I explained smell and hearing. Digesting and disease can be explained (IMO)
with separated environment containing different food (which you can say that
it is newer). Visualy - this is information transfered by looking someone's
posture. We are bad at this, we are looking at faces, not body talk that
much (AFAIK). Further, on land, when you see a predator, you can scream in
panic and run. There is not much time to talk. In water predator, although
seen at same distance, need to swim towards you. You have plenty of time to
exchange informations.
> Having said the above, a quick look at real estate prices for waterfront
> property makes a convincing case without any other evidence that we are
> adapted to life _near_ the water. Given our relatively high behavioral
> plasticity, even a relatively recent (0.8 ma would qualify as recent in my
> book) period of development primarily in a coastal setting might well make
> sense in explaining our love for water. However this will not account for
> bipedalism, hairlessness (have you looked at otters and seals?), brain
> size, control, long legs, vocality, or tool use. As for climbing ability,
> AFAIK we are more adept at climbing than we are at swimming - but that
> isn't saying much. On the whole I agree with Mr. Moore - what we are well
> adapted for is walking and talking. And long walks along the beach - well
> what could be more romantic than that? Bill Morse
We are walking, not running. We are slowest of them all. The more
animal is terrestrial the fastest it must be. Ostrich is bipedal, is heavier
than humans, and still is one of the fastest. OTOH, coast doesn't need
speed. On coast even animals with retarded limbs can live. This is our
speed. I've read somewhere that in some place where seals are living, people
are warned not to come close to them. Because even if they look retarded in
that regard, they can still be as fast as us. No way that we could escape on
land from anybody. -- Mario
Marc Verhaegen
> > Whatever the possible or past functions of sweating, the most-sweating
mammals besides humans are sea-lions at the shore AFAWK: "sweat glands on
the flippers of otariids aid in heat transfer. On hot days sealions &
furseals can often be seen fanning their flippers & increasing evaporative
heat loss at these sites" p.87-88 in AR Hoelzel ed.2002 "Marine mammal
biology" Blackwell. Trying to explain human sweat glands by ancestors
running over the hot African plains, as some traditional
paleo-anthropologists still do, is clearly ridiculous: salt & water are
scarse there, and typical savanna mammals use totally different ways of
cooling. OTOH, salt & water are abundant at the shores where sealions &
early Homo lived: early Homo c 1.8
> Actually, other primates sweat quite a lot, and in much the same way as
humans.
Don't you even know that sweat glands are a lot more abundant in human skin
than in other primates? Read, eg, Montagna on sweat glands.
> Phil Nicholls has just recently reposted a lot of info on this (1 Jan 2004
in sci.anthropology.paleo) so I won't clutter the space here with it.
Why don't you reproduce this nonsense here? Afraid?
> Other mammals, such as horses, are also rather well-known for sweating a
lot, although unlike primates, they don't sweat via eccrine glands. Sea
lions do indeed sweat, but not all that much or all that effectively. I dug
out that info by looking at the reference Marc gave here, and by, unlike
Marc, actually doing the work behind reading a couple of sentences in a
general reference. (Would-be paradigm smashers please note: you have to
look at primary references; grabbing a quote from the first book you see
just doesn't cut the mustard, it will lead you into error even if you;re not
inclined that way to start with.) So here's the thing: first, the
statement that Terrie Williams and Graham Worthy (the authors of Chapter 3
in the book Marc references above) make about seals flapping their flippers
is "supported" by what can only be an error, since the article they refer to
makes no such claim and is in fact only about how newborn harp seals manage
to keep from freezing since they're born on ice floes in the wintertime
(short story on that: they shiver a lot). But I know from actual sources
that seals do in fact wave their flippers when they get hot. Sweating?
Partly; they also have some really nifty blood vessels that shift warm blood
out to the flippers when their bodies are hot, where the flippers act as
raditators. That has nothing to do with sweating, except that it starts up
for the same reason.
A lot of blabla for nothing. Try to be concise. The facts in Hoelzel are
correct, it has everything to do with sweating, but as you say the ref is
apparently wrong. It should be GA Bartholomew & F Wilke 1956 "Body Tp in the
northern furseal" J.Mammal.37:327. This is not contradicted by anything that
follows. [snipped irrelevancies] The point you completely miss is not that
we sweat like sealions, but that it's stupid to believe that when forest
mammals go to the savanna they start sweating more: the opposite is true in
savanna mammals (see below).
> As for further arguments, I've already outlined in this thread the info
regarding the fact that in humans neither sweat glands or tear ducts can
have evolved to maintain homeostasis, and that this necessary job is handled
in humans by the kidneys, just as it is in every other mammal on earth. Let
me point out that in all marine mammals, such as the sea lions which Marc
refers to here, have very large and/or heavily lobulated kidneys to deal
with the salt load in that environment. Humans, of course, do not, which is
further evidence that they did not evolve in such an environment.
Again you miss the point. Most mammals, eg, most primates & rodents, many
carnivores, rabbit, horse, camel, giraffe & most ruminants except large
bovids, have 1 papilla in each kidney. Chimps have this papilla subdivided
into 6-7 smaller ones. Some populations of capuchin & spider monkeys have
multi-papillary kidneys. Humans have 10-12 papillae in every kidney, and
frequently an extra (third or fourth) kidney. If human ancestors had gone to
the savanna as your ridiculous alternative to our waterside scenario states,
humans would have had less papillae than chimps.
William Morse
>
> "William Morse" <wdm...@twcny.rr.com> wrote in message
> news:bu3s7l$oeu$1...@darwin.ediacara.org...
>
>> > The essence is this: you are incapable of explaining why humans &
>> > chimps
> differ. A coastal past in our history (probably end-Plio-,
> begin-Pleistocene, for some time) nicely explains a lot of these
> differences. Alister Hardy in his paper "Was Man more aquatic in the
> past?" (NS 1960) described how a sea-side life - beach-combing,
> wading, swimming, collecting coconuts, fruits, shellfish, turtles &
> turtle eggs, bird eggs, crabs, seaweeds etc. - explains many human
> traits (absent in our nearest relatives the chimps) a lot better than
> dry savanna scenarios do: very large brain (but reduced olfactory bulb
> - totally unexpected in the savanna), excellent breath-hold control
> (up to minutes), greater diving skills, well-developed vocality,
> extreme handiness & tool use, reduction of climbing skills, reduction
> of fur, more subcutaneous fat, very long legs, more linear body build,
> high needs of iodine, sodium & poly-unsaturated fatty acids etc.
>
>> One of the basic problems, as J. Moore pointed out, is that we are
>> not in
> fact particularly well adapted to a fully aquatic existence.
>
> Who speaks about fully aquatic?? Seaside. Hardy: "more aquatic."
