Apex predators don't like to get hurt, being hurt by humans potentially means death. Most apex predators outside of like bears will avoid humans entirely because of how dangerous we are even unarmed (as long as there's more of us).
It's interesting to look at the few animals that choose the opposite strategy, like honey badgers. I assume that a good part of their survivability comes from the fact that other animals aren't willing to call them on their bluffs.
Apex predators don't like to get hurt, being hurt by humans potentially means death. Most apex predators outside of like bears will avoid humans entirely because of how dangerous we are even unarmed (as long as there's more of us).
It's interesting to look at the few animals that choose the opposite strategy, like honey badgers. I assume that a good part of their survivability comes from the fact that other animals aren't willing to call them on their bluffs.
nature's version of "fake it until you make it"
I think this is why a lot of animals "puff up" when they try to intimidate something larger than them. Calling animals on their bluff works a surprising amount of the time. Hell goosebumps are a vestigial remnant of us doing just that.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Humans are terrifying creatures, you push a smart ape far enough from where it's supposed to be and you end up with nightmares. In the 80s the idea that humans were naked because they became semi-aquatic was a popular theory - now the same evidence is thought to suggest that we might be the way we are now as a way of heat control. You can run and sprint in conditions (heat and exhaustion) well after any other mammal can because you have massive heat sinks and the ability to lose a trail and find it again.
Obviously this is evolutionary biology and the answer is always all of the above. Species don't change to the extent we have without having multiple reasons reinforcing the trait - but the most interesting thing I've read is that generally, species don't change to such an extent if the benefit only rewarded one sex. I think it's unlikely that we're hairless because the women went diving for cockles (though there is a sexual dimorphism when it comes to diving in cool water in humans) whilst the men chased antelope. If you're main high energy food strategy relies on min/maxing a wildebeest - no way you're then taking that stuff home afterwards. Kill might be made by the Expendables but I think it'd be a bit of a stretch to assume the rest of the tribe aren't in tow.
Another reason why it's interesting that other primates have managed to uplift themselves watching humans do things with stuff. We're kind of looking back at those societies for clues about the secrets of ours - but I do think that's a mistake. They didn't change when we had to, but other species have watched our change and changed themselves accordingly. I wonder how much odd instinct has found itself into wild dogs, leopards and lions based on surviving early humanity. Recognition of rival cubs (as Leopards and baboons do seem to seek target each other's children to remove from the local environment) for example.
We actually have just as much hair as the rest of the primates. We differ in that our hair is much thinner and our sebaceous system is much more complex and widespread, probably from pressure from the Savannah lifestyle we were adopting.
Dogs were selectively bred and adopted well because of our similar social structures. Dogs understanding pointing and a 'representative state of an object' escalates them above most other primates. If an object is not in the room, a dog can visualize it like we can, other primates can't really do it as well, if at all. Almost all primates struggle with the concept of pointing too, outside of us, last I knew none of them really understood the concept.
Evolutionary pressure and selective breeding greatly influenced dogs.
It's crazy how much we impacted them.
As we became better at tool making over our ancestors, I think it freed us up to min-max even more and that's when modern humans arrived on the scene.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
In fact, we've selected for dogs to such an extent that they are innately tuned to human social cues. FMRI scans of dogs during scent and image-focused tests show dogs focus on humans preferentially to other dogs, they can recognize individual human faces, and respond directly to emotion in both speech and other noises. As a personal aside, based on how much we've already achieved with dogs I'd bet they end up being the first true uplift to equivalent intelligence if we endeavor to do so, because they're so well attuned to human psychology because of our breeding efforts.
@Tastyfish I think you have something there but you may be underestimating how many calories a small hunting party can recover. Take this group of persistence hunters as an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o
Three men, two trackers and one runner. The tactics used are to split the target off from the herd, at which point the runner pursues the target until it can be dispatched. It's worth pointing out that by the time the runner reaches his quarry, the animal is practically half-dead. The total number needed for a hunting party is just for mutual defense if they come upon a predator, and to haul the prize back home at the end of the day. The runner himself will only burn about 1000 calories at most during the hunt, or 1.3-1.5 pounds of meat. If each can haul 30-50 pounds of meat (probably more if it's not too unwieldy), that's 68,400 to 114,000 calories recovered for consumption in a single hunt. There is also a wide set of activities that need to be done for the other members of the group, including wide-ranging foraging. To include another curious case of mutualistic evolution that would fit foraging well, here is the Honeyguide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbgBllWeZ4k
A bird that directs humans to the location of a beehive. The humans get the honey, and the bird gets the wax and larvae.
