Carnivore ungulates

Why don't they exist? Imagine how terrifying it would be

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    that he is indeed mindbroken
    >Thanks for proving the point. Now go back.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    well it's been fun, but i got to get back to work. remember kids, evolution theory has many plot holes and requires many leaps of faith. we draw up whole species from one mouth fragment and make up fantastical tales that don't stand up to scrutiny like muh Sparse Forests or muh Eating Meat Makes Big Brains. it's faith based on some dirty remains that will be updated when some new dirty remains contradict everything they dreamed up about the first batch. all this bullshit will change yet again when they dig up more where "it shouldn't be".

    Spoiler: God created us and the universe.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >muh capital G god
      Your god is the fire demon agni. He did not create anything. He is a lesser aspect of the true god, brahma, and the demon who once had the duty of communicating with humans and ferrying sacrifices to divinity. You worship a fire demon. His accomplishments in your holy books consist of:
      Lighting a bush on fire
      Burning two cities
      Appearing as a pillar of fire and smoke
      Bringing fire and brimstone down upon people
      Calling upon the forces of disease and death, close friends of fire.
      Agni is also called YAHVAH (sound familiar?) in the rig veda and was prayed to as driving mortal impurity from mens hearts with his light. Conceptually agni is similar to a sun god in many respects, leaving his cult open to corruption from monotheistic sun worshipers.

      He is agni. you worship agni. you are part of a psychotic hindu cult that stole some ideas from zoroaster and applied them to a fire god, yahvah, also called agni, who took over the religious duties and "head of cult" status from a typical polytheist's "god atop the mountain" who was called el (the original god of the israelites). The true god is brahma. The gnostics almost got this right in realizing that the judaists god was not the real god and was just a minor shred of divinity gone rogue (did you know there is no hindu cult that chiefly worships agni? that's because it's YOU.), but alas not 100% right.

      But I digress. This is not a religion board, this is an animals and nature board. We have found quite a lot of mineralized and buried animals and nature that prove a change in kinds and observed animals evolving in real time so evolution is a fact, the only theory is its exact path. And eating meat does make big brains, it predated big brains and big brains predated everything else we do. Specifically, meat that was already dead (early hominids scavenged kills) and fish. It shows when you prefer dried and cooked meat, like a scavenger, not raw meat, like a hunter.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        well it's been fun, but i got to get back to work. remember kids, evolution theory has many plot holes and requires many leaps of faith. we draw up whole species from one mouth fragment and make up fantastical tales that don't stand up to scrutiny like muh Sparse Forests or muh Eating Meat Makes Big Brains. it's faith based on some dirty remains that will be updated when some new dirty remains contradict everything they dreamed up about the first batch. all this bullshit will change yet again when they dig up more where "it shouldn't be".

        Spoiler: God created us and the universe.

        I think religion is probably a byproduct of human group cohesion and complex social behaviors, coupled with our burgeoning intellect trying to make sense of the world, that have helped us survive to some capacity as our ancestors seemed to select for it in terms of evolutionary psychology.
        And ultimately it helped us until very recently. Modern science came directly from the Church (while its precedents go back to Greco-Roman and Chinese times, and perhaps further back than that) - and religion is ultimately the quest to understand the universe along with the moral code we humans need to function as a large group.

        I don't believe in God in a literal sense but I also don't believe that broader human society can function without God. God could be the start of what we call a hive mind.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >religion is the result of human evolution
          >Darwin's theory of evolution is the result of religion
          Poetry.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Is someone really trying to argue that grain eating is what caused the human brain's evolution?