As noted in my previous follow, I can agree with seaside - but that then
falls far short of explaining the wide range of features that AAT
purports to explain.
(snip stuff on fully aquatic existence)
>> We are so poorly adapted to truly deep diving that the well-developed
> vocality is unlikely to be due to the development of conscious
> breathing control
>
> 1) I didn't say that, see the scenario above. There's no doubt IMO
> vocality as in gibbons played an important role in the development of
> human vocality. Otters (waterside) are more vocalic that weasels.
> Arboreal mammals are usu. more vocalic than related species in more
> open milieus. Savanna mammals generally have less variation in
> vocality.
>
>>, as it may be in birds and truly aquatic mammals. It is more likely
>>that
> the breath-hold control is a byproduct of speech.
> Then you can't explain speech. You can't explain why human can speak &
> why chimps couldn't evolve this skill.
Chimps (or rather a very near relative) _did_ evolve this skill. We are
the result. Read "The Symbolic Species" for an excellent discussion of
this topic.
> Having said the above, a quick look at real estate prices for
>> waterfront
> property makes a convincing case without any other evidence that we
> are adapted to life _near_ the water. Given our relatively high
> behavioral plasticity, even a relatively recent (0.8 ma would qualify
> as recent in my book) period of development primarily in a coastal
> setting might well make sense in explaining our love for water.
> However this will not account for bipedalism
> Evolved gradually: first (hominoid) wading-climbing in swamp forests
> (short legged bent-knees-bent-hips-bipedality, still partial
> suspensory), later (seaside early Homo) loss of climbing & evolution
> of straight body (for streamlining, regular swimming), still later
> (sapiens LCA) exclusively walking.
I don't buy this, maybe partly because I don't like swamps, but it is at
least an interesting possibility for explaining the development of
bipedality in humans (at least until you get to the straight body part
which is hogwash since we are relatively bad at swimming).
>>, hairlessness (have you looked at otters and seals?
> These species are not tropical. The very large male elephant seals &
> Steller sealions & walruses are furless in cold environments, but
> other pinnipeds & also sea otters are too small to be hairless. A
> tropical middle-sized semi-aquatic is the baburusa: furless.
Sea lions (250 lb) too small to be hairless? How about the Hawaiian monk
seal - it is tropical. And the capybara is a tropical middle-sized semi-
aquatic, and it has lots of hair. Meanwhile elephants and rhinoceroses
are non-aquatic but hairless. The point is that an aquatic existence does
not necessarily lead to hairlessness, nor is hairlessness evidence for an
aquatic existence.
>> ), brain size, control, long legs, vocality, or tool use.
>
> All not unexpected at the seaside (cf. tool using sea otters, long
> legs for wading, etc.)
And how about those tool using seals, as opposed to the chimps that are
incapable of tool use. And how about those wading giraffes, not to
mention all those other mammals that have adopted bipedalism as a result
of their semi-aquatic existence - the babirusa, capybara, otters, water
buffalo, beaver ... oh darn, _none_ of them are bipedal.
As I said previously, humans show evidence of development in a shoreline
habitat - but it only explains a few of the differences that set us apart
from our nearest relatives.
Yours,
Bill Morse
Marc Verhaegen
> I have to write up a post now regarding Marc Verhaegen's "sweat and sea
lions" claim, which is phoney even though he claims to have researched it.
You are sick, Moore!
Where did I claim that??
Liar!
The most-themoregulatorily-sweating mammals besides humans are sea-lions at
the shore AFAWK: "sweat glands on the flippers of otariids aid in heat
transfer. On hot days sealions & furseals can often be seen fanning their
flippers & increasing evaporative heat loss at these sites" p.87-88 in AR
Hoelzel ed.2002 "Marine mammal biology" Blackwell.
Trying to explain human sweat glands by ancestors running over the hot
African plains, as some traditional paleo-anthropologists still do, is
clearly ridiculous: salt & water are scarse there, and typical savanna
mammals use totally different ways of cooling. OTOH, salt & water are
abundant at the shores where sealions & early Homo lived: early Homo c 1.8
Ma is found from Algeria to Java (amid barnacles & shells in a former river
delta at Mojokerto). No doubt they spread over the warmer parts of the Old
World at the beginning of the Pleistocene along the coasts. It is here that
we have to situate Hardy's more-aquatic past (AC Hardy 1960 "Was Man more
aquatic in the past?" New Scientist 7:642-5).
Moore has no counter-argument whatsoever to this.
Marc Verhaegen
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Verhaegen.html
http://www.onelist.com/community/AAT
Mario Petrinovich
I didn't talk eaither of their walking posture, or their pelvises.
Yes, I've seen their skeleton before. Penguins are not like quadruped
mammals, nor like monkeys. It is obvious, they are bipedal fish (evolved
from birds).
And, although we do have near relatives who can hold their legs in
the manner you think could lead to obligate bipedalism, they are still very
far from bipedalism. And yet, some other animals are bipedal at rest, which,
BTW, as you've said yourself, don't have anything with gibbons, siamangs,
etc.. It is obvious that being able to stand occasionaly on hind legs (a
goat can do that too, and a lot of other animlas) isn't what is needed for
bipedalism. What is needed for bipedalism is what I described. Being adapted
to acquire forces in axial direction. That is it.
> You're making the mistake of taking what AAT proponents say as if it were
> true, when frankly, you just can't rely on their research. I have to
> write
> up a post now regarding Marc Verhaegen's "sweat and sea lions" claim,
> which
> is phoney even though he claims to have researched it. Relying on people
> like that for your information will leave you awash in "false facts" and
> the poorer for it.
Discussing with them is always very interesting. Yet, I am thinking
with my own head. I have Elaine's latest book at home, but I opened it only
once. I am afraid like hell to touch it, to not come under the influence
(although, I am clearly under the influence of some other AAT book that I've
read 12 years ago). As you've seen, I only used your article for 'salt
glands' thing. This is the way I am working. Never-the-less, AAT community
is full of smart people, and I am more than glad to be in their company.
> > I bet, although on land we are much weaker, in water we
> > could drown a leopard. Even if it bites us, we could still keep it in
> > water
> > until it loses air and dies, and we could keep our head out of water. We
> > would be wounded, but leopard would be dead. This is the basic idea of
> > my
> > scenario. We also need distance if we feed on shellfish (the only meat
> > we can eat uncooked).
>
> Another wrong statement. Humans actually do eat various types of meat
> raw,
> especially various internal organs, although as a rule, we eat most meats
> cooked.
