Why Kenyans Make Such Great Runners: A Story of Genes and Cultures – somebody’s picked up on the phrase human biodiversity! check out the last sentence in paragraph two. (^_^) h/t to luke for pointing out the article to me!
Why Chimpanzees Kill – “[K]ills occurred in most of the chimpanzee communities and that victims tended to be infant and adult males outside the killer’s social group. Most of the killings were conducted by groups of males…. What did appear to be a factor was the number of males in a group: the higher the number of males in a group, the higher the number of kills.”
People prefer male politicians with lower voices – @the inductivist.
Analysis of surname origins identifies genetic admixture events undetectable from genealogical records – @race/history/evolution notes.
Impact of Carnivory on Human Development and Evolution Revealed by a New Unifying Model of Weaning in Mammals – “Since early weaning yields shorter interbirth intervals and higher rates of reproduction, with profound effects on population dynamics, our findings highlight the emergence of carnivory as a process fundamentally determining human evolution.”
Women focus on their children, not their men, as they age – of course. @dennis’.
Women Are Twice As Likely To Hit The Gas By Mistake – that’d be pretty funny if it weren’t so dangerous.
bonus: When Memory Commits an Injustice – “[W]hen it comes to human memory, more deliberation is often dangerous.”
bonus bonus: Evolution seen in ‘synthetic DNA’ – “Researchers have succeeded in mimicking the chemistry of life in synthetic versions of DNA and RNA molecules. The work shows that DNA and its chemical cousin RNA are not unique in their ability to encode information and to pass it on through heredity.”
bonus bonus bonus: The Emergence and Early Evolution of Biological Carbon-Fixation – “Here we reconstruct the complete early evolutionary history of biological carbon-fixation, relating all modern pathways to a single ancestral form.”
(note: comments do not require an email. orwell court. heh.)
@Why Chimpanzees Kill
Chimpanzees are by nature vegetarian and pacifistic, but they were corrupted by contact with human “civilization” in the 70′s.
This remarkable transformation of chimpanzee culture was documented by Jane Goodall, who wrote Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe
The vegetarian chimpanzees began hunting colobus monkeys (the ‘”Bambi” of the jungle), tearing them apart and eating their flesh raw without so much as barbecue sauce. ref
Their egalitarian social structure was replaced with a hierarchical one with a so-called “alpha” male as leader.
The communal sharing of food ceased and the “alpha” male would forcibly take food from lower ranking chimpanzees. ref
The Universal Siblinghood of Chimp was broken up into many small “communities” that controlled a a small territory and had little contact with each other.
The formerly pacifistic chimpanzees began engaging in violent raids against neighboring communities, ambushing lone individuals and tearing them apart, sometimes even cannibalizing them (again, no barbecue sauce). ref
Fortunately, the chimpanzees close cousin, the bonobo, lives deeper in the interior of the jungle, uncontaminated from the influence of Peoplekind and still living in an idyllic State of Nature.
“Women Are Twice As Likely To Hit The Gas By Mistake”
We’re not talking sex I assume.
Chimpanzees are very inbred, like most animal species.
They live in small bands of 20–150 closely related animals that have hostile relationship with neighboring bands. The small band size is enforced by splitting off a smaller band when the population becomes too large. After a short truce the larger parent band conducts raids against the smaller band.
Net effect: Only breeding inside a small group of less than 150.
“chimpanzees from different populations were substantially more different genetically than humans living on different continents.” http://www.sciencedaily.com
Lethal intergroup aggression leads to territorial expansion in wild chimpanzees
“the Kahama community had recently formed by fissioning from the Kasekela group.
…
Why Chimpanzees Kill
article:”Chimpanzees are mostly peaceable creatures…”
me: Rousseau would be proud… Wait a minute, “mostly peaceable”?
article: “But occasionally they kill their own kind.”
me: Well, I guess in the times they’re not killing there being entirely peaceable. What are these peaceable times?
article: “spending much of their time foraging for food and grooming each other.”
me: So it’s not like they’re killing all the time, I mean, they eat too.
continued
article: “One theory holds that killing is an evolved strategy for reducing competition for resources;”
me: Silly theory, isn’t it.
article: “another posits that human disturbance—including hunting and deforestation—has triggered the behavior.”
me: Much more likely.
Lol good posts sNoOOPy
I may have to check out Goodall’s book
@sNoOOPy – “Chimpanzees are by nature vegetarian and pacifistic, but they were corrupted by contact with human ‘civilization’ in the 70′s.”
i shouldn’t judge what goodall has to say about chimps since i haven’t read that book (and she obviously understands chimps probably better than anyone else on the planet!), but i have to say that i am skeptical.
all sorts of social animals are territorial and will strongly defend their territories AND try to take over others’ territories if they can, even if it means killing their competitors (think of the sweet, little meerkitties, for instance — ruthless when they want to expand into another group’s territory!). and all sorts of animals kill other individuals from other species, too. so it doesn’t come as a shock to me that chimps can be ruthless killers.
and how does jane goodall know that her chimps were always the lovey-dovey pacifists she says they were? i mean, how far back in time does her data on chimp behavior go? (answer: not very.)
still, interesting sounding book. thanks for the reference!
@luke – “We’re not talking sex I assume.”
heh! (^_^) no, definitely not!
Off topic, but when you get to China you might take account of a custom called “surname exogamy” which meant that “all wives must be brought in from other lineages.” Not sure how this would affect inbreeding/outbreeding. Here is the reference.
@hbd chick
@sNoOOPy – “Chimpanzees are by nature vegetarian and pacifistic, but they were corrupted by contact with human ‘civilization’ in the 70′s.”
“i shouldn’t judge what goodall has to say about chimps”
Actually, I was attempting sarcasm vis-a-vis “Why Chimpanzees Kill”
Specifically:
“another posits that human disturbance—including hunting and deforestation—has triggered the behavior.”
Goodall’s book is being used as a vehicle for humour, as if observed behaviours recently came to be. Although it was generally believed that chimps were more placid.
Sorry for using capital letters in my posts.
@luke – “Off topic, but when you get to China you might take account of a custom called ‘surname exogamy’ which meant that ‘all wives must be brought in from other lineages.’ Not sure how this would affect inbreeding/outbreeding. Here is the reference.”
thanks for the reference! i’ve read a little about this (only a little), and one thing that it means is that the good ol’ father’s brother’s daughter (fbd) marriage (i.e. the arab one) has pretty much never been practiced at all in china. you wind up with mother’s brother’s daughter (mbd) marriage instead.
the difference, then, afaics, is that with fbd marriage, you wind up with a really crazy tribal society — think saudi arabia or iraq or afghanistan (or syria). with mbd marriage, you still have a degree of inbreeding, but you can build broader alliances with a greater number of clans being involved. the system is more open than the fbd system, but not as open as not inbreeding at all. iow, china is somewhere in between england and arabia.
@sNoOOpy – “I was attempting sarcasm….”
oh. heh! well, never mind! (^_^)
Also, a commentary on “Noble Savage” idea. ie: Even chimps have nations, territory, borders, armies, wars, aristocrats etc.
Mutiny on the Bounty. Dances With Wolves. Dances with Smurfs.
“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
@sNoOOPy – “Dances with Smurfs”
heh! (^_^)
i didn’t bother seeing avatar. i preferred cameron’s movies when the humans nuked alien planets from their spaceships (or at least planned to). (~_^)