    No, it quite objectively evolved before all agriculture, due to eating meat. Agriculture was a cope for increasing populations beyond what game animals could sustain.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >early grassland hominids had all of the cognitive sophistication of other great apes

    circular as always. we're smart because we're smart. so smart, when we eat meat, our brains magically grow, but when another primate does it, no dice. and a nifty deflection (survivorship bias) that handwaves away the major plotholes in your 'creation story'.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >when we eat meat, our brains magically grow,

      No, moron, we were forced to adapt to a more meat-heavy diet, one of the unintentional side effects of which is we now consume more excess protein regularly, which allows for denser brain growth. As the generations go on, the meat in our diet increases, and brain growth goes hand in hand.

      >but when another primate does it, no dice.

      The effectiveness of a diet is based on how suited our digestion is to process it. Chimps do not have the correct digestive system to process the same amount of meat as a human eats. Chimps eat 3% meat, human hunter-gatherers eat 30% meat. You tried to feed a chimp that much meat, it'll get very sick.
      Increased brain size is a generational thing. Once the digestive system is forced, by selective pressure in the environment (less fruit, more meat), to digest more meat, some apes will get sick, die, have no kids, others will have the gene that helps them digest the meat, they will process it, have more kids. More meat in the diet means more excess protein, greater encephalisation.

      >we're smart because we're smart.

      God you're thick. Great apes had sophisticated cognition already because of their specific evolutionary history. But new selection pressures (grassland) produced an ape that ate more meat. That was ONE of the many factors that led to greater encephalisation.

      >Primates evolved in a complex forest environment in which they had to closely observe the changing of the seasons and the resulting timing of the ripening of fruits
      squirrels and birds do this.

      real question: got anything that doesn't suck? all you're giving me is faith based fan-fic.

      >squirrels and birds do this.

      Ok? It was one of MANY factors I listed that explains primate intelligence. And forest primates are usually the most successful fruit foragers in their given ecosystem, so rodents and birds may do it too, but not nearly as well.

      >all you're giving me is faith based fan-fic.

      Hahahahaha

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        it's all bullshit though, none of it stands up to basic questioning. we got a whole thread that shows walls of texts that're unable to answer simple questions to the point you get mad. enjoy your fan-fic. i'm glad you find it as laughable as i did.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          well it's been fun, but i got to get back to work. remember kids, evolution theory has many plot holes and requires many leaps of faith. we draw up whole species from one mouth fragment and make up fantastical tales that don't stand up to scrutiny like muh Sparse Forests or muh Eating Meat Makes Big Brains. it's faith based on some dirty remains that will be updated when some new dirty remains contradict everything they dreamed up about the first batch. all this bullshit will change yet again when they dig up more where "it shouldn't be".

          Spoiler: God created us and the universe.

          Lmao you're so out of your depth kid.

          As they evolved a more complex brain, our ancestors required ingredients found primarily in meat, including iron, zinc, vitamin B12 and fatty acids. In the grassland, meat is more readily available than high iron and fatty acid plants. Evolution follows the path of least resistance. Although plants contain many of the same nutrients, they occur in lower quantities and often in a form that humans cannot readily use. For instance, red meat is rich in iron derived from haemoglobin, which is more easily absorbed than the non-haem form found in beans and leafy greens. Furthermore, compounds known as phytates bind to the iron in plants and block its availability to the body. As a result, meat is a much richer dietary source of iron than any plant food. You would need to eat a massive amount of spinach to equal a steak.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    not apex predators but they would eat you little primate

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Why don't they exist?
    Based moron

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Why don't they exist?
    They exist tho.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      That is an epic win, anon! But I still don't get the fact of why their breasts are next to their vag?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Maybe that's because you haven't seen breasts nor vags in real life yet
        BAZINGA!!!!

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    oh frick me, i forgot hippos exist lol

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      actually never mind whales are a thing too and they count as ungulates if i remember correct lol!!!!!!!!

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Why don't they exist?
    F in Biology. See me after class.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      https://i.imgur.com/IqhCcLo.jpg

      Cetaceans are carnivore ungulates.

      they're called whales

      They do exist, they are called whales and dolphins and orcas are prob the most terrifying predator ever.

      https://i.imgur.com/tja8Xzl.jpg

      I mean if you count cetaceans they still exist

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Cetaceans are carnivore ungulates.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      calling cetaceans ungulates is like calling birds reptiles

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        They still belong to Artiodactyla order

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I mean, they are?

