Re: Dissecting the Aquatic Ape: Bipedalism
Gerrit Hanenburg (ghanenbu@inter.nl.net)
Sat, 10 Aug 1996 15:48:43 GMT
Paul Crowley <Paul@crowleyp.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Attempts by the arboreal ape to become
>adjusted to the ground will be defeated by the species that are
>already there. It will constantly be driven back into its own niche
>in the high canopy. It has no advantages over them, and there are
>enormous impediments in the way of any progress towards speciation
>into a new ground-based niche.
Your ideas on ecology are somewhat simplistic.
Advise:read an ecological case-study,such as Sinclair et al's
"Serengeti:Dynamics of an Ecosystem",and learn something about
community complexity and resource partitioning.
>This might be a slight change of topic and could be in another
>thread, but what you say indicates that early hominids were more
>ground-based than chimps, which spend 90% or their time on the
>ground. How about 98% for early hominids?
Can you give us reference for the 90% figure?
Kevin D.Hunt in a year-long study at Gombe and Mahale arrived at a
percentage of 47.2 and 60.7 for Gombe and Mahale chimps respectively.
(Hunt,K.D.,Positional Behavior of Pan troglodytes in the Mahale
Mountains and Gombe Streams National Parks,Tanzania.
Am.J.Phys.Anth.87:83-105)
Gerrit.
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