Just makes it that much worse how some people treat them. We owe our civilization to animals working with and for us.
This is definitely the case for dogs. They're a pack species that views all humans as Alpha, forever unto the end of time. They deserve good treatment.
Humans are terrifying creatures, you push a smart ape far enough from where it's supposed to be and you end up with nightmares. In the 80s the idea that humans were naked because they became semi-aquatic was a popular theory - now the same evidence is thought to suggest that we might be the way we are now as a way of heat control. You can run and sprint in conditions (heat and exhaustion) well after any other mammal can because you have massive heat sinks and the ability to lose a trail and find it again.
Obviously this is evolutionary biology and the answer is always all of the above. Species don't change to the extent we have without having multiple reasons reinforcing the trait - but the most interesting thing I've read is that generally, species don't change to such an extent if the benefit only rewarded one sex. I think it's unlikely that we're hairless because the women went diving for cockles (though there is a sexual dimorphism when it comes to diving in cool water in humans) whilst the men chased antelope. If you're main high energy food strategy relies on min/maxing a wildebeest - no way you're then taking that stuff home afterwards. Kill might be made by the Expendables but I think it'd be a bit of a stretch to assume the rest of the tribe aren't in tow.
Another reason why it's interesting that other primates have managed to uplift themselves watching humans do things with stuff. We're kind of looking back at those societies for clues about the secrets of ours - but I do think that's a mistake. They didn't change when we had to, but other species have watched our change and changed themselves accordingly. I wonder how much odd instinct has found itself into wild dogs, leopards and lions based on surviving early humanity. Recognition of rival cubs (as Leopards and baboons do seem to seek target each other's children to remove from the local environment) for example.
We have documented cases of crows taking advantage of crosswalks at intersections to crack nuts. They pretty much drop the nuts on the intersection when the light is green, where it will get run over by a car, move to a position where they can see the pedestrian side and collected the tasty contents of the now cracked nuts, when the sign indicates pedestrians are allowed to cross.
Humans are terrifying creatures, you push a smart ape far enough from where it's supposed to be and you end up with nightmares. In the 80s the idea that humans were naked because they became semi-aquatic was a popular theory - now the same evidence is thought to suggest that we might be the way we are now as a way of heat control. You can run and sprint in conditions (heat and exhaustion) well after any other mammal can because you have massive heat sinks and the ability to lose a trail and find it again.
Obviously this is evolutionary biology and the answer is always all of the above. Species don't change to the extent we have without having multiple reasons reinforcing the trait - but the most interesting thing I've read is that generally, species don't change to such an extent if the benefit only rewarded one sex. I think it's unlikely that we're hairless because the women went diving for cockles (though there is a sexual dimorphism when it comes to diving in cool water in humans) whilst the men chased antelope. If you're main high energy food strategy relies on min/maxing a wildebeest - no way you're then taking that stuff home afterwards. Kill might be made by the Expendables but I think it'd be a bit of a stretch to assume the rest of the tribe aren't in tow.
Another reason why it's interesting that other primates have managed to uplift themselves watching humans do things with stuff. We're kind of looking back at those societies for clues about the secrets of ours - but I do think that's a mistake. They didn't change when we had to, but other species have watched our change and changed themselves accordingly. I wonder how much odd instinct has found itself into wild dogs, leopards and lions based on surviving early humanity. Recognition of rival cubs (as Leopards and baboons do seem to seek target each other's children to remove from the local environment) for example.
We have documented cases of crows taking advantage of crosswalks at intersections to crack nuts. They pretty much drop the nuts on the intersection when the light is green, where it will get run over by a car, move to a position where they can see the pedestrian side and collected the tasty contents of the now cracked nuts, when the sign indicates pedestrians are allowed to cross.
Corvids are scary.
The other non-human intelligence that freaks me out a bit to think about too much? The octopus. They way they see life and think has to be so alien to us.