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    goats and pigs are omnivore. The biggest land mammal predator was an ungulate too but he got exctinct quickly because claws are better than hooves for hunting

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Andrewsarchus isn’t the biggest anymore, it’s not even the biggest hoofed predator

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It's hard to hunt without claws. Even if they existed, they would have been outcompeted by clawed carnivores. Or some of them could mutate to develop them, these new clawed mutants would be favored by natural selection and become more common, until the hooved ones disappear.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    they're called whales

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Here you go

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Looks like a hippo-horse.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous
      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        tuunbaq

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They did exist, and we're in fact the first large mammalian predators (entelodonts come to mind). However, carnivorans were simply better at being predators, what with the flexible spines and having weasel-like, ambush oriented builds from the get go.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Not to mention claws. A kick from a hooved animal definitely can be fatal but getting slashed or pinned down by claws is a whole another kind of danger

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They do exist, they are called whales and dolphins and orcas are prob the most terrifying predator ever.

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I mean if you count cetaceans they still exist

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Amazing picture

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I thought cetaceans were artiodactyles, are they not?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        artiodactyls are ungulates

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      https://i.imgur.com/IqhCcLo.jpg

      Cetaceans are carnivore ungulates.

      https://i.imgur.com/snAGvUQ.png

      >Why don't they exist?
      F in Biology. See me after class.

      https://i.imgur.com/cnFL8KJ.jpg

      Andrewsarchus is a member of cetancodontamorpha, which includes hippos, whales, whale ancestors and entelodonts. Cetancodontamorpha is a total clade within artiodactyls, which means they are ungulates. So yes, Andrewsarchus and entelodonts were ungulates.
      Mesonychians were also basal ungulates related to the ancestors of artiodactyls. In fact, the ancestral group of artiodactyl ungulates were a small group of ''condylarths'' called Arctocyonids, small raccoon- to bear-sized omnivores from the Palaeocene. So, all Artiodactyls (including camels, pigs, peccaries, hippos, deer, cows, antelope, sheep, goats and whales) have omnivore or carnivore ancestors.
      Perissodactyls (horses, rhinos, tapirs) potentially have their roots in the more herbivorous Phenacodont lineage of ''condylarths''. It's also theorised that the enigmatic Dinoceratans of the Palaeocene and Eocene, including giants like Uintatherium, may have been related to the ancestors of perissodactyls.

      >yfw pic related is the most successful macropredatory ungulate of the Holocene

      https://i.imgur.com/EmDSVdl.jpg

      >Why don't they exist?
      They exist tho.

      https://i.imgur.com/AFRzAF4.jpg

      >Why don't they exist?
      Based moron

      no hooves ergo not ungulates

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Doesn't eat meat ergo not a carnivore.

  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous
    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Why birds especially ? do feathers feel like grass, or is there some secret animosity at play ?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Chicks don't fly or run away
        Easy prey

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        the endless, silent war between synapsids and diapsids continues

  19. 1 year ago
    Anonymous
    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Fricking psycho

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      What nutritional benefits they got from eating chicks?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Not even nature's vegans can cope with just eating grass all day long.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        calcium builds strong bones and makes good milk. Not sure if they can digest it though. Some veterinary expert might stop by and elaborate.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Not a vet but studied wildlife pretty extensively.
          Most animals get some benefit from meat; it’s just really easy to digest. The tricky bit is getting to the meat, and not eating spoiled meat. Chicks are basically walking calcium pills, which is why you don’t let them wander around large mammals, because they will eat them.
          Hell, I’ve seen deer eat baby squirrels and everything eats tadpoles (hence why frogs are so fecund). Really, the hard part is figuring out what DOESN’T eat some meat. Even fricking butterflies get salt and other essential minerals from carcasses.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Really, the hard part is figuring out what DOESN’T eat some meat.
            The redditest post on Wauf right now. I bet you won't have any trouble finding a carnivore that doesn't eat plants (and be wrong about it) though, right?