I went through fierce discussion about this (in AAT community, as
well). Did some research, tried a lot of supposedly "raw" meat we are
eating. Internal organs are eaten after hunt, purely for ceremonlial
reasons, nothing else (you can eat your shoe for ceremonial reason). Inuits
are eating those parts also after hunting, probably because they are hungry,
and they don't have the means to set up fire.
> And don't try that with a leopard, really -- it's not a good plan, to say
> the least. In fact, it's common for some predators, large cats among
> them,
> to drive their prey into the water where the cat, because of the way it
> can
> leap, has a big advantage. As a hominid, one would probably be far better
> doing almost anything other than running into water to escape a
> terrestrial predator.
A kangaroo is doing this. It is suppose to know better than you. It
was in those situations. A leopard is just a floating meat if it cannot
reach bottom. Can it leap if it doesn't have something below its legs? Even
if it can, it is pale to what it can do on land. Actually, the main predator
I set for hominids, are sabre toothed cats. Anyway, they aren't adapted to
water. They even cannot bite, or tear properly in water. Compare teeth of
aquatic predators (crocs, sharks), and the way they are tearing flesh, to
teeth of terrestrial ones. They are completly different. Terrestrial
predators are adapted to do terrestrial hunting. Hunting in water is very
different.
I think you are wrong here. Lenghtening nose always helps in aquatic
situations. BTW, I was talking about female's nose. It wouldn't be strange
that respiratory organ is sexually dimorphed in aquatic situation. And they
are in aquatical environment (crocs are their only predator, this is pretty
aquatical. Predators shape you.). It could simply be that longer noses help
when they jump into water. Or whatever. A respiratory adaptation is logical
in aquatical environment.
> > Bottom divers doesn't have to be adapted for speed. Speed in
> > water is only needed if you are chasing fish.
>
> Or escaping aquatic predators, which even the fastest Olympic swimmers (in
> the fastest events) would be utterly incapable of, even if they spotted
> them before they attacked, which one usually doesn't.
We don't have sea predators. For us, sea is safe. Remember summer
days?
> > Our speed is less than that of other, non-terrestrial apes.
>
> You know, it bothers me when I continually see statements like this from
> AAT
> proponents with absolutely no evidence to back it up. Is it true? It
> certainly would not be true of all but possibly chimpanzees and bonobos,
> but
> even there -- do you have any evidence for this statement whatever?
No. I think I've read something, but I definitely wouldn't search
for it. Why? Because even you are mentioning chimps and bonobos. They are
our closest relatives. No way that we would become even slower than them in
terrestrial environment. Remember, a biped can be fast if it needs to. So,
the same as with straight posture. A straight bipeds are able to sustain
forces from axial direction. We should be the only exception. A primate
becomes faster in terrestrial environment. We should be the only exception.
Those two things are basic recquirements for those things. And we shouldn't
be able to accomodate this, and still be able to be straight terrestrial
bipedals. Why?
If you ask me, your book about dismissing AAT is becoming thicker
and thicker. Every new day brings another clue against savanna, and another
clue for AAT. You can try to dismiss AAT things one by one, but you cannot
do this with them all at once. I believe that it is time for YOU, to start
to accept that all those things that look so similar to aquatic adaptations,
really could arise from those same adaptations >2mya. -- Mario
J Moore
--
For a scientific critque of the aquatic ape theory, go to www.aquatic.org
Marc Verhaegen <fa20...@skynet.be> wrote in message
news:buc90a$9pa$1...@darwin.ediacara.org...
>
> "J Moore" <anthro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:bu7bla$1r00$1...@darwin.ediacara.org...
>
> > I have to write up a post now regarding Marc Verhaegen's "sweat and sea
> lions" claim, which is phoney even though he claims to have researched it.
>
J Moore
> A lot of blabla for nothing. Try to be concise. The facts in Hoelzel are
> correct, it has everything to do with sweating, but as you say the ref is
> apparently wrong. It should be GA Bartholomew & F Wilke 1956 "Body Tp in
the
> northern furseal" J.Mammal.37:327. This is not contradicted by anything
that
> follows. [snipped irrelevancies] The point you completely miss is not
that
> we sweat like sealions, but that it's stupid to believe that when forest
> mammals go to the savanna they start sweating more: the opposite is true
in
> savanna mammals (see below).
In a way it is for nothing; that is it adds nothing to knowledge of human
evolution save to point out that the claim you've been making about sea
lions and sweat is wrong and is shown to be wrong using the sources you
claimed supported it. It's kind of sad that this has to be done (I'll never
get that afternoon back, but then I like libraries) but I had to point out
that your much repeated claim had no basis in fact, despite your offering a
citation which you claimed supported it. I've dealt with the Bartholomew
and Wilkie paper on my cite. They did say they saw the animals wave their
flippers but as evidence of sweat itself offered only an experiment with
frying a dead seal's flipper under a heat lamp until it blistered. These
other cites which I summarised show through actual measurements in
experiments that sea lions do indeed sweat, but ineffectively, which
directly contradicts your claim. (In fact most of a sea lion's heat loss
through the flippers is through radiation using the blood vessels that
adjust blood flow to the flippers according to heat load -- alas for the sea
lions, even this is not effective enough to get rid of the heat they need to
lose.)
I am not here making any claim for any "scenario", "alternative" or
otherwise. I am merely examining the evidence for your scenario to see if
it makes sense and is supported by evidence. It doesn't and it isn't. Even
if all of "conventional" paleoanthropology was shown to be in error -- even
if every single fact was shown to be wrong -- it wouldn't mean that your
theory was therefore right. It wouldn't even suggest that your theory was
likely to be right -- your theory has to stand on its own merits. All I'm
doing is looking at the evidence (doing work, btw, that you should've done
yourself) to see if your theory stands on its own merits, and it doesn't.
JMoore
***
For a scientific critique of the "aquatic ape" theory, go to
www.aquaticape.org
Marc Verhaegen
> >> > The essence is this: you are incapable of explaining why humans &
chimps differ. A coastal past in our history (probably end-Plio-,
begin-Pleistocene, for some time) nicely explains a lot of these
differences. Alister Hardy in his paper "Was Man more aquatic in the past?"
(NS 1960) described how a sea-side life - beach-combing, wading, swimming,
collecting coconuts, fruits, shellfish, turtles & turtle eggs, bird eggs,
crabs, seaweeds etc. - explains many human> traits (absent in our nearest
relatives the chimps) a lot better than dry savanna scenarios do: very large
brain (but reduced olfactory bulb - totally unexpected in the savanna),
excellent breath-hold control (up to minutes), greater diving skills,
well-developed vocality, extreme handiness & tool use, reduction of climbing
skills, reduction of fur, more subcutaneous fat, very long legs, more linear
body build, high needs of iodine, sodium & poly-unsaturated fatty acids etc.