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BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
Cats probably saved the species from potential rodent-borne diseases a few times throughout history, I'm sure.
And lack of them exacerbated/strengthened some pandemics.
There's a lot of speculation and a fair bit of evidence that the rise of the Inquisitions in the 12th century and the advent of continent-wide witch tribunals in the 13th century dropped the population of felines in most of Catholic Europe by as much as 75-80% (cats were the most common animal assumed/charged with being familiars and/or demonic agents and were killed en masse during auto-da-fe and witch burnings). The loss of 4/5 cats meant that rodents (rats, marmots, etc...) and their fleas had an extreme paucity of true predators in European towns, and the Black Death had the equivalent of a freeway to speed from the Mediterranean to as far north as the Low Countries and Denmark and as far east as the borders of Poland/Lithuania by the end of the first 14 months of plague outbreak (hit Sicily in October of 1347, Italian mainland January 1348 and by December it had hit pretty much everything south of the Baltic).
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
Same question for who the first human was that decided oysters were food?
I imagine early humans were less picky about their food because it was considerably less abundant, so they'd try anything that could potentially be edible. Alternatively, starvation driving people to try just about anything to see if it's edible.
It's also a surprisingly abundant food source.
I was watching this show on Welsh Cuisine and at one point the host goes on this ... like, foraging picnic type outdoor meal with a bunch of locals. And they literally just head to the coast and walk down the coast line, picking stuff off the rocks and throwing it in a bag. And like an hour or two later they've got just this massive pile of edible seafood. (I mean, if you call that stuff edible anyway)
Hell there's people making mosquito burgers in Africa.
It's pretty dangerous to be on a humans food list tbh.
So, pretty much every organism on the planet knows it's but 1 proper cultivation technique and/or 3-4 generations of selective breeding away from being in our bellies.
We made almonds edible for fucks sake.
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
Humans are terrifying creatures, you push a smart ape far enough from where it's supposed to be and you end up with nightmares. In the 80s the idea that humans were naked because they became semi-aquatic was a popular theory - now the same evidence is thought to suggest that we might be the way we are now as a way of heat control. You can run and sprint in conditions (heat and exhaustion) well after any other mammal can because you have massive heat sinks and the ability to lose a trail and find it again.
Obviously this is evolutionary biology and the answer is always all of the above. Species don't change to the extent we have without having multiple reasons reinforcing the trait - but the most interesting thing I've read is that generally, species don't change to such an extent if the benefit only rewarded one sex. I think it's unlikely that we're hairless because the women went diving for cockles (though there is a sexual dimorphism when it comes to diving in cool water in humans) whilst the men chased antelope. If you're main high energy food strategy relies on min/maxing a wildebeest - no way you're then taking that stuff home afterwards. Kill might be made by the Expendables but I think it'd be a bit of a stretch to assume the rest of the tribe aren't in tow.
Another reason why it's interesting that other primates have managed to uplift themselves watching humans do things with stuff. We're kind of looking back at those societies for clues about the secrets of ours - but I do think that's a mistake. They didn't change when we had to, but other species have watched our change and changed themselves accordingly. I wonder how much odd instinct has found itself into wild dogs, leopards and lions based on surviving early humanity. Recognition of rival cubs (as Leopards and baboons do seem to seek target each other's children to remove from the local environment) for example.
We have documented cases of crows taking advantage of crosswalks at intersections to crack nuts. They pretty much drop the nuts on the intersection when the light is green, where it will get run over by a car, move to a position where they can see the pedestrian side and collected the tasty contents of the now cracked nuts, when the sign indicates pedestrians are allowed to cross.
Corvids are scary.
The other non-human intelligence that freaks me out a bit to think about too much? The octopus. They way they see life and think has to be so alien to us.
Considering octopi know how to open some pretty complex mechanical locks, lids and doors to get the tasty thing inside....
Same question for who the first human was that decided oysters were food?
I imagine early humans were less picky about their food because it was considerably less abundant, so they'd try anything that could potentially be edible. Alternatively, starvation driving people to try just about anything to see if it's edible.
It's also a surprisingly abundant food source.