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              The fact that the world rewards cruelty and suffering as a means to get energy makes me think God is prob some sadistic serial killer who created the universe as a play thing. You’re God, you can tweak the rules anytime but chose not to. Hell God could actually made the Libertarian dream of post scarcity a thing but nope.God is either 3 things, evil (this is probably the most real one considering Old testament God),doesnt give a frick about us so doesnt care suffering happens, or doesnt exist.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                god made man to rule over all animals so you're missing the point by giving a damn about it

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                If you think that bible quote meant that we're supposed to rule over animals like a tyrant and not with love and benevolence you're projecting your evil onto God, you're blaspheming.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                This you?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                that's me (as long as the snake/lizard is swallowing it alive)

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                We know.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Really, the hard part is figuring out what DOESN’T eat some meat.
            Genuine vegan apes used to exist, and it never worked. That's why they are extinct now.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              If it didn't work at some point then they wouldn't have existed to begin with

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                They existed to be livestock for native predators, like in pic-related. But invasive predators overhunt these vegan apemen, which meant many predators that solely relied on Australopithecus as a food source also went extinct with them.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                This is the most intense meatgay cope I've ever seen.

                >GOD HATES VEGETARIANISM!! EBULOTINO BAD!!

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                It's a recurring schizo who appears to be obsessed with the idea of predators using hominids as their primary food source, probably because it satisfies some fetish of his.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Unfortunately, it's far more than one. "EVERYTHING IS A CARNIVORE!!" is a pretty common reddit NPC cope these days.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Vegan shit is the OG reddit cope thoughever
                >CHRIST SCHIZOS!!!!
                >*reinvents hinduism but without 99% of the moral obligations*

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                It's not just "everything is a carnivore", it's a specific schizo that believes not only that big cats evolved a specifically anthropophagous diet but that apes and humans evolved for the express purpose of being eaten by big cats.

                In another thread he tried to claim that Megalodon could survive in the present by "filter feeding" on 8 billion of "breathing canned catfood".

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                He's not wrong, but it's more like ancient vegans were forcibly devolved specifically to be cat food because they had earned gods spite by refusing to accept the natural order he had created. And he'll fricking do it again. Just watch. It's already happening in india.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Of course he's wrong. Whining about vegans doesn't make you an ecologist. Unfortunately for your pea brain, nature doesn't follow the latest 20 year old white upper middle class boy trends of what foods to be afraid of this month.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >nature doesn't follow the latest 20 year old white upper middle class boy trends of what foods to be afraid of this month
                If nature is so great I can bludgeon you to death to prove that I'm the dominant male. Would you be glad if that happened to you because it's nature? How about if someone brains you with a rock for stepping too close to their tent? Just like the hominid days. nature!