> As noted in my previous follow, I can agree with seaside - but that then
falls far short of explaining the wide range of features that AAT purports
to explain.
?? You are ill-informed: Hardy hypothesised a seaside past, see his paper
1960 "Was man more aquatic in the past?" New Sci.7:642-5.
> >> We are so poorly adapted to truly deep diving that the well-developed
vocality is unlikely to be due to the development of conscious breathing
control
> > 1) I didn't say that, see the scenario above. There's no doubt IMO
vocality as in gibbons played an important role in the development of human
vocality. Otters (waterside) are more vocalic that weasels. Arboreal mammals
are usu. more vocalic than related species in more open milieus. Savanna
mammals generally have less variation in vocality.
> >>, as it may be in birds and truly aquatic mammals. It is more likely
that the breath-hold control is a byproduct of speech.
> > Then you can't explain speech. You can't explain why human can speak &
why chimps couldn't evolve this skill.
> Chimps (or rather a very near relative) _did_ evolve this skill. We are
the result. Read "The Symbolic Species" for an excellent discussion of this
topic.
?? You don't claim chimps speak, I hope??
> > > ... However this will not account for bipedalism
> > Evolved gradually: first (hominoid) wading-climbing in swamp forests
(short legged bent-knees-bent-hips-bipedality, still partial suspensory),
later (seaside early Homo) loss of climbing & evolution of straight body
(for streamlining, regular swimming), still later (sapiens LCA) exclusively
walking.
> I don't buy this, maybe partly because I don't like swamps, but it is at
least an interesting possibility for explaining the development of
bipedality in humans (at least until you get to the straight body part which
is hogwash since we are relatively bad at swimming).
- Please note: wading-climbing in swamp forests is not about humans: it was
much earlier: it's about hominoids.
- What is "hogwash"? Not in my dictionary.
- Humans swim well enough to collect shellfish by diving, see Polynesians,
Japanese & Korean Ama etc. No doubt a straight posture is advantageous here.
Do you have a reason why sapiens ancestors would not have done this parttime
when they spread along the coasts?
> >>, hairlessness (have you looked at otters and seals?
> > These species are not tropical. The very large male elephant seals &
Steller sealions & walruses are furless in cold environments, but other
pinnipeds & also sea otters are too small to be hairless. A tropical
middle-sized semi-aquatic is the baburusa: furless.
> Sea lions (250 lb) too small to be hairless? How about the Hawaiian monk
seal - it is tropical.
Yes. Thanks for the example. I hadn't realised this. If Hawaiian monk seals
are exclusively tropical, my idea that humans & babirusas are naked because
they're semi-aquatic & tropical & medium-sized is wrong.
> And the capybara is a tropical middle-sized semi-aquatic, and it has lots
of hair.
Yes, but smaller than humans & babirusas. I thought c 50-100 kg was the
limit: humans & babirusas are partly haired.
> Meanwhile elephants and rhinoceroses are non-aquatic but hairless.
So?
> The point is that an aquatic existence does not necessarily lead to
hairlessness
Full aquaticism leads to furlessness (exception: sea otters).
>, nor is hairlessness evidence for an aquatic existence.
Nobody ever claimed this.
> >> ), brain size, control, long legs, vocality, or tool use.
> > All not unexpected at the seaside (cf. tool using sea otters, long legs
for wading, etc.)
> And how about those tool using seals, as opposed to the chimps that are
incapable of tool use.
Please no simplistinc thinking: if A leads to B, than doesn't mean that B
leads to A. Our scenario is not that our ancestors were seals, but that our
ancestors c 2 Ma spreadl along the coasts.
> And how about those wading giraffes, not to mention all those other
mammals that have adopted bipedalism as a result of their semi-aquatic
existence - the babirusa, capybara, otters, water buffalo, beaver ... oh
darn, _none_ of them are bipedal.
This is too stupid to answer. Again: for the Xth time: IMO our bipedalism
evolved gradually: first (hominoid) wading-climbing in swamp forests (short
legged bent-knees-bent-hips-bipedality, still partial suspensory), later
(seaside early Homo) loss of climbing & evolution of straight body (for
streamlining, regular swimming), still later (sapiens LCA) exclusively
walking.
Have you written a book, Bill? Which?
--Marc
Mario Petrinovich
> Marc Verhaegen :
> > William Morse :
> > Having said the above, a quick look at real estate prices for
> >> waterfront
> > property makes a convincing case without any other evidence that we
> > are adapted to life _near_ the water. Given our relatively high
> > behavioral plasticity, even a relatively recent (0.8 ma would qualify
> > as recent in my book) period of development primarily in a coastal
> > setting might well make sense in explaining our love for water.
> > However this will not account for bipedalism
>
> > Evolved gradually: first (hominoid) wading-climbing in swamp forests
> > (short legged bent-knees-bent-hips-bipedality, still partial
> > suspensory), later (seaside early Homo) loss of climbing & evolution
> > of straight body (for streamlining, regular swimming), still later
> > (sapiens LCA) exclusively walking.
>
> I don't buy this, maybe partly because I don't like swamps, but it is at
> least an interesting possibility for explaining the development of
> bipedality in humans (at least until you get to the straight body part
> which is hogwash since we are relatively bad at swimming).
My idea (which is the topic of this discussion) is saying that we
became streamlined because of plunge diving (just like plunge diving birds
are very straight when they are plunge diving).
> As I said previously, humans show evidence of development in a shoreline
> habitat - but it only explains a few of the differences that set us apart
> from our nearest relatives. Bill Morse
William Morse
> William Morse :
>> Marc Verhaegen :
>> > William Morse :
>> > Having said the above, a quick look at real estate prices for
>> >> waterfront
>> > property makes a convincing case without any other evidence that we
>> > are adapted to life _near_ the water. Given our relatively high
>> > behavioral plasticity, even a relatively recent (0.8 ma would
>> > qualify as recent in my book) period of development primarily in a
>> > coastal setting might well make sense in explaining our love for
>> > water. However this will not account for bipedalism
(snip)
> My idea (which is the topic of this discussion) is saying that
> we
> became streamlined because of plunge diving (just like plunge diving
> birds are very straight when they are plunge diving).
>> As I said previously, humans show evidence of development in a
>> shoreline habitat - but it only explains a few of the differences
>> that set us apart from our nearest relatives.
I don't know if you missed my earlier follow, in which I pointed out some
of our liabilities for plunge diving. And as you may not be aware, I have
often used penguins and seals as examples of convergent evolution. But
seals, even though they are streamlined, do not walk upright. Penguins do.
The difference is that penguins evolved from bipedal ancestors while seals
evolved from quadripedal ancestors.Since humans evolved from quadripedal
ancestors, the analogy to penguins doesn't hold. You might also note that
human legs are poorly adapted for swimming (if you look at the olympic
sprint swimming events you will note that they don't use their legs for
much.)