I was watching this show on Welsh Cuisine and at one point the host goes on this ... like, foraging picnic type outdoor meal with a bunch of locals. And they literally just head to the coast and walk down the coast line, picking stuff off the rocks and throwing it in a bag. And like an hour or two later they've got just this massive pile of edible seafood. (I mean, if you call that stuff edible anyway)
For old school humans, that's fucking jackpot.
Double post. But one of my fondest childhood memories was a family reunion at the grandparent's farm and that saturday my brother and i marshalled all the cousins to go crawfishing by hand at the stream because they were spawning and thus bright red and easy to find.
About 3 hours later, 10 sunburned kids had three 25 gallon coolers filled with crawdads for grandma to boil with the medallion potatoes and corn they bought from the farmer's market.
Humans are terrifying creatures, you push a smart ape far enough from where it's supposed to be and you end up with nightmares. In the 80s the idea that humans were naked because they became semi-aquatic was a popular theory - now the same evidence is thought to suggest that we might be the way we are now as a way of heat control. You can run and sprint in conditions (heat and exhaustion) well after any other mammal can because you have massive heat sinks and the ability to lose a trail and find it again.
Obviously this is evolutionary biology and the answer is always all of the above. Species don't change to the extent we have without having multiple reasons reinforcing the trait - but the most interesting thing I've read is that generally, species don't change to such an extent if the benefit only rewarded one sex. I think it's unlikely that we're hairless because the women went diving for cockles (though there is a sexual dimorphism when it comes to diving in cool water in humans) whilst the men chased antelope. If you're main high energy food strategy relies on min/maxing a wildebeest - no way you're then taking that stuff home afterwards. Kill might be made by the Expendables but I think it'd be a bit of a stretch to assume the rest of the tribe aren't in tow.
Another reason why it's interesting that other primates have managed to uplift themselves watching humans do things with stuff. We're kind of looking back at those societies for clues about the secrets of ours - but I do think that's a mistake. They didn't change when we had to, but other species have watched our change and changed themselves accordingly. I wonder how much odd instinct has found itself into wild dogs, leopards and lions based on surviving early humanity. Recognition of rival cubs (as Leopards and baboons do seem to seek target each other's children to remove from the local environment) for example.
We have documented cases of crows taking advantage of crosswalks at intersections to crack nuts. They pretty much drop the nuts on the intersection when the light is green, where it will get run over by a car, move to a position where they can see the pedestrian side and collected the tasty contents of the now cracked nuts, when the sign indicates pedestrians are allowed to cross.
Corvids are scary.
The other non-human intelligence that freaks me out a bit to think about too much? The octopus. They way they see life and think has to be so alien to us.
Considering octopi know how to open some pretty complex mechanical locks, lids and doors to get the tasty thing inside....
A pet store owner I know had the first hand lesson in how smart octopi are. One he brought in would move between tanks at night and eat other animals, then go back to its own tank.
Then one day it was dead in the parking lot. It had just decided fuck this place and squeezed out under the door after cleaning out a tank of marine adapted mollies.
Humans are terrifying creatures, you push a smart ape far enough from where it's supposed to be and you end up with nightmares. In the 80s the idea that humans were naked because they became semi-aquatic was a popular theory - now the same evidence is thought to suggest that we might be the way we are now as a way of heat control. You can run and sprint in conditions (heat and exhaustion) well after any other mammal can because you have massive heat sinks and the ability to lose a trail and find it again.
Obviously this is evolutionary biology and the answer is always all of the above. Species don't change to the extent we have without having multiple reasons reinforcing the trait - but the most interesting thing I've read is that generally, species don't change to such an extent if the benefit only rewarded one sex. I think it's unlikely that we're hairless because the women went diving for cockles (though there is a sexual dimorphism when it comes to diving in cool water in humans) whilst the men chased antelope. If you're main high energy food strategy relies on min/maxing a wildebeest - no way you're then taking that stuff home afterwards. Kill might be made by the Expendables but I think it'd be a bit of a stretch to assume the rest of the tribe aren't in tow.
Another reason why it's interesting that other primates have managed to uplift themselves watching humans do things with stuff. We're kind of looking back at those societies for clues about the secrets of ours - but I do think that's a mistake. They didn't change when we had to, but other species have watched our change and changed themselves accordingly. I wonder how much odd instinct has found itself into wild dogs, leopards and lions based on surviving early humanity. Recognition of rival cubs (as Leopards and baboons do seem to seek target each other's children to remove from the local environment) for example.
