Perhaps the most successful animal ever to live is humans. Why are we successful? Believe it or not, we should not even be here. If we hadn't learned to build big civilizations and control fire, we would have become extinct long ago. It is actually our brain-power that made us so successful. Now me personally, I only have the smarts of a caveman! LOL! But people in general are the smartest of all living things. Other than our brain power, we are not equipped to survive at all in this world.
If humans still had to live like their earliest ancestors, we would not survive at all. We, unlike all other wild animals, do not have teeth or claws as defenses or weapons, we cannot run very fast, we are not as strong as other animals our size, our jaws are weak so we cannot kill or eat our food without specially-made weapons. And we are relatively delicate creatures, much more so than any other mammal our size, our bones are easily broken and our flesh is very easily torn and easy for a predator to bite into. All other prey animals have very tough flesh, are fast-moving, or have some kind of weapons of defense. People do not like to think of their species as being prey for others, but if we were still living in a wild state, we could very easily become targets for all kinds of large predators. Simply put, we would not survive the wild at all. Big predators would eat us into extinction.
Many other hominids have become extinct over the past 2 million years the family has been around. There was even one that was believed to be semi-aquatic and have partially-webbed hands and feet. It was a short-lived, yet crucial, part of our evolutionary outcome. Though we are related to gorillas, orangs and chimps, none of these other closely-related species can swim. Their skeletal structure is too heavy to keep them afloat, and the way the nostrils are placed on the face, water can get into their airway passages and the animals will drown quicker than a human would. It is believed that our nose is shaped the way it is now to help keep out water. Much like the proboscis monkey of Borneo, which is also a semi-aquatic species with a large nose. This could explain our ability to swim, whereas all our other living relatives take pains to avoid the water. This particular species is probably what shaped us into the species we are today.
It could also explain why humans are mostly hairless. Most aquatic mammals are indeed hairless, such as whales, dolphins and manatees. Hair, for the most part, is dead weight in the water. The only fully-aquatic mammal that has put it's fur to good use is the sea otter, and sea otters are relatively slow swimmers compared to seals and dolphins, and mostly just float on the surface of the water. The fur does provide buoyancy, but also keeps a layer of warm air next to the animal's skin to keep them from chilling in the water, especially at night when temperatures drop. But humans evolved in Africa, where it is hot, and it is believed we lost our fur to prevent overheating when we took to the African savannah, where it is much hotter than it is in the jungle where our closest wild kin, the chimpanzees, live. This also aided our semi-aquatic relatives that probably shaped us into the creatures we are now, from becoming waterlogged and drowning. One article I recently read also explains that we may have lost our fur to ward off parasites like ticks and fleas. Many parasite species carry deadly diseases, like plague and lyme disease. If we had fur, parasites would be very hard to spot and brush off since we could not see them in between the hair fibers. So one theory of why we are mostly hairless, whereas other primates aren't, is that it was a defense against parasites.
Somewhere back in our lineage, humans went from a semi-aquatic existence to a fully terrestrial existence. Why? Because the land offered so much more in the way of food for us to take fully to the waters. This is one time evolution took a U-turn. But as a result, we did suffer some problems. Among those is one problem I have been struggling with for several years, FAT!! This is also why we have problems in childbirth, why water births are much easier and less painful than giving birth lying out of water, on our backs. No other mammal feels as much pain in childbirth as we do. Also, because we are naked, we rely on the skins of other animals to keep us warm. Or we build heated structures today to shelter us from the elements. Not exactly what nature intended, but it's a product of our civilizations. We still have hair, it's just not as widesread on our bodies as it is in other land mammals. This also helped in learning to control fire, for heat and cooking, to tenderize our meat. All other living things fear fire and won't go near it, but humans have learned to use it to their advantage, especially today. Everything that made our societies and civilizations is controlled by fire. We use it to burn energy to light and warm our homes, cook, drive to work every day. Everything we are familiar with now is controlled in some way by fire. I say if dinosaurs had learned to exploit fire the way we have, they might still be around today!
Anyone else want to read about Oreopithecus, or the Aquatic Apes we descended from, there is an interesting article that discusses the proof that we did come from this creature. Click on this link to visit the Aquatic Ape Theory.
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