5 ms·
Not a biologist, but been around them long enough. I been cultivating a theory that mammals strategy is more or less "go fast; break things". That is, asteroid
by tejtm 5y ago
Not a biologist, but been around them long enough.
I been cultivating a theory that mammals strategy
is more or less "go fast; break things".
That is, asteroid or not, we were on track to out evolve
everything that came before by extending and exploiting
explosive cell growth. No animal converts matter & energy
to body-mass faster than young mammals, the cold blooded
do not stand a chance. The competition would get larger
eventually only if some adolescent mammal did not
eat them first as peers.
consider how you would bet on
a 1 year old raccoon
vs
a 1 year old alligator
then again with
a 5 year old raccoon
vs
a 5 year old alligator
The mammal strategy traded the long game for the quick win.
We have all sorts of (genetic) machinery who's function is to grow fast
but then STOP as we can't support gigantic sizes.
(Maybe in part because of the quick and dirty foundations
but thermodynamics have scaling issues too)
So we need to shut of all those machines before we get too big.
And so here we happily sit in our bodies, our mammal factory
and everything is great; just don't push that big red button
over there, or pull that lever or that one or that one or ...
eventually if you live long enough some of those buttons will be pushed
and the mammal machinery will do what it evolved to do.
grow fast and break things.
A final observation on humans in particular, recently bipedal,
have not gotten all the bugs worked out on that.
Deployed a monkey patch for dimorphic gender singling
requires cron job flipping on a subset of growth machinery
some years after the main global shutdown but only flip them on
for a season or so;
still seeing evidence of switch bounce issues, see ticket BCRA1.
- Kejiti 5y agoWe humans are very unique though on how much care and dependency babes need. From an evolutionary perspective natur might have just stoped after we gave birth but for humans you need to be still very healthy for much longer. We have a second evolution which we as a species gained due to our more generic and bigger brain and therefore being able to retain and learn more even through generations. Whenever nature stoped we continued (glasses, cancer treatment etc.) I personally would not subscribe to your idea that cancer is our basis and we just let loose. Cancer is just one sickness of a highly complex system. And after all why would longevity even be a goal for evolution? It's a wishful human idea of lifing forever. I myself I'm looking forward to NOT life forever and still today the thought of not being able to end my life for good is my worst nightmare next to loosing my mind.
- lurquer 5y ago> We humans are very unique though on how much care and dependency babes need. The marsupials of Australia called and would like a word with you.
- zabzonk 5y agoAll mammals care for their offspring - it's what makes them mammals. Many of them do it for quite big chunks of the parent's own lives.
- CyanBird 5y agoI think it is a cute hypothesis, but I don't believe it is fully functional, how would this explain megafauna? An I am not talking of moose, but of ice age gigantic mammals, which were just gigantic
- reader_mode 5y agoThey are extinct, so supporting his hypothesis ? It's not like evolution is a design process in which something gets "traded off" - random shit happens, something sticks.
- PudgePacket 5y ago> They are extinct, so supporting his hypothesis Or they were hunted to death by organised groups of early humans. Wales are probably only surviving because their environment is so foreign to humans.
- vasco 5y agoThey are extinct because in the game of size vs brains they lost. So this still supports their argument. Humans and human activity is part of the environment the same way as anything else. Humans were also here with cockroaches or horses but those are still around.
- darkr 5y ago> No animal converts matter & energy to body-mass faster than young mammals, the cold blooded do not stand a chance. Feel like Argentinosaurus might have had something to say about that argument..