We have documented cases of crows taking advantage of crosswalks at intersections to crack nuts. They pretty much drop the nuts on the intersection when the light is green, where it will get run over by a car, move to a position where they can see the pedestrian side and collected the tasty contents of the now cracked nuts, when the sign indicates pedestrians are allowed to cross.
Corvids are scary.
The other non-human intelligence that freaks me out a bit to think about too much? The octopus. They way they see life and think has to be so alien to us.
Considering octopi know how to open some pretty complex mechanical locks, lids and doors to get the tasty thing inside....
A pet store owner I know had the first hand lesson in how smart octopi are. One he brought in would move between tanks at night and eat other animals, then go back to its own tank.
Then one day it was dead in the parking lot. It had just decided fuck this place and squeezed out under the door after cleaning out a tank of marine adapted mollies.
It was probably less a case of "fuck this place" and more a case of "fuck, I need to get LAID!"
Luckily octopi short lifespans aren't conducive to creating civilization, otherwise they'd be serious competition for who gets to rule the world.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
The other non-human intelligence that freaks me out a bit to think about too much? The octopus. They way they see life and think has to be so alien to us.
The octopus displays sophisticated (some might say even irreverent) behavior in the lab too. Just ask Jean Boal, a behavioral researcher at Millersville University. On the way to feed her octopus subjects one day, she suspected they might not like what was on offer: They preferred the very freshest of frozen squid, but the stuff she bore was a bit stale. She doled it out anyway, walking down the line of tanks, dropping a subpar serving into each one. When she finished, she walked back to the first octopus to see if it had gone for the meal. The food was nowhere to be seen, but the cephalopod was waiting for Boal—waiting and watching. This octopus locked eyes with her and moved slowly sideways to the drain in the front right corner of its tank. Pausing above the outflow, it shot the stale squid out of its arms and down the drain, continuing its stare (or was it a glare?) at Boal, who got the message. Two, actually: This octopus was not going to tolerate crummy food—and maybe it even wanted Boal to understand that.
So, octopuses: two thirds of their brains are distributed in their arms instead of their heads. They not social but quite solitary so don't really communicate with each other. We're separated from them by about 750 million or more years of evolution, basically split off early once multi-cellular life got started. That article doesn't go into it but they even have a different architecture for their neurons. Also the whole "they live in water while we live out of water" thing and the very different body structures and so forth. They're about as alien from us as you can get while still being on planet Earth. And yet, even they can express and communicate "This food sucks" to us, in a clear, concise manner.
In non-animal news, it's always disturbing to remember how we're all dumber because of all the lead in the air.
The potential of the whole human race was stunted by freaking gasoline.
Yeah, we're seeing that effect in politics now. Lead exposure in childhood also makes people more violent, which again, we're seeing that effect in politics now.
To try to not end this post on a downer: turkeys have also figured out crosswalks. They don't use it for nutcracking though, just for their intended purpose of walking around.
Edit: Wild turkeys are actually rather clever and intelligent creatures. Domesticated turkeys had all the brains bred out of them.
The other non-human intelligence that freaks me out a bit to think about too much? The octopus. They way they see life and think has to be so alien to us.
The octopus displays sophisticated (some might say even irreverent) behavior in the lab too. Just ask Jean Boal, a behavioral researcher at Millersville University. On the way to feed her octopus subjects one day, she suspected they might not like what was on offer: They preferred the very freshest of frozen squid, but the stuff she bore was a bit stale. She doled it out anyway, walking down the line of tanks, dropping a subpar serving into each one. When she finished, she walked back to the first octopus to see if it had gone for the meal. The food was nowhere to be seen, but the cephalopod was waiting for Boal—waiting and watching. This octopus locked eyes with her and moved slowly sideways to the drain in the front right corner of its tank. Pausing above the outflow, it shot the stale squid out of its arms and down the drain, continuing its stare (or was it a glare?) at Boal, who got the message. Two, actually: This octopus was not going to tolerate crummy food—and maybe it even wanted Boal to understand that.