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Except you would fail and die. That's why you shouldn't believe yourself an ubermensch just because your criminal daddy has more money than the average citizen.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                This is moronic, you're moronic, every ecosystem and food web we've ever encountered has primary consumers in its second trophic level, most modern animals, terrestrial and marine, exist in this second trophic level, and only a select few hypercarnivores make up the tertiary consumers in the fourth trophic level, and an even smaller amount can be apex predators in the fifth trophic level. If the numbers were skewed in any direction, then you have an unstable ecosystem. Too many herbivores and not enough carnivores, primary producers are depleted, eco-collapse. Too many carnivores and not enough herbivores, carnivore population collapse. Meat is a far more nutritious foodstuff than grass (the primary producer in most terrestrial ecosystems on Earth), which is why most grazing mammals have crazy adaptations like multiple stomachs and infinite tooth growth for eating gritty grass, and must eat constantly. However, grass is so plentiful that grazers make up the most successful larges mammal lineages in history. Grass doesn't want to be eaten like fruit or nectar, it reproduces via wind. Hell, even humans have to process it into bread to eat it - but once we did that, we had millions upon millions of acres of grassland to convert into agricultural land for Neolithic founder crops, and boom, human society formed. Meat is far more nutritious (because its made up of mostly animal proteins, which means it takes a lot less energy to digest and convert into other animals proteins, as opposed to plant proteins), but it is fricking incredibly difficult to get a hold of, which explains most of the evolutionary history of the predator-prey relationship. High stakes, high reward.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                The real solution is being a mesocarnivore or omnivore, like dogs, bears, mustelids or humans. You can adapt to most food shortages. Not enough deer? Lemme eat salmon. Salmon's out of season? I'll hit the berries. For million upon millions of years, primate ancestors have occupied the second trophic level, being primarily frugivorous or herbivorous, with some insectivores. The moment hominids were forced by environmental factors to become more omnivorous, that coupled with the perfect storm of large brains, erect postures, extremely complex socialisation and opposable thumbs to create, eventually, a problem solving primate that would complete upend the global trophic system. That's not because we are le badass carnivores, it's because we are generalist, opportunistic omnivores. Obligate carnivores generally do very badly during environmental crises - because they were at the top of the house of cards, and cannot move trophic level.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                seems to me the most goated solution would be to be a detritivore or decomposer

                >thirty tons of waste calcium from a colossal whale carcass just fell onto my plate? delicious

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Correction, bears and humans are actually hypocarnivores, as in they consume less than 30% meat for their diet, and obviously mustelid diets vary massively (they are so diverse), but the point still stands. Omnivore is a general term but it is applicable here.
                The trick, as always, is adaptability. Dog digestion has changed in the last 10,000 years since they were domesticated from wolves - their intestines are slightly longer than wolves, allowing them to digest plants more than other carnivores. They are better at producing amylase to break down carbohydrates, and are better at extract beta-carotenes from the plants they eat. Their diets, after only 10,000 or so years of pressurised, selective breeding, have been able to approximate humans more closely and massively benefit from being generalist omnivores. They still have their sharp canines, but also have the flat back molars of all carnivorans (behind the carnassials). The fundamental omnivorous ancestral traits present in all carnivoran mammals, ranging from a very small presence in felids to being dominant in the diets of badgers, bears and raccoons, are what has allowed them to be so successful.
                The least successful bear species and the ones most threatened by ecological change are pandas - obligate herbivores that rely on a specific, fragile ecosystem - and polar bears - obligate carnivores that rely on a specific, fragile ecosystem. Two sides of the same goddamn coin.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                odd how other omnivores never bothered to grow a big brain or walk upright.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Can't you read?

                >that coupled with the perfect storm of large brains, erect postures, extremely complex socialisation and opposable thumbs

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                yes. it's also odd that only hominids were caught up in that, uh, "perfect storm"

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >grasslands of east africa develop around 20 million years ago during the miocene and some forest hominins are forced to adapt to grassland environment
                >bipedalism evolved because no longer arboreal, living on wide grassy landscapes, and need to walk great distances
                >omnivorous diet evolved because grasslands do not provide the fruit and other dietary necessities of forest hominids, must broaden diet and rely on scavenging, bone marrow, starchy tubers
                >increased protein in diet allows for growth of larger brains
                >maintain complex troop structures from the forest but now much larger as more threats in grassland lead to more young and quicker gestation - chimps only give birth to one child every five years, humans have bigger family groups
                >also strength in numbers
                >larger groups require more complex social organisation, lucky we have bigger brains now
                >bipedal posture requires wider cervix so larger craniums for babies, but birth is now more dangerous so family groups must care for everyone more directly
                >opposable thumbs and colour vision descend from being forest primates
                >tool use for eating termites and other insects extends back to early hominids, inherited by grassland hominins
                >eventually, groups that develop stone tools for processing and butchering of scavenged meat, small game, starchy tubers become more successful - have more descendants - supersede other grassland apes - homosexual habilis
                >with each generation, the greater the level of tool technology, the great the chance of survival and fathering the next generation
                >humans become hypOcarnivores in E. African grassland, not dominant predators but require sophisticated hunting to bring down game, use intelligence and social organisation to challenge other hunters
                >by the time of homosexual erectus and the spreading to Eurasia, humans are becoming the most successful hunters in each ecosystem they encounter, despite the fact they are not obligate carnivores
                >hunter-gatherers

