Apes habitat

[Fraggle Rocker]

In all fairness, the term "ape", loosely used, usually does not include humans. But in stricter terms, we usually mean "anthropoid apes plus humans" when we say "apes", esp. "great apes". One of the sources of confusion here is that "ape" is not a taxon (Homo is a genus and sapiens is a species).

Not true. Hominoidea is the superfamily including all of the tailless primates, i.e., the Lesser Apes or gibbons (family Hylobatidae) plus the Great Apes (family Hominidae)--the family of which our species Homo sapiens is a member.

The next higher taxon is the parvorder Catarrhini, which includes Hominoidea and Cercopithecoidea (the Old World monkeys).

Except quick access to trees would be in the forest, and the armloads of food would not be - forests don't produce armloads of hand-foraging food at ground level, or within walking distance of a given spot (even for competent bipeds), as a rule.

Ardipithecus was a herbivore (like all of the living apes except our own species), subsisting on leaves and enough arthropods and other small animals to provide adequate protein. They had no more trouble harvesting enough food within the forest than the modern gorillas. The ability to walk bipedally and carry a much larger load of plant tissue in their arms than a gorilla is assumed (they thoughtlessly didn't leave us any photos) to have been the catalyst for division of labor between the females (full-time childcare) and the males (full time harvesting).

The savannah ape was not mere "speculation", but the firmly defended and conventional wisdom that dominated the discussion.

Fine. Not being an actual professional scientist, I prefer to refer to a discredited hypothesis as a "speculation" instead of a "blunder."

 

[Aqueous Id]

Not true. Hominoidea is the superfamily including all of the tailless primates, i.e., the Lesser Apes or gibbons (family Hylobatidae) plus the Great Apes (family Hominidae)--the family of which our species Homo sapiens is a member.

That is essentially what I meant: the name of the taxon which includes all apes is Hominoidea, not Ape. The word "ape" in common speech is usually used loosely to exclude humans, as in the statement "Stop acting like an ape and give me that banana" or that catchy tune I am an Ape-Man. I suppose you could say the word "anthropoid" is implied in such statements. I guess it all depends on context. We can get away with using it in technical speech as long as we are all on the same page. I just wouldn't insist that the more common loose usage is wrong.

The next higher taxon is the parvorder Catarrhini, which includes Hominoidea and Cercopithecoidea (the Old World monkeys).Ardipithecus was a herbivore (like all of the living apes except our own species), subsisting on leaves and enough arthropods and other small animals to provide adequate protein.

Sounds like Ardi was a conflicted herbivore, like some vegans I've known.

They had no more trouble harvesting enough food within the forest than the modern gorillas. The ability to walk bipedally and carry a much larger load of plant tissue in their arms than a gorilla is assumed (they thoughtlessly didn't leave us any photos) to have been the catalyst for division of labor between the females (full-time childcare) and the males (full time harvesting).Fine. Not being an actual professional scientist, I prefer to refer to a discredited hypothesis as a "speculation" instead of a "blunder."

Of course anything to do with Ardi's behavior is pretty speculative. As you probably know, in the case of certain gorillas, the male forages and the harem and offspring follow at a distance, subsisting on his scraps. I think it was kind of a reach to quickly conclude that Ms. Ardi probably traded sex in exchange for food. Or maybe this educated guess has just sort of slipped into our subconscious as a plausible theory.

 

[iceaura]

Ardipithecus was a herbivore (like all of the living apes except our own species), subsisting on leaves and enough arthropods and other small animals to provide adequate protein. They had no more trouble harvesting enough food within the forest than the modern gorillas.

Which puts the female and the baby in the middle of the food patch, with trees handy. The key being that such food is not provided in dense patches of convenient "armload" form, but is instead low density (bulky and heavy) and spread out - it's much easier for gorillas (or any terrestrial primate) to carry the baby to the food than vice versa.

The ability to walk bipedally and carry a much larger load of plant tissue in their arms than a gorilla is assumed

Which would be not only ridiculous (male gorillas can carry much more in their arms than Ardi or any modern human even, even if the concept of "armloads" of small arthropods and leaves were not more or less comedy fodder)

and logically confused ( you can't assume competent bipedalism in your explanation of how bipedalism evolved, a fundamental error quite strikingly ubiquitous in the standard descriptions of hominid evolution).

but contrary to what we know of early bipedalism (the heel, for walking with a load, came later etc) and the mechanical advantages involved (a quadruped primate can carry more stuff long distances with one arm than with two, as child carrying primates universally demonstrate).

The original context of the armloads of food speculation was the savannah ape foraging away from the trees - this provided the advantage of leaving the females and young in the trees, which made sense, and a potential source of high density food worth schlepping back to camp like that, namely carrion from predator kills. The mechanical and other problems were still obvious, of course. But the forest ape doesn't even have that - barring one or two possibilities that of course we may not take seriously and be taken seriously.

 

[CEngelbrecht]

Reg. OT, there has been a plethora of great ape fossils found in Southern Europe as far North as Hungary. Mind you, they lived circa 14-7 million years ago, towards the end of the Micone, when Earth's climate was significantly warmer and had tropical jungles all across Southern Eurasia. Before that phase, their ancestors most likely were African apes, that migrated out of the continent (and possibly back into it, extant humans, chimps and humans might just as well descend from them), similar to Homo erectus and Homo sapiens much later. The vast majority of ape (and monkey, Japanese snow macaques being an exception) species seem dependent on tropical jungles as a habitat, apart from humans, which are capable of e.g. controll of fire and warm clothing to survive outside the tropics, originally our sole habitat as well untill roughly 100,000 years ago.

http://www.sciforums.com/threads/apes-habitat.152617/

And incidentally, chimps are also omnivorous (they ocassionally hunt monkeys), along with humans. All other apes are herbivorous, though.

 

[CEngelbrecht]

• Ardi lived in the forest. This should put an end to speculation about humans evolving on the savannah, using our bipedal stature to peek over the tops of the plants in order to search for both predators and prey. It will probably also put the "aquatic ape" hypothesis to rest.

I honestly don't see how. Ardi would match perfectly what marc Verhaegen has argued for several decades, that human aquaticism would've have begun in a woodland setting, which is labeled "aquarboreal." And the vast majority of hominin fossils are found from then lakeside sediments, including Ardipithecus. Preservation bias notwithstanding, it hardly excludes these species being semiaquatic, as is being proposed in the aquatic debate. Nothing can exclude them being waterside waders, and if they were indeed bipedal, observing extant apes, otherwise quadrupedal today, being indeed vertically bipedal in shallow water, exactly like humans, would even further support the notion, that wading had a large part in the origin of our own bipedalism.




And "aquatic ape" is argued a misnomer in English. It aparently gives off a connotation that the aquatic idea argues some kind of seafaring "dolphin ape" in recent human evolution, which it doesn't. The more widely used term nowadays is "waterside ape." Much more to the point. Fair enough, the notion that humans had recent ancestors that somehow lived in the open seas 24-7-365 ... is complete bollocks. But that's not being proponed either, regardless of what ever impressions from some stupid Animal Planet mockumentary. There's way too much noise about what is a somewhat simple and probably true idea about our unique ape origin. That we're old beach apes of sorts.