The other problem with plunge diving as an explanation is that there is
precious little habitat for a non-flying plunge diver to exploit - there
simply aren't that many locations where cliffs overlook deep clear water. I
am unaware of any mammal that makes its living by plunge diving. There are
fishing bats, but they catch their prey with their feet, probably because
they evolved from echo-locating ancestors and so use echo-location rather
than vision to spot fish and so cannot detect fish at any significant
depth.
Yours,
Bill Morse
J Moore
that this debate should be continued in the public forum it started in. In
case he hasn't posted his post to the newsgroupo yet, I've appended the
entire text of it at the bottom of my post here so people can check the
accuracy of my excerpts of his post:
> What relly is ridiculous, is you trying to ridiculing me on this.
> Claiming that penguins are birds is as much ridiculous as claiming that we
> are apes, although we are humans, and weren't apes for so long. Or, that
> dolphins aren't fish because they are flipping their tail upside-down
> instead of left-right. They are functionaly fish, and this is what we are
> talking about.
They are not "functionally fish", they are birds who are very adept at
swimming, to the point we would probably call them aquatic, certainly
semi-aquatic. Looking at only a few superficial features and behaviors (and
ignoring the majority of their features and behaviors) is the only way you
can even approach calling them fishlike (and even that is so far-fetched I
don't know how to point it out without insulting you, since you seem
insulted by my pointing it out already). They are far more like birds than
they are like fish, which is why they are classified as birds and why no one
disputes this classification (except, apparently, you).
>
> > > I didn't talk eaither of their walking posture, or their
> > > pelvises.
> > > Yes, I've seen their skeleton before. Penguins are not like quadruped
> > > mammals, nor like monkeys. It is obvious, they are bipedal fish
(evolved
> > > from birds).
They are birds, Mario; saying what you are here just makes your position
seem even sillier than it does already, and I would think you don't want to
do that.
> Interesting. You are saying that what we need in water is leaping?
No, what I said several times, and I thought pretty clearly, is that large
cats will commonly chase their prey into water to catch it, and that this wo
rks well for them because they leap through the water while the water slows
down their prey. This means that running into water isn't a good way to get
away from large cats, contrary to your statements. Your suggestion that we
always dived into deep water presupposes that we were always very near water
that is very deep at the shoreline, which rids the "aquatic ape" of the
ability to be the shoreline wader that most proponents now want it to be.
On proboscis monkeys and their noses:
> I was talking about jumping into water. When they are in panic
(and
> they are in panic in life threating situations, someone would presume)
they
> are jumping into water. Life threating situations shape you.
When they jump into the water they jump feet first with their heads held in
a position that would drive water up their nostrils if that actually were a
problem -- as I explained it isn't actually a problem if you hold your
breath -- but the actual behavior of proboscis monkeys jumping into water is
not what you imagine it to be; they don't dive or hold their heads down.
> When was that I claimed that we see predators? Certainly not in
the
> last year or so (but I think I never did this. I usually don't claim such
> uncertain things). I also never did mention crocs. And I am swimming safe
in
You said it in this newsgroup on the 15th of this month; that was 4 days
ago: "In water predator, although
seen at same distance, need to swim towards you. You have plenty of time to
exchange informations."
This is incorrect information; it's wrong. This is known stuff, well known,
and in fact I have many examples on my site with the references to the
literature that supports what I'm saying. Further, although on land some
predators no doubt attack without being seen first, or seen to late to do
anything about it, that is almost certainly not the approach that our
ancestors took with terrestrial predators, since they probably reacted to
them much as chimps do now. Again, my site has lots of info on this as
well, also supported by references to the relevant literature.
> Adriatic sea, no problem. Along with millions of others. Why, indeed,
South
> Africans are spending on shark nets. Didn't those mothers with their
> children heard about sharks? What is so much attracting them to put their
> beloved children in such a dangerous conditions? Listening to you, I would
> presume that they wouldn't go into sea even if this can save their lives.
You claimed that for humans there are no sea predators and that "for us, sea
is safe". I pointed out that even for us, with our advanced technology,
life guards, and having for several centuries decimated our predators with
guns and nets, we still get attacked by aquatic predators. And these
predators attack in both shallow and deep water, and we usually don't see
them before they attack, even when we are in groups. These predators also
don't respond to counter-attack as a rule, which makes them even more
dangerous and rather different from terrestrial predators. For our early
hominid ancestors, who were smaller and had no technology to speak of (rocks
and branches), and who weren't able to wipe huge numbers of their predators
from the face of the earth as we have, this would be even more dangerous.
This is no doubt why we see that animals (chimps) who are very like our
ancestors (ie., of medium size with slow reproductive rates) can exist as
terrestrial animals, but we see no such animal (ie., like us, of medium size
with slow reproductive rates) in an aquatic environment anywhere in the
world.
> > > clue for AAT. You can try to dismiss AAT things one by one, but you
> > > cannot
> > > do this with them all at once. I believe that it is time for YOU, to
> > > start
> > > to accept that all those things that look so similar to aquatic
> > > adaptations,
> > > really could arise from those same adaptations >2mya. -- Mario
One can only disprove individual points one by one, and as you go through
the AAT litany, each point falls apart when you look at the evidence. That
AAT list of "aquatic traits" has the rather large problem of containing
myriad items that are simply false. In science one cannot accept things
that are demonstrably false, so I decline your invitation to do so.
JMoore
--
For a scientific critque of the aquatic ape theory, go to www.aquatic.org
*********** appended entire post from Mario:
>
>
> > Mario, you really have to ... what can I say. Penguins are not fish,
they
> > are birds. Don't you see how ridiculous you sound when say they're
fish?
> > They aren't even like fish. I mean come on. Even allowing for
hyperbole
> > this is a ridiculous statement.
>
> What relly is ridiculous, is you trying to ridiculing me on this.
> Claiming that penguins are birds is as much ridiculous as claiming that we
> are apes, although we are humans, and weren't apes for so long. Or, that
> dolphins aren't fish because they are flipping their tail upside-down
> instead of left-right. They are functionaly fish, and this is what we are
> talking about.
>
> > > I didn't talk eaither of their walking posture, or their
> > > pelvises.
> > > Yes, I've seen their skeleton before. Penguins are not like quadruped
> > > mammals, nor like monkeys. It is obvious, they are bipedal fish
(evolved
> > > from birds).
> >
> > About killing large cats in water.
> >
> > > A kangaroo is doing this. It is suppose to know better than
you.
