Besides our intelligence, bi-pedalism, and opposable thumbs, are there any other things H. Sapiens are good at compared to other animals? I know, for example, that dogs and cats have us beat in smell; many prey animals (such as deer) smoke us when it comes to hearing; and when it comes to eyesight, we’re basically blind compared to some birds. Similarly, dolphins and bats have eyesight and echolocation; we just have eyesight.
But what senses/abilities do we have (again, outside of our intelligence, opposable thumbs, and bi-pedalism) that would be impressive to our animal kingdom brethren?
Endurance, at least partially because we bleed off heat through sweating and have little fur.
Our vocal cords seem good at making many sounds which helps with communication.
We have a long lifespan too which can be helpful when combined with intelligence.
As for eyesight, it’s bad compared to birds but our eyesight is better compared to other land animals. I think our eyesight is rather good compared to land animals.
This strikes me a bit like Monty Python’s Life of Brian “What have the Romans ever done for us?” Besides the things that we’re uniquely better at, what would be impressive?
Unpalatable flesh? Whether or not endurance, hungry lions could easily prey upon early humans, but they didn’t, and still don’t. Without such an extreme evolutionary advantage, no bi-pedalism, no opposable thumbs and no intelligence … humans are stuck up in the trees still.
ETA: Tool use is not uniquely human, and what advanced tools there be is a direct result of thumbs and intelligence …
We’re adapted to, possibly, a wider diet than almost any other animal. Because we have the ability to process our foods, we’re able to eat everything from the simple, calorically dense foods like honey and fat all the way down to impressively dense and hard to break down foods like roots. We use our hands to grind and/or heat to soften them up, allowing our gut to digest what would otherwise pass right through without imparting any energy. With our intellect, we have also figured out things like how to de-poison foods by letting them sit in streams.
And I note this as a specific genetic trait of humans - to be able to process food - because we evolved with/towards it. It’s not just a matter of us being smarter. We wouldn’t look like we look (particularly our jaw) and our bodies wouldn’t function the same (the digestive system) if we hadn’t developed these techniques.
What? The Njombe lions alone killed 1500+ people. The Tsavo lions killed and ate dozens to over a hundred (depending on which estimate you prefer) in less than a year.
Smart and well organized groups of humans have killed anything that harms humans or comes near their settlements for many thousands of years. So any predator species were subject to strong artificial selection for the trait don’t mess with humans. Given how rapidly we have modified wolf behavior in artificially selected dogs, artificial selection is probably sufficient to explain the fact that large predators usually avoid rather than attack humans.
Predators can and do eat humans if the opportunity presents itself. But humans are bigger than most prey animals and usually travel in groups. That makes even primitive humans tougher prey than most. Hungry lions will take on a solitary human, but they prefer to leave humans alone for the same reason they tend to leave baboons alone: they usually aren’t alone, and there are far easier pickings to be had.
Do you have a citation for this, or are you relying on the Smithsonian Institute’s claim of “… perhaps as many as 1,500 …” {Cite}. That’s over 15 years, so the 100 per year is consistent with current rates in Tanzania.
So, of the fifty million “of the most helpless creatures” in Tanzania, a lousy hundred get eaten … sorry, I don’t think that qualifies as a “prey species”.
The better argument against my claims is that … rather than human evolving horrible tasting flesh … it is humans who artificially selected lions who thought impala was the tastier choice for dinner. If a lion comes into a village and eats a peoples … the other peoples are going to kill it …
I speaking in evolutionary time scales, Australopithecus spp. were around 4 million years ago and were bi-pedal, but not very smart. Perhaps there’s another reason why a sweet tasting critter fresh out of the tree-tops would survive the intense predation found on the savannah.
Certainly the trait of tasting bad to carnivores would be immensely successful.
I’m unclear of the relevance of “evolutionary time scales”.
You seem to be arguing that there was some time in the past when humans did not have the intelligence and social organization to exterminate dangerous predators. That is surely true, but what evidence is there that we were not common prey animals until that point? Humans became highly successful when they acquired intelligence and sophisticated cooperation, and a critical part of this was surely organized group protection against dangerous predators. It seems implausible that there would not then have been strong artificial* selection on those predators for the trait of avoiding dangerous humans.
(*I’m using artificial as shorthand for human-mediated; of course in reality it’s just as natural as any other form of natural selection.)
The evolution of impalatable flesh is convoluted by comparison. Taste is a subjective sensation control by the predator’s genes. A predator could only evolve a taste-mediated aversion to human flesh in one of two ways:
(1) Human flesh is actually poisonous, i.e. predators that eat human flesh actually die.
(2) Mimickry: some other substance X is actually poisonous to the predator, causing the predator to evolve taste-mediated aversion to X, then human flesh evolves a taste that resembles X.
our ability to recognize patterns. whereas say, a lion will hunt its prey the same way every time (e.g. sneak up on a heard of zebra, then try to grab one) we would be able to watch and see how zebra try to evade predators (run in short bursts, zig zagging from side to side,) then think of a way to sidestep that.
yep. most other prey animals just flee. we fight back.