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Male faces 'buttressed against punches' by evolution
- balor123 12y agoSo we can survive a punch to the face now but we can't breath while asleep. Thanks for nothing, nature!
- pavel_lishin 12y agoHow do our faces prevent us from breathing in our sleep? I seem to have survived last night.
- ars 12y agoSleep apnea and various sinus disorders are not rare.
- pavel_lishin 12y agoI thought sleep apnea mostly occurred in people who are overweight?
- ars 12y agoThat is certainly a risk factor, but no, it happens in normal weight people too. Pretty much anyone who snores is more likely to also have sleep apnea.
- e40 12y agoLucky you. Many people suffer from a deviated septum, which restricts airflow. The airflow in one of my nostrils is dramatically less than the other, and if the good one is blocked, for any reason (cold, allergies), I'm a mouth breather.
- pavel_lishin 12y agoAh, I forgot about deviated septums. Wonder what evolutionary advantage came with those.
- Florin_Andrei 12y agoApparently, the evolutionary impetus to withstand punches to the face is greater than the one to breathe easily at night. Mother Nature is awful.
- andyjdavis 12y agoIndeed. Natural selection only cares about things that interfere with the ability to live long enough to reproduce. Whether or not the organism is happy, well rested and enjoys their life isn't particularly important from an evolutionary stand point.
- jonathansizz 12y agoThe problem with drawing these kinds of conclusions is that it's easy to invent adaptive stories that purport to explain changes in morphological features, but not easy to build a case that will convince an appropriately sceptical audience. I've heard of over a dozen disparate adaptive explanations for why zebras have stripes or why human hair is less dense than that of other mammals, but none are necessarily correct.
- whyenot 12y agoYes, it could be a spandrel. see the classic (and controversial) paper by Gould and Lewontin: Gould, SJ and Lewontin RC. 1979. The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 205(1161): 581-598 http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/205/1161/581.abstract http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/205/1161/581....
- davidgerard 12y agoYes, it explains why you've evolved an adaptation to being punched in the face, but not to being kicked in the breadbasket. It's a bit just-so. It did make this occur to me: http://newstechnica.com/2014/06/09/scientists-tony-abbott-evolved-to-have-a-punchable-face/ http://newstechnica.com/2014/06/09/scientists-tony-abbott-ev... I can't tell you how happy it made me to find out there existed a photo of Tony Abbott getting punched in the face.
- thucydides 12y agoAnother relevant article from the same site: Artists' beards evolved to be "structurally different" http://newstechnica.com/2014/04/17/artists-beards-evolved-to-be-structurally-different/ http://newstechnica.com/2014/04/17/artists-beards-evolved-to...
- haberman 12y agoTotally agreed. It strikes me as very similar to traditional myths, or stories that purport to explain how things are. The only difference is that instead of using gods and supernatural powers, our new myths take into account scientific information like the theory of evolution. So our new myths are more plausible, but just as unsubstantiated.
- vanderZwan 12y agoIn a way this reminds of this SMBC: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2138 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2138
- humanresources 12y agoThe article suggests that we started evolving away from adaptations to survive violence two species ago.
- imjk 12y agoDamnit, I was hoping to find a justification for my oversized head.
- beloch 12y agoI took a couple of physical anthro courses in university, and I never did get a satisfactory explanation for why genus homo evolved a parabolic dental arcade. After reading this, one has to wonder how a parabolic vs. U-shaped dental arcade functions when it comes to spreading force from a fist-blow, either head-on or oblique. Modern humans have proportionally less upper body strength than australopithecines, but what about neandertal's? If there was a linear relationship between reducing jaw robustness and upper body strength over the last few million years, neadertals have got to be an outlier! If a parabolic dental arcade offers better protection against blows, perhaps fisticuffs remained an evolutionary pressure but nature just found a more efficient way to address it than making thicker bones.