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Did Snakes Help Build the Primate Brain?
sciencehabit writes "A new study of the monkey brain suggests that primates are uniquely adapted to recognize the features of snakes and react in a flash. What's more, by selecting for traits that helped animals avoid them, the reptiles ultimately endowed us with forward-facing eyes, for example, and enlarged visual centers deep in our brains that are specialized for picking out specific features in the world around us, such as the general shape of a snake's body camouflaged among leaves.The results lend support to a controversial hypothesis: that primates as we know them would never have evolved without snakes."
They are at least as important as snaaaaakes.
Surely, a basic consequence of the mechanisms involved in evolution is that all long term changes in individual species are effectively driven by factors of the environment they live in, whether that's predators or other dangers, or the needs of being able to acquire food or raise offspring, etc. Snakes are, we know, dangerous. So surely it's obvious rather than controversial that they should have had some effect on our evolution?
The bible was right after all... it was the snakes fault after all
(Yes, I was aiming for '+5 funny'... how did you know?)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Seems also birds are afraid of snakes. I place rubber snakes on places like boat decks and balconies, they are very effective and birds stay away.
I thought they were prevalent on hunting animals because stereoscopic vision was important to depth perception which is critical when attacking another animal. Are snakes the reason for raptors having forward facing eyes too?
Something else that looks like a snake? Vines used by primates to move through jungles.
yep, but unlike "angels" or "face of Jesus" [sic] that you quote, get it wrong with a snake, and you're naturally selected.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Compared with three other categories of stimuli (monkey faces, monkey hands, and geometrical shapes), snakes elicited the strongest, fastest responses,
They compared one high value stimulus with a number of low value stimuli. How about adding a few other possibilities to the mix; predators like lions or wolves, prey animals, spiders, birds, etc. We have no idea if these other stimuli would get a greater response and, by their theory, influence primate evolution more. The study is obviously flawed.
Giant noisy sucking arms spewing out nearly a hundred decibels of unnatural noise, including in the frequencies that we can't hear but cats are very sensitive to, which starts up suddenly, chases them around the house when they hide, which their "alpha" owner tries to wrest control over but which ends up tugging them around the house chasing after the cat, and which if they get too near tries to swallow their tail.
Yeah. Must be evolution about a snake-fear... And they're scared of your car starting up while they're inside the engine because cats evolved from animals that got swallowed by bellowing mammoths with whirling stomach parts...
Idiot.
There is a niche for a small, fast, deadly predator. Snakes happen to have won the fight for that niche, and so it's them that we have evolved to spot. If it weren't for the snakes, we woud still exist because something else would exist that we had a need to spot and react really quickly to. Screw you, snakes, you're not all that.
If this is true, it it might explain the evolution of lawyers. Under this hypothesis, lawyers would have evolved from snakes that preyed on monkeys. As the monkeys got smarter, the snakes evolved into monkey mimics that still had primates as their primary food source. Finally, it all makes sense.
Why is Snark Required?
The random-face-generator in the brain is uncanny in its ability to amuse simple folk like myself. Also pretty tough on youngsters afraid of the dark.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
This is the problem with modern "science." Any consistency and color of shit can be shoveled as long as someone pulls something vaguely rational-sounding out of their ass and calls it science.
Forward-facing eyes evolved for predators, not prey. They allow for judging of distance and depth, something a predator needs in order to chase. See lions, raptors, wolves, bears, etc.
Side-facing eyes evolved for prey, so they can perceive a wide viewing angle for movement and differences in texture/shade. See antelope, horses, deer, rabbits.
Primates evolved to take advantage of their hands. Enlarged visual centers for climbing and enlarged heads for the brains required to start using tools.
Fuck, and I'm not even a scientist. This "let's see how much utter horseshit we can label science" routine is getting really tired.
Perhaps a more important differentiation to an arboreal animal would be snakes and branches. One represents safety, the other danger (and possibly lunch).
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
AC is so right - I was in a church the other day and looked up at a glass window panel and I was like "OMG it's full of angels and faces of Jesus!"
while (true != false) process_more_stupid_code();