PLAN 10 FROM OUTER SPACE.

We are very firmly of the opinion that Humans are the best animals at Freaky Trigger, and it is nice to see that yet again this is proved by looking at the energy efficiency of our walking style. As this hopefully trustworthy BBC report* has it, walking on two legs like a human is four times more energy efficient than the lolloping gait of a chimpanzee. Which perhaps factors in to that most difficult part of human evolution, namely just how vulnerable we are as wee nippers. No walking, communication, higher functions. Is the price to pay for the complex movement, the complex talking and other complex shit we humans do. Is out first year of life just booting the software?

What is nice about this story is that it is a feel good story on how we are naturally energy efficient creatures. If monkeys rules the Earth i daresay thair standby buttons would use more energy that a human appliance running on full. Indeed such is the natural urge for energy efficiency that I often find myself spending an extra hour in bed JUST TO SAVE ENERGY. Which makes me wonder, this so called profligacy with energy that Al Gore is shouting at us about. It seems unnatural. Almost as if the energy inefficiencies are not due to humans at all. But rather the meddling hands of evil aliens. Its no dumber the Plan 9.

*”Hopefully trustworthy” will be appended to every FT source until the BBC stops lying.

1. FT's Martin Skidmore on July 19th, 2007

   I’m unconvinced by their leap to claiming this is the evolutionary cause. Reaching for food, climbing, keeping an eye out for dangerous dinosaurs (okay, sabretoothed tigers), the lovely water-dwelling explanation and possibly others are all still contenders, I’d have thought. There’s clearly no reason why one factor has to win.

2. FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on July 19th, 2007

   of those four, surely only the water reason would (well, might) work as an evolutionary factor in normal gait? chimps can reach for food as well as us and climb rather better than we can; and are as adapted as we are (in a general sense)* to “look out for predators” (adaptation-in-ref-predators wd have to cite a human-chimp differential in respective predator-environment i think; ie has to be adaptatively-distinct-in-ref-locally-specific-predators)

   the swimming reason is nice bcz it exemplifies the (badly named) concept of “pre-adaptation”, where a feature part-develops in ref. better fitness for environment A (or “purpose A”, to put it teleological bad-Darwinism), and then the partial development further develops in better fitness for environment B/purpose B. viz middle-ear bone was once part of the jaw structure, where it had a biting value, and developed a sound-sensitive value

3. FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on July 19th, 2007

   actually we didn’t evolve “from chimps” — chimps and us evolved from one ancestor, so really the energy-saving thesis has to compare both of us with that ancestor (in ref our different environmental pressures) to get traction

4. FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on July 19th, 2007

   oops the asterisk pointed to this point: all non-extinct species are “as adapted as we are (in a general sense), since “less adapted (in a general sense)” = “extinct”

   relative adaptivity in ref any given particular environmental context is a different matter