So if the chimps are mainly fruit eaters and have canines that size, why did we humans, who are omnivores and have much more need for canines, end up with the greatly reduced in size ones? You'd think, that the canines were more necessary for a creature that have meat as main part of it's diet.
For that matter, why on earth would we have lost the the fur that covers all the other hominids? What kind of evolutionary advantage would that afford, to be MORE exposed to the elements?
Along with the helplessness of our infants and the burden they place on the mother.
Humans are not well suited for unprotected life in the wild. It does not make sense that the genetic changes that produced a weaker creature would have allowed the creature to so successfully reproduce and flourish.
Brains alone don't ensure survival.
We developed tool use. Canines are of little use in eating fruit, but they are very useful in fighting. The Homo line developed tools to do the fighting for them, and the canines tapered off accordingly.
For that matter, why on earth would we have lost the the fur that covers all the other hominids? What kind of evolutionary advantage would that afford, to be MORE exposed to the elements?
There are a couple of possibilities. One would be change in environment and development of hunting. Running after prey in the open, sunny plains, would require a better cooling system than apes had in the hot but moist forests.
Along with the helplessness of our infants and the burden they place on the mother.
That is also an ape trait.
Humans are not well suited for unprotected life in the wild. It does not make sense that the genetic changes that produced a weaker creature would have allowed the creature to so successfully reproduce and flourish.
The change to "weakness" was allowed by the development of a wide range of tools and culture. It did not happen in isolation.
Brains alone don't ensure survival.
Of course not. But tools and culture are extremely important in our survival, and the degree that humans possess these traits far outstrips the rest of the primates. These traits are almost certainly associated with the increased brain size.
(Good questions by the way.)
Who knows, but one thing is certain, some darwinian will give you an a priori reason for it.
Basically they're saying these 13 million year-old monkeys ate bananas because modern monkeys with the same dentition eat bananas. They've discovered that the ancestor of modern banana-eating monkeys was a banana-eating monkey.
Maybe evolution doesn't mean change, after all.
The "fruit-eating" factoid is symptomatic of ape-man evolution literature. A reader can be lulled into thinking he is learning something from dreck like 'prehistoric chimps ate bananas, they probably went for a dump now and then, climbed trees, mated, ate, and slept, blah, blah'. I'm sure you've read ape-man stories that go... "ape-man possibly ran around naked, or perhaps wore rudimentary clothing, he used his feet for locomotion, and ate foodstuffs found in nature. He mated with the opposite sex and had children. When mauled by tigers, he possibly made lound sounds. etc. etc." There's reams of that sort of rot in evolutionary literature, and if it were all pushed into the sea one day, the loss to human knowledge would be zero.