So, octopuses: two thirds of their brains are distributed in their arms instead of their heads. They not social but quite solitary so don't really communicate with each other. We're separated from them by about 750 million or more years of evolution, basically split off early once multi-cellular life got started. That article doesn't go into it but they even have a different architecture for their neurons. Also the whole "they live in water while we live out of water" thing and the very different body structures and so forth. They're about as alien from us as you can get while still being on planet Earth. And yet, even they can express and communicate "This food sucks" to us, in a clear, concise manner.
I feel continually guilty about how delicious I used to find them.
The other non-human intelligence that freaks me out a bit to think about too much? The octopus. They way they see life and think has to be so alien to us.
The octopus displays sophisticated (some might say even irreverent) behavior in the lab too. Just ask Jean Boal, a behavioral researcher at Millersville University. On the way to feed her octopus subjects one day, she suspected they might not like what was on offer: They preferred the very freshest of frozen squid, but the stuff she bore was a bit stale. She doled it out anyway, walking down the line of tanks, dropping a subpar serving into each one. When she finished, she walked back to the first octopus to see if it had gone for the meal. The food was nowhere to be seen, but the cephalopod was waiting for Boal—waiting and watching. This octopus locked eyes with her and moved slowly sideways to the drain in the front right corner of its tank. Pausing above the outflow, it shot the stale squid out of its arms and down the drain, continuing its stare (or was it a glare?) at Boal, who got the message. Two, actually: This octopus was not going to tolerate crummy food—and maybe it even wanted Boal to understand that.
So, octopuses: two thirds of their brains are distributed in their arms instead of their heads. They not social but quite solitary so don't really communicate with each other. We're separated from them by about 750 million or more years of evolution, basically split off early once multi-cellular life got started. That article doesn't go into it but they even have a different architecture for their neurons. Also the whole "they live in water while we live out of water" thing and the very different body structures and so forth. They're about as alien from us as you can get while still being on planet Earth. And yet, even they can express and communicate "This food sucks" to us, in a clear, concise manner.
I feel continually guilty about how delicious I used to find them.
eh... I'm pretty sure many octopuses also find octopus delicious.
SpaceX is having a great year. Just this past week the US military made a big shift in its policy toward rockets, because the price ULA offers flights for is so extraordinarily high compared to new competitors that it basically saves you the full price of a satellite to ride on SpaceX. That apparently was a significant factor in BulgariaSat's decision to buy a spot with SpaceX, because otherwise the project was going to be too expensive for the company to execute at all.
SpaceX is having a great year. Just this past week the US military made a big shift in its policy toward rockets, because the price ULA offers flights for is so extraordinarily high compared to new competitors that it basically saves you the full price of a satellite to ride on SpaceX. That apparently was a significant factor in BulgariaSat's decision to buy a spot with SpaceX, because otherwise the project was going to be too expensive for the company to execute at all.
Be interesting to see how x-37b launches go after spacex does their first. This one was no bid awarded to spacex. Any launches after will be bid for by ula and spacex. You'd expect the majority to go with their preferred launcher.
It was probably less a case of "fuck this place" and more a case of "fuck, I need to get LAID!"
Luckily octopi short lifespans aren't conducive to creating civilization, otherwise they'd be serious competition for who gets to rule the world.
Given their intelligence and personalities, octopus lifespan has got to be one of the most profoundly unfair things I've come across in nature. I mean, sure, it probably works out for everything else in the oceans, but come on.
It was probably less a case of "fuck this place" and more a case of "fuck, I need to get LAID!"
Luckily octopi short lifespans aren't conducive to creating civilization, otherwise they'd be serious competition for who gets to rule the world.
Given their intelligence and personalities, octopus lifespan has got to be one of the most profoundly unfair things I've come across in nature. I mean, sure, it probably works out for everything else in the oceans, but come on.
Then again, considering the whole alien intelligence thing (and opportunistic cannibalism) death may not really compute for them. The same goes for many of the very intelligent bird species, dogs too.
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It's interesting to look at the few animals that choose the opposite strategy, like honey badgers. I assume that a good part of their survivability comes from the fact that other animals aren't willing to call them on their bluffs.
nature's version of "fake it until you make it"
I think this is why a lot of animals "puff up" when they try to intimidate something larger than them. Calling animals on their bluff works a surprising amount of the time. Hell goosebumps are a vestigial remnant of us doing just that.