> > > It
> > > was in those situations. A leopard is just a floating meat if it
cannot
> >
> > Kangaroos do not live in places with leopards. Again,. this is common
> > knowledge, not arcane scienctific data. Don't you realise you sound
> > ridiculous when you state things that even grade school kids know is
> > wrong?
> > I really don't mean to be mean in pointing this out, but really. Also
> > note,
> > when you start talking about dingos rather than leopards, that kangaroos
> > move by leaping, which really helps in moving quickly through shallow
> > water.
>
> You mean from shallow into deeper. Well, by plunge diving into
water
> you also are fastly into deeper water. That way you can use your potential
> and kinetic energy to gain distance.
>
> > That's why big cats, which can attack with leaping bounds, often chase
> > their
> > prey into water to catch them. And it is a fact, which you can even see
> > from watching nature shows on TV, that large cats regularly attack and
> > kill
> > their prey by chasing them into water. I'll grant you that if we were
> > trying to get away from dingos (or possibly hunting dogs), and if we
could
> > leap like kangaroos or large cats, we might escape by going into
water --
> > but I shouldn't really have to point out that we can't do that.
>
> Interesting. You are saying that what we need in water is leaping?
>
> > > Lenghtening nose always helps in aquatic
> > > situations. BTW, I was talking about female's nose. It wouldn't be
> > > strange
> > > that respiratory organ is sexually dimorphed in aquatic situation. And
> > > they
> > > are in aquatical environment (crocs are their only predator, this is
> > > pretty
> > > aquatical. Predators shape you.). It could simply be that longer noses
> > > help
> > > when they jump into water. Or whatever. A respiratory adaptation is
> > > logical in aquatical environment.
> >
> > Female and young proboscis monkeys do not hold their noses in a position
> > that would tend to make water wash over it. That would be a face down
> > position, like the "crawl" position in human swimming; they hold their
> > noses
> > in the position we would a "dog paddle" which if you would look at
> > pictures
> > of them swimming you would see leaves their nostrils facing essentially
> > forward in the water, the opposite of what you are imagining them doing.
>
> I was talking about jumping into water. When they are in panic
(and
> they are in panic in life threating situations, someone would presume)
they
> are jumping into water. Life threating situations shape you.
>
> > > We don't have sea predators. For us, sea is safe. Remember
> > > summer days?
> >
> > Again, are you completely unaware that even modern day humans, with our
> > technology and our having nearly wiped out many large aquatic predators,
> > we
> > still have problems with aquatic predators? Why does the government of
> > South Africa spend all that money on shark nets around their swimming
> > beaches? Are they just crazy in your view? The fact is that even
today,
> > when we have far more effective anti-predator techniques at our disposal
> > than any of our past ancestors, we still get killed by crocs and sharks.
> > Further, contrary to your claim that we'd just see them coming from
afar,
> > most attacking aquatic predators aren't seen until they attack. For
> > instance (and this is typical) the boy who was attacked in Florida last
> > year
> > was in shallow water (about knee-deep) and the shark wasn't seen until
it
> > had atatcked him. Crocs do the same; I have a typical example on my
site
> > of
> > a woman in Australia who was standing, with two companions, in
ankle-deep
> > water who was atatcked and killed by a croc that none of them saw until
it
> > grabbed her. This is typical of these predators.
>
> When was that I claimed that we see predators? Certainly not in
the
> last year or so (but I think I never did this. I usually don't claim such
> uncertain things). I also never did mention crocs. And I am swimming safe
in
> Adriatic sea, no problem. Along with millions of others. Why, indeed,
South
> Africans are spending on shark nets. Didn't those mothers with their
> children heard about sharks? What is so much attracting them to put their
> beloved children in such a dangerous conditions? Listening to you, I would
> presume that they wouldn't go into sea even if this can save their lives.
>
> > > If you ask me, your book about dismissing AAT is becoming
> > > thicker
> > > and thicker. Every new day brings another clue against savanna, and
> > > another
> > > clue for AAT. You can try to dismiss AAT things one by one, but you
> > > cannot
> > > do this with them all at once. I believe that it is time for YOU, to
> > > start
> > > to accept that all those things that look so similar to aquatic
> > > adaptations,
> > > really could arise from those same adaptations >2mya. -- Mario
> >
> > First you have to have things that DO look like aquatic adaptations, and
> > the
> > things that AAT proponents point to just don't; I detail many of these
> > things on my site. And second you have to ask yourself why humans have
> > none
> > of the actual ubitquitous aquatic and/or marine traits (developed via
> > convergent evolution) found in mammals. NONE.
>
> Unfortunately, I don't have time, right now, to discuss anything
> except our straight posture thing. Sorry about this. -- Mario
>
>
William Morse
>
> "William Morse" <wdm...@twcny.rr.com> wrote in message
> news:buc90a$9q2$1...@darwin.ediacara.org...
>> >> We are so poorly adapted to truly deep diving that the
>> >> well-developed
> vocality is unlikely to be due to the development of conscious
> breathing control
>> > 1) I didn't say that, see the scenario above. There's no doubt IMO
> vocality as in gibbons played an important role in the development of
> human vocality. Otters (waterside) are more vocalic that weasels.
> Arboreal mammals are usu. more vocalic than related species in more
> open milieus. Savanna mammals generally have less variation in
> vocality.
>> >>, as it may be in birds and truly aquatic mammals. It is more
>> >>likely
> that the breath-hold control is a byproduct of speech.
>> > Then you can't explain speech. You can't explain why human can
>> > speak &
> why chimps couldn't evolve this skill.
>> Chimps (or rather a very near relative) _did_ evolve this skill. We
>> are
> the result. Read "The Symbolic Species" for an excellent discussion of
> this topic.
> ?? You don't claim chimps speak, I hope??
I think we have a semantic misunderstanding. What you may have meant to
say is that I can't explain why the lineage that led to chimps from our
last common ancestor _didn't_ evolve this skill (speech).My point was
that humans evolved from something very like chimps, which implies that
chimps _could_ evolve speech given the right conditions. Our contention
is over what conditions are required for chimp-like apes to evolve
speech. Deacon in the reference above discusses vocality in aquatic
mammals and birds, which he attributes (correctly IMHO) to their need for
conscious breath control. I simply don't think human ancestors were
sufficiently aquatic over a sufficiently long time for their aquatic
existence to have led to speech.
Yours,
Bill Morse
Philip Nicholls
<fa20...@skynet.be> wrote:
>> Phil Nicholls has just recently reposted a lot of info on this (1 Jan 2004
>in sci.anthropology.paleo) so I won't clutter the space here with it.
>
>Why don't you reproduce this nonsense here? Afraid?
I guess Marc defines nonsense as stuff based on articles he won't
read.
