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You two are wildly speculating. The fact is that none of this greatly influences reproductive fitness, so it is unlikely to be acted on by evolution. The effe

• nazgul17 10y ago
  I agree that it is speculation, but the evolutionary advantage is pretty clear there: getting extra learning during fights increases your chances of survival in the next fight.
  • searine 10y ago
    1. You are assuming brain health means learning. 2. You are assuming fights exert the same effect as exercise. 3. You are assuming the selection pressure is great enough to effect allele frequency. 4. You are assuming humans fight alone. 5. You are assuming humans have extra knowledge to be gained in a split second of a fight. 6. You are assuming said extra knowledge would be overwhelmingly adaptive in a physical fight. Breaking down adaptation is all about understanding your assumptions. It is easy to speculate, but it is hard measure evolution. However, given rigorous study we can measure adaptation mathematically and quantify it's impacts.
• mywittyname 10y ago
  The evolutionary reasoning behind almost any trait is going to be entirely speculative. > The fact is that none of this greatly influences reproductive fitness, so it is unlikely to be acted on by evolution. It absolutely does, in fact, it's probably a key influence of reproductive fitness in predatory species. The species that can gather more energy or more efficiently use that energy is going to out-grow their peers more each successive generation. And it's easy to see the relationship between more efficient learning and gathering more food. A group of hunting animals that learn 10% faster during and after exercising than a control group would have a huge resource advantage because they increases both the pool of available prey and the likelihood of catching prey. Acquiring just 7% more calories (and translating that into 7% more offspring) would result in a population that is double the control group in 10 generations.