evolution

[Eyeofsauron]

Culture. It's part of the chimp/human niche. It's the main reason for our advance, and nothing else really has it. You pass more information between generations, than just what's held in your genes. It's transforming.

But it's artificial.  We are controlling environmental influences, but the extent we can do that has its limits.  Eventually (as I mentioned earlier), the human population will reach a level where a 'disaster' is required to reduce the population to a sustainable level.  A pandemic, climate change, or even a man-made catastrophe will have to come into play.  Of course, the alternative is finding somewhere else for humans to live.  But I don't think Mars is quite ready yet.

The pandemic, or diaster, you hint of, could well come from somewhere we least expect.

If, say, some sort of virus came along & killed bacteria, which are the things that keep us alive & well, well, we'd all be dead within days. Every last one of us.

Gotta love bacteria. Be nice to them.

Tikay,

I think you would enjoy reading the following book:

The Death of Grass by John Christopher

[tikay]

Culture. It's part of the chimp/human niche. It's the main reason for our advance, and nothing else really has it. You pass more information between generations, than just what's held in your genes. It's transforming.

But it's artificial.  We are controlling environmental influences, but the extent we can do that has its limits.  Eventually (as I mentioned earlier), the human population will reach a level where a 'disaster' is required to reduce the population to a sustainable level.  A pandemic, climate change, or even a man-made catastrophe will have to come into play.  Of course, the alternative is finding somewhere else for humans to live.  But I don't think Mars is quite ready yet.

The pandemic, or diaster, you hint of, could well come from somewhere we least expect.

If, say, some sort of virus came along & killed bacteria, which are the things that keep us alive & well, well, we'd all be dead within days. Every last one of us.

Gotta love bacteria. Be nice to them.

Tikay,

I think you would enjoy reading the following book:

The Death of Grass by John Christopher

Can you tell me more please? Is is Non-Fiction? I don't read fiction.

Bacteria is, it seems, a wonderful thing. It was the first life-form on earth, I believe.

Millions - literally - of bacteria live inside each of us, & they do all sorts of jobs, digest our food, keep us in good order, & they bash-up other bacteria that turn up in the wrong place. e-coli, in fact, is a good thing until it arrives in the wrong location. They cause BO too - dead bacteria pongs shocking.

It's pretty neat at helping to make things too - butter, beer, yoghourt, cheese.

They also live at the perimeter of vents at the bottom of the sea, where water temperatures can vary by (allegedly) 100c over less than a metre - & they flourish in either extreme!

One strain - Deinococcus radiodurans - has DNA which is immune to radioactivity. Blast it with Radioactivity, it sort of explodes into tiny pieces - then immediately reforms & carries on as normal.

Quite simply, without bacteria, we would all die, & quickly. Arguably, they are nature's cleverest trick. They've not done a good job with their PR though.

[Muahahahaha]

Easy question.

Who will live longer , veggies, or carnies ?

Obviously veggies.  They will eat all the grass, so there's none left for the cows, so our beef ration goes out the window.

We can't eat.  They win.

Cheats.

( Unless of course, we crossbreed cows with lions, so the veggies will be too scared to go into the fields, so it's them that starve. - This is definately move complex than I first thought )

[kinboshi]

Bacteria is, it seems, a wonderful thing. It was the first life-form on earth, I believe.

You were there at the time, so you should know!

[AdamM]

There have already been several species of humans, many of which looked and behaved radically different from ourselves. Out of all those, we certainly weren't the strongest or the most intelligent. Perhaps our success lies in our aggressive and selfish nature, both against ourselves and the habitat we live in. Our "success" and all of our achievements may merely be a flash in the pan. On evolutionary terms, we've only just appeared on the scene, compared to the earth's long history. Look how much damage we've already done.

People often mistakenly think that evolution follows a certain path, as though it has a purpose or direction, and that species which survive today, are superior to past extinct forms. Life simply has one objective; to continue. As the earth's environment changes, as it has done since it's conception, life has evolved to fill every crevice, on land, sea and air.

Long after the human race has wiped itself off the face of the planet, taking with it countless other species, life will still continue to thrive and evolve unabated, even if that life takes on a microscopic form.

post of the year for me.

[Eyeofsauron]

Thanks Adam!