However, since you asked nicely:
(apologies to sci.bio.evolution folks who don't think this is the
place to discuss the AAH and I'm not, but I am providing some
information on sweating as it occurs in primates).
Proposition: Sweating in humans is an evolution anomaly that can only
be explained within the context of convergent evolution as put forth
by Morgan in her various books.
----------------------------------------
PRIMATE SWEATING
". . . the chief mystery does not lie in any one of these
ANOMALIES [emphasis added], not even the wonderful brain or the
dexterous hands or the miracle of speech. It lies in the
sheer number and variety of the ways in which we differ from
out closest relatives in the animal kingdom." (Morgan, 1990)
One of Morgan's anomalies is eccrine (as opposed to apocrine) gland
sweating. Eccrine glands are associated with hair follicles while
apocrine glands open directly onto the skin. There are other
differences as well.
Is eccrine sweat really anomalous?
In Prosimians and New World monkeys the apocrine glands are more
numerous. In Old World Monkeys the distribution is at a ratio of 1:1,
1:2 or 1:3 depending on the body region sampled (Sokolov,
1982:160-169). For the rhesus monkeys, Sokolov remarks that "Except
for the lips and ischila callosities the eccrine glands are
plentiful." (Sokolov, 1982, p.165). Johnson and Elozondo (1974) note
that the distribution of eccrine glands in the rhesus monkey is
identical to that observed in humans.
For the chimpanzee, Sokolov notes "All of the features of
chimpanzee eccrine glands are similar to those of humans. In
the immature female the apocrine sweat glands are much smaller
in size than in the male. These are fewer in number than the
eccrine glands." (Sokolov, 1982, p.169).
Any sweating that occurs in primates is eccrine sweat (see Robertshaw,
1985 for an overview of sweating in primates vs non-primates. For a
look at the research on sweating in primates, see Hiley, 1976; Johnson
and Elizondo, 1974 and Newman et. al., 1970). The first primates were
probably nocturnal, as are many of the living prosimians today.
Nocturnal primates do not really need to worry about overheating.
They discharge excess body heat by panting. As a result,
the apocrine glands in Prosimians did not develop a thermo-
regulatory role. As primates evolved and anthropoids appeared
and moved into diurnal niches, they continued to pant until two
evolutionary pressures forced a change -- increase in body size and
increase in relative brain size.
As body size increases the number of eccrine sweat glands also seems
to increase (Robertshaw, 1985). As brain size increases, the size of
the nasal sinuses is reduced. Since in closed-mouth panters this is
the place where most of the heat exchange takes place, the increase in
brain size produced a need for an alternative heat rejection system.
Why eccrine glands when apocrine glands are the gland of choice in
other mammals? The answer, I believe, lies in the neurophysiology of
sweating. Apocrine glands are controlled by the sympathetic nervous
system. The neurons which control apocrine glands use
noradrenline as their neurotransmitter. Eccrine glands are
also controlled by the sympathetic nervous system but unlike
apocrine glands they are cholinergic, i.e. use acetylcholine
as a neurotransmitter. The difference may be compared to
playing a piano. Noradrenline works like the pedals, affecting the
action of all the tones being played. Acetylcholine is like the
individual piano keys. Cholinergic neurons are employed where fine
control over the effector organs is required. Anthropoid primates
need a greater degree of control over their heat rejection systems
because of their larger brains, which are very sensative to
temperature changes.
This is particularly important in Homo sapiens. Apocrine sweat occurs
in bursts which saturate the skin quickly. The amount of sweat they
produce cannot be regulated nor can their action be sustained for any
period of time (Robertshaw, 1985). This is ideal for an animal that
needs to cool off quickly after a period of brief intense activity but
are not suited to the task of regulating body temperature over
an extended period of time.
To sum up, eccrine sweating is not anomalous. It is consistant with
the trend observed in anthropoids, established long before the the
hominid/pongid split. Apocrine sweat glands never developed a
thermoregulatory role in primates. Eccrine sweating makes makes
good sense of neurophysiological grounds.
-------------------------------
Bligh, J (1967) A thesis concerning the process of secretion
and discharge of sweat. Environmental Search 1:28-51.
Hiley DA (1976) The thermoregulatory responses of the galago
(Galago crassicaudatus), the baboon (Papio cynocephalus) and
the chimpanzee (Pan satyrus) to heat stress. Journal of
Physiology, 254:657-670.
Johnson, GS and Elizondo, R (1974) Eccrine sweat gland in
Macaca mulatta: physiology, histochemistry and distribution.
Journal of Applied Physiology 37:814-820
Morgan, E. (1990) Scars of Evolution. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Newman, CM; Cummings, EG; Miller; Wright, H (1970)
Thermoregulatory responses of the baboon to heat stress and
scopolamine. Physiologists 13:271-285.
Robertshaw, D (1985) Sweat and heat exchange in man and other
mammals. Journal of Human Evolution 14: 63-73.
Sokolov, VE (1982) Mammal Skin. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
Now I want you to note that at no time did I mention sweating as an
adaptation to savannas. I said that it occurred in response to (1)
body size increase and (2) brain size increase. Thus sweating is
not tied to bipedalism but rather to brain expansion.
Dean Falk proposed an interesting idea concerning the connection
between brain size and bipedalism. She suggested that bipedalism
released a constraint on the evolution of brain size, changing the way
in which blood drains from the brain to a pattern that permits more
efficient heat removal.
This suggests a scenerio of bipedalism --> bigger brain--> more
efficient thermoregulatory sweating --> bigger brain -->loss of body
hair --> even bigger brains.
It is very likely that many of the so-called anomalous characterisitcs
of modern humans did not appear at the same time and some may have
appeared only in the last 100 000 years or so.
Marc Verhaegen
> Kinda answered your own question there, didn't you Marc?
?? Yet found an argument against our scenario, Moore? Alister Hardy ("Was
Man more aquatic in the past?" NS 1960) described how a sea-side life -
beach-combing, wading, swimming, collecting coconuts, shellfish, turtles &
turtle eggs, bird eggs, crabs, seaweeds etc. - explains many human traits
(absent in our nearest relatives the chimps) a lot better than dry savanna
scenarios do: very large brain (but reduced olfactory bulb), greater
breathing control, greater diving skills, well-developed vocality, extreme
handiness & tool use, reduction of climbing skills, reduction of fur, more
subcutaneous fat, very long legs, more linear body build, high needs of
iodine, sodium & poly-unsaturated fatty acids etc. Hardy was wrong in
thinking his seaside phase happened ~10 Ma. More likely it happened during
the Ice Ages: early Pleistocene Homo fossils or tools have been found in
Israel, Algeria, Iran, Kenya, Georgia, Java. When sea levels dropped,
H.ergaster followed the Mediterranean (pre-antecessor-neandertals) & Indian
Ocean coasts (erectus). Pleistocene coasts during the glacial periods were
some 120 m below the present sea level, so many fossil & archeological finds
show the inland Homo populations that entered the continents along the
rivers & wetlands. In spite of this, Homo remains (but not
australopithecine) have frequently been found amid shells, corals, barnacles
etc., throughout the Pleistocene, in coasts all over the Old World (eg,
Mojokerto, Terra Amata, Table Bay, Eritrea), even on islands that could only
be reached by sea (Flores 0.8 Ma).