Obviously this is evolutionary biology and the answer is always all of the above. Species don't change to the extent we have without having multiple reasons reinforcing the trait - but the most interesting thing I've read is that generally, species don't change to such an extent if the benefit only rewarded one sex. I think it's unlikely that we're hairless because the women went diving for cockles (though there is a sexual dimorphism when it comes to diving in cool water in humans) whilst the men chased antelope. If you're main high energy food strategy relies on min/maxing a wildebeest - no way you're then taking that stuff home afterwards. Kill might be made by the Expendables but I think it'd be a bit of a stretch to assume the rest of the tribe aren't in tow.
Another reason why it's interesting that other primates have managed to uplift themselves watching humans do things with stuff. We're kind of looking back at those societies for clues about the secrets of ours - but I do think that's a mistake. They didn't change when we had to, but other species have watched our change and changed themselves accordingly. I wonder how much odd instinct has found itself into wild dogs, leopards and lions based on surviving early humanity. Recognition of rival cubs (as Leopards and baboons do seem to seek target each other's children to remove from the local environment) for example.
Dogs were selectively bred and adopted well because of our similar social structures. Dogs understanding pointing and a 'representative state of an object' escalates them above most other primates. If an object is not in the room, a dog can visualize it like we can, other primates can't really do it as well, if at all. Almost all primates struggle with the concept of pointing too, outside of us, last I knew none of them really understood the concept.
Evolutionary pressure and selective breeding greatly influenced dogs.
It's crazy how much we impacted them.
As we became better at tool making over our ancestors, I think it freed us up to min-max even more and that's when modern humans arrived on the scene.
@Tastyfish I think you have something there but you may be underestimating how many calories a small hunting party can recover. Take this group of persistence hunters as an example:
Three men, two trackers and one runner. The tactics used are to split the target off from the herd, at which point the runner pursues the target until it can be dispatched. It's worth pointing out that by the time the runner reaches his quarry, the animal is practically half-dead. The total number needed for a hunting party is just for mutual defense if they come upon a predator, and to haul the prize back home at the end of the day. The runner himself will only burn about 1000 calories at most during the hunt, or 1.3-1.5 pounds of meat. If each can haul 30-50 pounds of meat (probably more if it's not too unwieldy), that's 68,400 to 114,000 calories recovered for consumption in a single hunt. There is also a wide set of activities that need to be done for the other members of the group, including wide-ranging foraging. To include another curious case of mutualistic evolution that would fit foraging well, here is the Honeyguide:
A bird that directs humans to the location of a beehive. The humans get the honey, and the bird gets the wax and larvae.
That's how you get more.
This is definitely the case for dogs. They're a pack species that views all humans as Alpha, forever unto the end of time. They deserve good treatment.
Cats are basically Prozac for a lot of people. They've probably prevented wars.
Ah, maybe I should get a cat then. I could use the endorphins or what have you.
That's not @Incenjucar talking, that's the mind-altering parasites talking. /s
We have documented cases of crows taking advantage of crosswalks at intersections to crack nuts. They pretty much drop the nuts on the intersection when the light is green, where it will get run over by a car, move to a position where they can see the pedestrian side and collected the tasty contents of the now cracked nuts, when the sign indicates pedestrians are allowed to cross.
Corvids are scary.
The other non-human intelligence that freaks me out a bit to think about too much? The octopus. They way they see life and think has to be so alien to us.
PSN / Xbox / NNID: Fodder185
And lack of them exacerbated/strengthened some pandemics.
There's a lot of speculation and a fair bit of evidence that the rise of the Inquisitions in the 12th century and the advent of continent-wide witch tribunals in the 13th century dropped the population of felines in most of Catholic Europe by as much as 75-80% (cats were the most common animal assumed/charged with being familiars and/or demonic agents and were killed en masse during auto-da-fe and witch burnings). The loss of 4/5 cats meant that rodents (rats, marmots, etc...) and their fleas had an extreme paucity of true predators in European towns, and the Black Death had the equivalent of a freeway to speed from the Mediterranean to as far north as the Low Countries and Denmark and as far east as the borders of Poland/Lithuania by the end of the first 14 months of plague outbreak (hit Sicily in October of 1347, Italian mainland January 1348 and by December it had hit pretty much everything south of the Baltic).
