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re: Why do people always say "I didn't evolve from a monkey?"

Posted on 6/6/18 at 8:38 am to
Posted by Cowboyfan89
Member since Sep 2015
12747 posts
Posted on 6/6/18 at 8:38 am to
quote:

Being fatties

The climate, by all accounts, isn't getting cooler, so getting fatter isn't adapting to anything. Animals put on fat as a means of survival in cooler temperatures. There is very little that our bodies would adapt to now that clothing or other technologies wouldn't address. We don't have to put on fat or body hair to stay warm--we invented clothes. We use fire to do that. We love in insulated shelters with heating to protect us from the cold.

The fattening of America isn't an adaptation to anything.
Posted by GeauxTigerTM
Member since Sep 2006
30596 posts
Posted on 6/6/18 at 8:55 am to
quote:

The climate, by all accounts, isn't getting cooler, so getting fatter isn't adapting to anything. Animals put on fat as a means of survival in cooler temperatures. There is very little that our bodies would adapt to now that clothing or other technologies wouldn't address. We don't have to put on fat or body hair to stay warm--we invented clothes. We use fire to do that. We love in insulated shelters with heating to protect us from the cold.


Humans have gotten larger due to diet, nutrition, medicine, etc.

Obesity, being a separate issue, makes total sense as well in an evolutionary way. Our species evolved to take advantage of high fat high calorie food whenever it was available, because it was often times scarce. That was the way for hundreds of thousands of years. Today, we are still hardwired to eat that way despite the fact that food, for most of humanity, is not just no longer scarce but is found in abundance AND tends to be the most available and cheapest to acquire when it's the highest in fat and calories.

That trait which helped us now hurts us in our current situation.

As far as whether or not humans will evolve to new surroundings as time passes...sure. But that would require changes that would make us better adapted to whatever this new environment is AND that the environment stay that way long enough to allow the adaptation to be worth the change in the first place.

Our life spans and thus generations take a long time, so very noticeable changes in humans takes thousands of years and more. On the other hand, species with far shorter generational spans can be seen to evolve new traits in nearly real time.
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