Mario Petrinovich
> Mario Petrinovich sent me his post via e-mail, but agreed to my suggestion
> that this debate should be continued in the public forum it started in.
> In
> case he hasn't posted his post to the newsgroupo yet, I've appended the
> entire text of it at the bottom of my post here so people can check the
> accuracy of my excerpts of his post:
Actually, I was replying to your post, received from you, by e-mail,
so I responded adequately. Just to put things in their real context.
> > Interesting. You are saying that what we need in water is
> > leaping?
>
> No, what I said several times, and I thought pretty clearly, is that large
> cats will commonly chase their prey into water to catch it, and that this
> wo
> rks well for them because they leap through the water while the water
> slows
> down their prey. This means that running into water isn't a good way to
> get
> away from large cats, contrary to your statements. Your suggestion that
> we
> always dived into deep water presupposes that we were always very near
> water
> that is very deep at the shoreline, which rids the "aquatic ape" of the
> ability to be the shoreline wader that most proponents now want it to be.
Actually, yes. You are perfectly right here. I never saw anything
interesting in wadding idea. My scenario doesn't include wadding as start of
bipedalism.
> On proboscis monkeys and their noses:
> > I was talking about jumping into water. When they are in panic
> > (and
> > they are in panic in life threating situations, someone would presume)
> > they
> > are jumping into water. Life threating situations shape you.
>
> When they jump into the water they jump feet first with their heads held
> in
> a position that would drive water up their nostrils if that actually were
> a
> problem -- as I explained it isn't actually a problem if you hold your
> breath -- but the actual behavior of proboscis monkeys jumping into water
> is
> not what you imagine it to be; they don't dive or hold their heads down.
As I said, we also can jump into water legs first. It is good to
close nostrils if you jump this way, if I remember correctly from when I was
at the sea. Anyway, it isn't a big problem. Problem for nostrils arise when
you are jumping head first (like plunge diving birds clearly show). Jumping
head first is recquired to gain distance. I don't know how Proboscis monkey
gain distance. Probably by leaping. I definitely would like to research this
more. I wonder where I can get more info.
Do Proboscis monkeys hold their nostrils like tapirs? Here is an
excerption from an animal encyclopedia which could answer a lot of questions
you are asking above :
"Instinctively, all tapirs take refugee in water when they are being
persueded by predators, which include jaguars, tigers, pumas, and Andean
bears - ingeniously, the Brazilian tapir of the Amazon may submerge itself
in deep water to force a jaguar clinging to its back to release the hold."
Why doesn't prey of large cats take a dive to get rid of its
predators? For tapirs, running into water is excellent way to get rid of
predators. Tapirs are an old family. Today's, more common, grazers are newer
thing. Before today's grass fields, a lot of world was rainy forest. Animals
adapted to running into water to find refugee would be more common. We are
adapted for this, as well as we are straight like kangaroos. I see no
problem for us. I don't know where are you seeing it.
> > When was that I claimed that we see predators? Certainly not in
> > the
> > last year or so (but I think I never did this. I usually don't claim
> > such
> > uncertain things). I also never did mention crocs. And I am swimming
> > safe in
>
> You said it in this newsgroup on the 15th of this month; that was 4 days
> ago: "In water predator, although
> seen at same distance, need to swim towards you. You have plenty of time
> to exchange informations."
>
> This is incorrect information; it's wrong. This is known stuff, well
> known,
> and in fact I have many examples on my site with the references to the
> literature that supports what I'm saying.
Oh. No problem. Mea culpa. I discussed a lot about how we don't have
aquatic predators, so I am keeping this in the back of my mind that
everybody thinks like that. In example above, I didn't talk about aquatic
predators at all, but about terrestrial predators going after us. Predators
like big cats we were talking about. I was comparing dealing with
terrestrial predators on land and in water.
> Further, although on land some
> predators no doubt attack without being seen first, or seen to late to do
> anything about it, that is almost certainly not the approach that our
> ancestors took with terrestrial predators, since they probably reacted to
> them much as chimps do now. Again, my site has lots of info on this as
> well, also supported by references to the relevant literature.
Will you, please, explain here, in short?
Firstly, do we see a diference, in that regard, between Old and New
(without human impact) world? That would need more thorough research, but I
think I could see a diference. Further, there is a national park in South
Africa, Cape Peninsula National Park. It is situated on the Cape of Good
Hope. There, chacma baboons are roaming beaches in the fashion similar to
what I had in mind. I did have in mind more rocky coast, but this place also
has a lot of steep hills. During low tide, those baboons are feeding on
shark eggs. Now, what sharks have to say on this, lol?
Why sharks don't attack us, I am not 100% sure. It could be that
they don't like animals with limbs. It could be that they can use us,
because we are scaring fish. Maybe this all has something to do with
dolphins. Shark experts usually like to say : If sharks would attack us, it
wouldn't be few isolated cases, that look more like mistakes. It would be a
real bloodshed. No way that we could go anywhere near sea, with all
protection you can find. In water, we are without rock or branches even
today. Today also we are unarmed.
> > > > clue for AAT. You can try to dismiss AAT things one by one, but you
> > > > cannot
> > > > do this with them all at once. I believe that it is time for YOU, to
> > > > start
> > > > to accept that all those things that look so similar to aquatic
> > > > adaptations,
> > > > really could arise from those same adaptations >2mya. -- Mario
>
> One can only disprove individual points one by one, and as you go through
> the AAT litany, each point falls apart when you look at the evidence.
> That
> AAT list of "aquatic traits" has the rather large problem of containing
> myriad items that are simply false. In science one cannot accept things
> that are demonstrably false, so I decline your invitation to do so. JMoore
In science one can accept things that are true, though. I don't have
time to discuss anything than plunge diving related things, right now. I
only could say, in general, that your interpretation looks to me like wrong
one. OTOH, by every day AAT is improving. -- Mario
Marc Verhaegen
> > A lot of blabla for nothing. Try to be concise. The facts in Hoelzel are
correct, it has everything to do with sweating, but as you say the ref is
apparently wrong. It should be GA Bartholomew & F Wilke 1956 "Body Tp in the
northern furseal" J.Mammal.3