I don’t know if penguins flock. They’re birds, and you can get a couple thousand of them standing together. Ever see the old (based on a true story) Bloom County cartoon? First the jet flies, left to right, over a massive herd of penguins. And slowly, every head turns, left to right, to follow it. And then it comes back. Right to left. And every head turns, right to left, to follow it.
And then it returns, flying front to back. And slowly, slowly, but surely, every head tips up, up, up… and softly, a thousand penguins fall on their butts.
When pre historic man learned to make fires, he also learned to control fires. Once upon a time, he stood up and peed on the fire to put it out. The rest is history.
I first saw it in a Air Force Magazine, circa 198X (Where X is 6-8), in Bob Stevens’ There I Was end of magazine cartoon. I figured the Bloom County came from that. May be a bull story, but I do not think that the evidence Snopes has is enough to debunk it… I’d have preferred finding one of the pilots stationed there and asking him.
I was under the impression that the point behind upright posture was the freeing of the forelimbs from locomotion, enabling them to be used for grasping and shaping purposes. (Note that a wide variety of other creatures evolved this skill.)
Regarding “pointing toward the heavens,” I offer http://www.sculpturecenter.org/oosi/sculpture.asp?SID=923 this statue, which on this Jan. 1 as a Raleigh-area resident I would have to point out as acknowledgement by the Great Lawgiver that the Wolfpack is really No. 1!!
So we have thousands of species of bird, hundreds of species of dinosaur, forty odd species of kangaroo, a few species of lemur and four species of apes (orangs and gibbons also walk upright when they have to walk at all) whose spines point towards heaven.
As someone who’s never been able to walk without assistance (and barely, at that), I find bipedalism to be amazing. What I mean is, I can’t figure out how it generally works so well, especially in humans - is it the butt that keeps everything in order (balanced, I guess)? Or the hips? Or am I woefully oversimplifying? I s**t you not, I’m really curious.
I don’t mean to imply that there’s something inherently significant about bipedalism - I just can’t totally wrap my brain around how people don’t fall on their butts on a constant basis. Sounds kinda stupid, I know, but 'tis true.
Cosmopolitan, you should look at the research being done in creating an artificial auto-balancing leg using computer-controlled motors responding to adjustments in balance.
Dinosaurs’ spines did not “point towards heaven”. Bipedality does not require a vertical spine; in the case of dinosaurs, the spine was more or less horizontal when walking.
[nitpick]
I was under the impression that evolutionary adaptations don’t have a “why”, that is. they don’t happen in response to a “need”.
I was under the impression that random genetic mutations are constantly taking place. Most of them are too minor to be noticed or have any effect on the overall population of a species. Most of the major random genetic mutations that do take place are not advantageous to the individual and usually cause the individual to die before passing them on. Very rarely a mutation will take place that is advantageous to the survival of an individual (trait X). The individual with that random genetic mutation will pass it on to its offspring. If there is environmental pressure that will put more stress on the individual members of a species who lack trait X, a larger percentage of them of them will die before reaching sexual maturity than members of the species who posess trait X.
That is my understanding of how evolution works.
It may seem like a minor point, but to begin with the assumption that adaptations happen for a reason is to begin the debate by giving it half way to the creationist/intelligent design camp.
[/nitpick]
So, a better way of phrasing the question would be “What are the survival benefits of upright posture”. And the first that springs to mind would be “It leaves the hands available to manipulate the environment; e.g. tool use becomes easier”. Further down the list would be fire urination, peanut butter sandwich-making, etc.
