Moderator Note
Let’s leave political commentary out of GQ. No warnings issued, but stick to the subject.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
The only way this would be certain is if there were a mutation that allowed a wolf to be faster and smarter with no drawbacks. Humans are the smartest animals on the planet but our brains take up 20% of the energy we use. If the wolf can still survive using 10% then they have a 10% caloric advantage over the smarter ones. If it makes the wolf faster or smarter but requires more calories then it’s a tradeoff.
It’s not necessarily an arms race, although it can be, and it’s pretty certain that before a certain point, their ancestors weren’t necessarily carnivores (at some point not long ago evolutionarily speaking, cows, wolves and humans share a common ancestor).
Is there a reason you chose energy expenditure one of your decisive criterion pairs? Not snark: but you can come up with other “tradeoffs” that make up for that local disadvantage in metabolism, before running into the laws of thermodynamics.
I’m not even clear, now that I mention it, if “criterion pairs”/conjugate variables is even supportable in evolution.
I have no idea what you mean by “criterion pairs”, but all of life spends much of its time in a struggle to obtain sufficient energy for survival. It’s not a controversial idea in evolutionary biology that many mutations involve a phenotypic cost/benefit tradeoff, and that increased energy expenditure is on the “cost” side of the fitness calculus. I’m not sure why you would find this questionable?
Humans are different than many other mammals in how much fat we like to carry. Maybe related to energy requirements of brain, maybe for enhanced fertility (or maybe to swim, but many people not liking this).
You ever try nibbling on a piece of unsweetened chocolate?
Some animals have much greater fat reserves than humans. Even among primates orangutans build up a lot of fat and can become very sedentary even in the wild (although in Borneo they may not have any natural predators so it could be a result of environment just like as it is for many humans). I’m not saying all these animals have large fat reserves for the same biological function as humans do, but I don’t know of a mammal that doesn’t build up extra fat if it gets more food than it needs to sustain itself. Some reptiles and fish build up large fat reserves. I don’t know about the undomesticated species but chickens and turkeys bred for food build up large amount of fat. I can’t think of an mammal that wouldn’t benefit from the ability to build fat deposits that can keep it alive longer when food is scarce. Maybe there are some. Even reaching the point of irrevocable morbid obesity won’t matter if it doesn’t interfere with reproductive success. So humans may have adapted some specific physiology that produces more fat than other animals, but the underpinnings of that go far back in evolution. I seriously doubt there was a form of our ancestors that would stealth brag about how they couldn’t gain weight no matter how much they ate that later mutated into our current form.
And besides that, beneficial mutations or even exclusion of variations are a lot more complex than some simple trade-off between speed and smarts or just some few characteristics like that. A better sense of smell that allows more efficient hunting or sensing danger could just be coincidentally associated with greater fat reserves.
It might taste bland, but starch seems to provide some kind of satisfaction that other types of foods don’t. Things like bread, rice, corn, and potato in it’s various forms do seem to provide a lot of satisfaction when eaten. I think they’re actually the main culprits when it comes to obesity. I don’t have a cite from a scientific study, but I think most people who are obese probably get that way from bread, tortillas, french fries, pasta, and other starches. I don’t think people are getting obese to any large extent on more flavorful things like steak, bacon, eggs, or even processed meats like sausage.
Well, there’s simple and complex carbohydrates (which eventually your liver metabolizes into glucose — maybe with the exception of fiber). Simple carbs, such as fructose and glucose are immediately available sugars that are delicious and have an almost immediate effect on your metabolism, whereas more complex carbs have a more robust and complicated process through your body. Eventually, any excess sugars will be stored as fat, whether simple or complex carbs, but stuff like potatoes, bread, rice and other high-starch foods seem to bring about a more delayed and healthier way to give and store energy than the immediacy of simple sugars.
One of the African explorers tells of meeting a Queen that was hugely fat. No supermarkets there.
So?
So? :rolleyes:
I am not playing that game with you anymore, Czarcasm.
What game? What the hell does a lack of supermarkets have to do with casting doubt that they encountered an overweight princess? What point were you trying to get across?
If he’s not making a reference to Captain Spaulding then maybe he’s pointing out that you can get fat without a modern diet. I don’t know why that needs pointing out because it’s so freaking obvious there were fat people before the 20th century.
Can you still have children? Do you live long enough for those children to become independent of you? Then it’s not a flaw, and your body isn’t stupid. As others have said, the reason we store fat is because our ancestors didn’t have the same access to food as we do today, and it was a survival mechanism to ensure those with this trait DID have kids, and DID live long enough for those kids to survive and have kids of their own. We haven’t adapted as a species to not being hungry when we have adipem asinum because there is no particular benefit to that…fat people can and do have kids all the time. I have several myself. 
And, generally, even on the atrocious US diet people live into their 50’s, 60’s or even longer even when they are over weight (again…I’m the poster child ;)).
People have argued that no, there haven’t been, that the Venus is not “real” and that fatness only existed due to the modern surplus of food.
Ruling princes can have a surplus of food: they command it to be given them by their followers.
There are examples of very hefty chieftains of pre-technical people in remote areas today.
(“People have argued” all kinds of weird junk.)
No they haven’t!