Not a problem. Just wanted to make sure I hadn't missed something. "Humans evolved from dolphins!" would have had me saying "Ridiculous!" too!



The only speculation I have on this regards risk-taking tendencies as a genetic advantage. But, I would still think this is an exception to the rule. Plus, doesn't that go against accepted evolutionary theory? According to that, traits that lessen survivability should be gradually culled, not increased. So, either that supposition is wrong, or there is some advantage to huge, bright tail feathers. The speculation in human evolution is the "bad-boy phenomenon," where girls are attracted to rule-breaking risk-takers for sex, but are more likely to marry strong steady men. How do risk-taking, arrogant males offer to make better offspring? Perhaps because they will also attract more females and father more children, because females are more attracted to bad boys?



Yeah, I think we just have a different level of distaste for the theory.

Ahh, here we go, under the title of the thread, "Did Humans/Apes evolve from Dolphins?" LOL

And it's survivability and attractiveness to the opposite sex. You could the perfect physical specimen in terms of survivalism, but if you're dog ugly, chances are you're not passing on your genes. =P The world is so unfair, ain't it?

Light eyes aren't a survival advantage, but they're universally more attractive. If you want to go really outside the box, perhaps large, pristine tail feathers reveal the survivability of the male even with such a damning feature?

Women are attracted to the bad boys for mating purposes, and to the steady men for child-rearing purposes. I'm so not going into the evolutionary explanations of partner choice and infidelity here. xD I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that last sentence, but hopefully that explains it. Bad boys are good genetic specimens, but they'd leave a woman in the dirt so she finds a steady mate who will help with raising children.

of course there is nothing in the AAT about dolphins... but, the thread title say's 'Aquatic Ape Theory, Did Humans/Apes evolve from Dolphins?', which IS ridiculous... IMO

Aw, geez. That had completely gone by me! Sorry!


ACK! I've been found out! Ok, not really. I've already spawned my requisite progeny and then politely removed myself from the gene pool.

And yet, dog ugly people are out there making even uglier babies every day. I see far more ugly people making ugly babies than otherwise. In fact, I


That was the extension of my speculation that I just didn't quite get out: "Look at me! I'm SOOOO fit, I can be eye-blindingly obvious to Mr. Predator, and STILL survive long enough to do you! Ain't that sexy???"

And another disagreement: I find darker eyes far more attractive. Is it time to speculate on how much culture may be overriding evolution, and if this can be, then how is culture, which should be in some way a product of evolution, working counter to evolution, which had at least some part in creating it?


Partner choice may have more to do with culture than evolution, but as I stated above (and not that I want to get into it either as I don't think we'll come up with any solid conclusions!) how can culture defy evolution, since presumably culture is a result of evolution? Or did we somehow attain attributes in our phenotype that can't be the result of evolutionary changes to our genotype?




My last sentence was just summing up why I wouldn't call AAT ridiculous. I find it interesting, but short of good science, whereas you appear to hold it in pretty low regard. I meant nothing more than that.

LOL well, I didn't really want to go that far into it, but society has for the most part overridden all of this because there are people breeding and surviving today that would have been weeded out even as late as a couple hundred years ago. Only the most basic fundamentals are still applicable to the H. sap species, at least in Western-type societies.

Culture and preferences in cultures have an evolutionary basis, but at the same time culture itself evolves to where nature is squashed pretty thoroughly by nurture.

And your "look at me" thing, yeah, that's pretty much it. xD

i did not state that we lost our hair to attract the female.


i stated that we lost our hair.


so the question is did we lose our hair because we started wearing other animals furs to stay warm. or did we start wearing other animals furs to stay warm because we were loseing our hair.

Natural selection wouldn't really work for that first part - there would have to be some reason hairiness wasn't getting passed on. Could be, come to think of it, that humans lost their hair while living in hot environments, as less hairy people would have less insulation, and once we started moving North where it was cold, we wore furs to keep us warm and thus hairiness wasn't re-introduced. At what point in human evolution did we become hairless, before or after migrating from Africa/Middle East?

From what I understand, that's the nurtshell pretty much. When Erectus started to wander out of Africa travelling across the Savanahs and deserts he found no body hair and being able to sweat pretty darn handy - as such his territory expanded, more food, and I believe bipedalism allowed better carrying and birthing. Between the travelling, additional food and an extra offspring or two during a life cycle erectus gained quite some advantage with the new adaptions. The theory we retained head hair to attract mates seems quite reasonable.

First, you wouldn't mean whales, because they're almost entirely hairless (a few whales have a few whiskers). But you're referring to the idea that our hair tract patterns are hydrodynamic, which is a long-time claim of AAT proponents. But for this to be true the swimming position would be prone, with our arms held stationary by our sides, our legs held stationary behind us, and the crowns of our heads facing forward. Not's not a way to swim, that's a way to drown.

It also doesn't fit the facts on swimming and hair. Con=sider that competitive swimmers (who BTW are pitifully slow in the water compared to most any semi-aquatic animal) do one of two things regarding hair: they shave it all off, or they don suits that mimic the hair most semi-aquatic mammals have in abundance (or the dermal ridges seen on dolphin skin) -- this latter aids in hydrodynamics. Why would evolution supposedly fine-tuning us for millions fo years for an aquatic or semi-aquatic life leave us with exactly what we don't want, hairwise?

Couple other points, and it applies to the fat question too (more on all this at my site, BTW): both are examples of classic sexual selection. They vary among peoples, change radically right at puberty, and differ radically between the sexes. Contrast to the conditions of aquatic and semi-aquatic mammals: do not vary among populations of the same species, the adult condition is either present at birth or by the time the individual hits the water, does not change at puberty. The layer of fat under the skin we have is what we see in any primate which eats a lot. Caroline Pond is the world's foremost expert on the evolutionary significance of fat, and she points out that human fat deposits are just like those of other primates, and that any differences is in amount of fat. We are just like monkeys and apes when they are allowed to get fat -- fat is discouraged in the wild because it leaves the animal open to predation, even though having fat is an advantage because it's an extra food store for when times are tougher. This has been confirmed many times by studies of animals in areas with few or no predators. Humans are in a position where we've had relatively little problem with predators for several hundred thousand years due to our use of fire and weapons.



We really don't know for sure, although it seems likely that as psyche101 said, it was part of what allowed our ancestors to handle hotter, drier places than we had originated in. This would make sense as part of the physical changes involved in the transition to Homo erectus like a taller, rangier build. That kind of build, for reasons having to do with basic physics, dissipates heat better (more surface area to volume). There have been recently some studies using the idea of looking at the genetics of human hair lice to try to determine when they arose (and therefore possibly when we changed our hair characteristics) is intriguing, but that sort of thing always has to be approached with a bit of questioning rather than immediate and wholehearted acceptance. Interesting idea though, and it so far suggests some changes around (more or less) that Homo erectus dispersing more widely period, as well as some other changes probably involving when we starting using more clothing, which the lice evidence suggests would be much later, around 120,000-70,000 years ago, if I remember correctly.