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Macaque Monkey Goes Totally Bipedal
Freshly Exhumed writes "Add another bonus point for the Darwinians/evolutionists. A macaque at the Safari Park Zoo in Ramat Gan, Israel has recovered from a near-fatal illness in an unusual way: she has switched exclusively to walking on her hind legs. Given theories of human history that stress the effect of disease on events and changes, as in William H. McNeill's Plagues and Peoples, what if an illness was the cause of the shift to bipedal motion by our evolutionary ancestors, and rote imitation by offspring or another set of circumstances locked it in? No matter, this could be a fascinating study of the macaque's altered brain functions."
Has anyone done a study on whether human bipedalism is due to the behavior learned from surrounding people or if there are practical reasons for why we hardly ever walk on all fours? That is, do we just walk on two legs most of the time because everybody else does?
Could be. Worth looking into.
But I'd put my money on weakening of the arms, whether through loss of control or coordination through nerve damage or some other flu side-effect, making quadrapedal motion difficult.
For a four-legger like a dog this would be crippling. (Dogs can't do two-legs for long due to blood pressure issues.) But for a monkey or ape with both four and two legged gaits, it's just an annoyance: Just drop the one that doesn't work so well any more and you're hardly bothered. (Like a kid with a knee injury no longer skipping.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It depends on how well she develops the ability. Walking upright makes you easier to catch, running upright makes you much harder to.
For a monkey or ape, which doesn't have the adaptations for it, running up right is slower than on all fours. (That's why they switch back to all four when in a hurry.)
The advantage of the two-legged walk for people is that it is lower-energy, not that it's faster. This lets us jog for a long time, at speeds that quickly overheat and exhaust prey animals until they drop from heat prostration.
People can outrun some horses in a very short sprint (though I wouldn't bet on it for quarterhorses). And they can jog down darn near anything. But in the middle distances other animals do better.
It may have been a defect when the first human did it, but it survived and we ended up all the better for it.
In particular it gave us a new hunting mode (like wolf packs but better) that, in combination with freeing the hands for weapon use, put us on top of the food chain and gave us the safety and leisure to develop agriculture and technology.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The problem is that creationism is pseudo-science, often by people trying to "prove" their religion, or trying to find a way to squeak in religion edgewise as a subject legitimately teachable in public schools.
For one, one does not read a book intended for spiritual enlightenment as a history book. That is the using-a-saw-as-a-hammer approach, such that its usefulness is somewhat limited because that is outside the scope of the texts. Have you ever tried to read about the complete history of Nevada in a book about the WW II nuclear programs? It majorly falls short.
Many of the same people read far too literally into such texts, particularly concerning the creation accounts, of which there are at least two accounts in the Hebrew Torah. Both are conflicting accounts, if you take them literally. If one says one is literal, the other non-literal, then you have an argument on which one is literal.
The people that try to claim that the earth is young and claim that is provable now, either are lying, are ignorant or couldn't pass a decent set of college science and math classes such as calculus, statistics, geology and second-year chemistry, because they pass off "facts" that seem to contradict some basic experiments I've done. Some try to make up some BS theories on radiation, but there are greater holes in those theories than they claim are in old-earth and evolution theories.
But this monkey likely tells us nothing about either theory.
So not only are we brain damaged monkeys. We are immature brain-damaged monkeys.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
One of the things that bipedalism gave us was the ability to carry a larger brain. Rather than having to hold the head up, we just sortof balance it on the top of the spine.
Try crawling around for a while on all fours. Besides getting sore knees, you'll also get a sore neck from holding your head up. (Although the fact that our spine connects to the skull in a different place from that of quadrupeds may exacerbate the problem.)
But don't let this confuse you. Having a larger brain did not cause us to go bipedal just so we could hold our heads up. Evolution doesn't work that way (with quadrupeds, brains larger than what gives an immediate advantage are selected against). Instead, our ancestors developed bipedalism because it was a hunting advantage... you can see farther and not occupy your hands with the act of moving (as someone else in this forum already mentioned). But then that allowed us to develop larger brains (and thicker skulls *g*) which kinda got us cornered this way (that is, our larger brains are now a selection criterion against NOT being bipedal).
(BTW, the thicker skulls thing is serious, though, when you consider Neandertals.)
So, to answer your question, bipedalism is not a learned thing in modern humans. We evolved to be this way, we don't function well if we don't walk upright, and children pretty much figure it out on their own (although watching others may help a little).
Also, besides bipedalism, another way to be able to develop a larger brain is to be aquatic. (Floating is good.) Thus, we have dolphins.
True it makes you much slower, but it in terms of energy effeciency it's a no brainer. A famous anthropologist who's name escapes me once did a demonstration to make this point. He started chasing after a gazelle and of course was QUICKLY outpaced, but he continue to jog after it slow and steady. Everytime he'd close the gap, the gazelle woould bolt.
.
After a little while though, the gazelle was totally exhausted. On 4 legs it was much faster, but it was burning quite a bit more energy to escape. Eventaully he caught up to the gazalle and was able to basically do wahtever he wanted to it. The gazalle was simply too exhausted to keep running. .
Also keep in mind that amonst tall savanah grasses, walking upright lets you see over the grasses and see predators sooner.
In otherwords, upright locomotion certainly has a downside, but its also got alot of nicepoints. It really just depends on the niche you're trying to fill.