~ Buckaroo Banzai
The potential of the whole human race was stunted by freaking gasoline.
But bright, shiny wall candy taste sweet.
Plumbum 4 lyfe!
~ Buckaroo Banzai
It's also a surprisingly abundant food source.
I was watching this show on Welsh Cuisine and at one point the host goes on this ... like, foraging picnic type outdoor meal with a bunch of locals. And they literally just head to the coast and walk down the coast line, picking stuff off the rocks and throwing it in a bag. And like an hour or two later they've got just this massive pile of edible seafood. (I mean, if you call that stuff edible anyway)
For old school humans, that's fucking jackpot.
It's pretty dangerous to be on a humans food list tbh.
So, pretty much every organism on the planet knows it's but 1 proper cultivation technique and/or 3-4 generations of selective breeding away from being in our bellies.
We made almonds edible for fucks sake.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
On the other hand, we are smarter because we started putting iodide in our table salt.
Considering octopi know how to open some pretty complex mechanical locks, lids and doors to get the tasty thing inside....
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Double post. But one of my fondest childhood memories was a family reunion at the grandparent's farm and that saturday my brother and i marshalled all the cousins to go crawfishing by hand at the stream because they were spawning and thus bright red and easy to find.
About 3 hours later, 10 sunburned kids had three 25 gallon coolers filled with crawdads for grandma to boil with the medallion potatoes and corn they bought from the farmer's market.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
A pet store owner I know had the first hand lesson in how smart octopi are. One he brought in would move between tanks at night and eat other animals, then go back to its own tank.
Then one day it was dead in the parking lot. It had just decided fuck this place and squeezed out under the door after cleaning out a tank of marine adapted mollies.
It was probably less a case of "fuck this place" and more a case of "fuck, I need to get LAID!"
Luckily octopi short lifespans aren't conducive to creating civilization, otherwise they'd be serious competition for who gets to rule the world.
Corvids are awesome.
Also another great octopus story:
So, octopuses: two thirds of their brains are distributed in their arms instead of their heads. They not social but quite solitary so don't really communicate with each other. We're separated from them by about 750 million or more years of evolution, basically split off early once multi-cellular life got started. That article doesn't go into it but they even have a different architecture for their neurons. Also the whole "they live in water while we live out of water" thing and the very different body structures and so forth. They're about as alien from us as you can get while still being on planet Earth. And yet, even they can express and communicate "This food sucks" to us, in a clear, concise manner.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Yeah, we're seeing that effect in politics now. Lead exposure in childhood also makes people more violent, which again, we're seeing that effect in politics now.
To try to not end this post on a downer: turkeys have also figured out crosswalks. They don't use it for nutcracking though, just for their intended purpose of walking around.
Edit: Wild turkeys are actually rather clever and intelligent creatures. Domesticated turkeys had all the brains bred out of them.
I feel continually guilty about how delicious I used to find them.
eh... I'm pretty sure many octopuses also find octopus delicious.
https://www.space.com/17933-nasa-television-webcasts-live-space-tv.html
Today's is (I think) their second launch with a used booster, and they're aiming for another drone-ship landing after the fact.
Another on Sunday!
I still can't quite internalize it, but it seems like this stuff is really starting to get there in a big way.
Launch moved to 1510 Eastern, due to additional ground checks.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
The octopus regularly edits its own RNA on the fly in order to adapt to different scenarios, particularly the RNA in its brain cells.
Riding on that, Congress is now all aboard the re-usability train, giving SpaceX a huge leg up on contracts because of its lead both over Blue Origin and ULA.
Be interesting to see how x-37b launches go after spacex does their first. This one was no bid awarded to spacex. Any launches after will be bid for by ula and spacex. You'd expect the majority to go with their preferred launcher.
Given their intelligence and personalities, octopus lifespan has got to be one of the most profoundly unfair things I've come across in nature. I mean, sure, it probably works out for everything else in the oceans, but come on.
Then again, considering the whole alien intelligence thing (and opportunistic cannibalism) death may not really compute for them. The same goes for many of the very intelligent bird species, dogs too.