Tikay, "The Death of Grass" is a fictional story. But you would still enjoy reading it, I think.

[FlyingPig]

The predecessor to the Human Being was a vegatarian. Only herbivores have an appendix. This was used to store grass and various other forms of vegatoubles..

Most of our teeth are flat, and used for chewing food, and we have snall canince teeth for biting. If we were originally meat eaters, we would have larger canines and more of them....

We went from vegatarians to meat eaters.....

[AdamM]

We were omnivores before we were humans.
Without the nutrients in red meat and fish our brains could never have developed the intelligence we have today.
If our ancestors had been vegetarians we wouldn't exist

[madasahatstand]

We were omnivores before we were humans.
Without the nutrients in red meat and fish our brains could never have developed the intelligence we have today.
If our ancestors had been vegetarians we wouldn't exist

sorry but 

[fearisthekey]

vegetarius ergo sum.

Without the nutrients in vegetables prehistoric man would never have been allowed dessert.
Without the nutrients in carrots prehistoric man would never have been able to see in the dark.

Fount of knowledge, my ma.

[AdamM]

We were omnivores before we were humans.
Without the nutrients in red meat and fish our brains could never have developed the intelligence we have today.
If our ancestors had been vegetarians we wouldn't exist

sorry but 

whats funny?

The theory is that without both the carbohydrates from our vegetable in take and the amino acids from our meat in take our brains could never have evolved.

Katherine Milton if you want to google it
heres one article on it
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/6-14-1999a.html

and incidentaly, there's no need to be rude Mad

[Eyeofsauron]

I think Adam is on the right track, concerning diet. Another thing to consider regarding brain size and intelligence, is that a herbivore doesn't have to think too much as to where it's next meal is coming from. A cow will simply stand in a field all day and eat. However, it has to eat virtually all day, every day, as grass offers little nutritional value compared to meat. In fact, grass is so tough to eat, that a cow literally digests it twice over.

A carnivore has a tougher job. In order to get fed, lions have to work as a team, stalking out prey, setting up an ambush, and running down prey. The majority of times, that effort is wasted, as their targeted prey manages to escape. Every time they miss an opportunity, their family takes another step closer to starvation and death. Their reward for success is a high energy food source. The pride doesn't have to eat for days after a good meal. It's a good example of risk verses reward. Hippos have even been known to scavenge meat from time to time, and they don't even have the dentistry to handle it!

Humans are lucky in that we've got the right types of teeth to eat almost anything. Perhaps our success lies in our opportunistic ways. Our intellect has evolved to a point where we have choices. We can choose where we want to live. We can choose what we want to eat. We can even choose the state of the planet. No other species has ever had so many choices, and yet we choose to squander them.

[fearisthekey]

I think Adam is on the right track, concerning diet. Another thing to consider regarding brain size and intelligence, is that a herbivore doesn't have to think too much as to where it's next meal is coming from. A cow will simply stand in a field all day and eat.

[FlyingPig]

Them Sharks eat a lot of fish, but they have dam small brains.

Crocodiles eat a good variety of meat and fish. What happened to them.?

[fearisthekey]

Them Sharks eat a lot of fish, but they have dam small brains.

Crocodiles eat a good variety of meat and fish. What happened to them.?

Natural selection picks out the fittest (to survive and rear offspring), not the brainiest. In humans, the fittest were the brainiest purely because of the ecological niche we happened to be in.
If I put you in a ring with a lion, who would win?
If I put a really strong, but dumb guy in the wilderness, and pitted him against a really brainy guy of average strength, who would more likely prevail?

That said, it sure gets a lot easier for natural selection to pick you out if you're still around, and opening up your diet to include meat and fish certainly helps. Various random hypotheses suggest that Homo Sapiens prevailed and Homo Neanderthalus (which had a larger brain) did not, because the latter failed to incorporate fish into its diet.

I'm still not sold on other reasons for the evolutionary development of human intelligence being contingent on the nutrients available solely from meat and fish. Vegetarians get by perfectly fine by getting all the critical nutrients from elsewhere.

When you look at the evolution of various monkeys and apes in the wild in their respective niches, you do have to always take food supply into account, but this is largely due to the *glucose metabolism* requirements engendered by a high brain>body ratio.