                there you go jerkoff

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                don't lions eat a strictly meat/protein diet? why don't we have talking lions? and why aren't any of our primate cousins bipedal? weren't their ancestors in the same places with the same needs? it's like they've stayed the same all this time while we evolved. very odd.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >don't lions eat a strictly meat/protein diet? why don't we have talking lions?

                Primates are already far more intelligent than felids. Just eating meat doesn't translate to intelligence, but early grassland hominids had all of the cognitive sophistication of other great apes which, when coupled with a more meat-heavy diet, led to an even more enlarged neocortex. Being a predator or carnivoree doesn't directly translate to intelligence.

                Cognitive sophistication is generally a good thing for any animal and thus is selected for in many cases, but there are two big things limiting it: it takes a lot of resources, especially a brain as big as a human brain, and it takes a long time and of prioritisation for it to evolve, since it is extremely complex. The perfect combination of environmental factors and preexisting ancestral traits are necessary for advanced cognitive sophistication to develop, and this can come at the expense of evolving other valuable things (such as immunities).

                Primates evolved prehensile grips and opposable thumbs that can manipulate objects, and they evolved in environments that lent themselves to manipulation (as compared to, for instance, the open sea that whales and dolphins live in). Primates evolved in a complex forest environment in which they had to closely observe the changing of the seasons and the resulting timing of the ripening of fruits and other plants for their sustenance.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                odd, you said access to meat is what led to us having larger brains. because reasons. it's odd that even chimps enjoy meat, but have not come very far. it's almost like you're saying here that hominids were already smart and the meat boosted it. because reasons.

                to your comment about grips, it's odd that primates, who were in the same forests, eating the same stuff, needing the same needs were able to hack it as they were.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >odd, you said access to meat is what led to us having larger brains. because reasons. it's odd that even chimps enjoy meat, but have not come very far. it's almost like you're saying here that hominids were already smart and the meat boosted it. because reasons.

                No, you dim fricking bulb, I said it was one of the contributory factors. The main factor, AS ALWAYS, was the environmental pressures - the change in East Africa from tropical rainforest to semiarid brush and savannah. Our great ape ancestors had to adapt to this new environment, using tools great apes had evolved in a rainforest ecosystem, and it led to them to A) bipedalism, B) larger social groups, C) a more meat-heavy omnivorous diet and D) more regular tool usage.

                Hominids were already smart, hominids (great apes) are the most intelligent things in nature, by our measure, and them being forced by environmental pressure to consume more meat (originally primarily by scavenging rather than hunting) also gave them the dietary protein boost to eventually sustain larger brains.

                >it's odd that even chimps enjoy meat, but have not come very far.

                No it isn't, because they eat far less meat than us or our australopithecine ancestors. 3% of the chimpanzee diet is made up of meat. By the evolution of anatomically modern homosexual sapiens, their diet was up to 30% meat, just on the border between hypocarnivore and mesocarnivore. That has gone down since the development of agriculture.
                Chimps are not regular meat eaters, because there are no selection pressures for them to be regular meat eaters. The rainforest is rich in fruits, seeds, rich foliage, termites and other nutritious parts of their diet. The grassland is NOT, the grassland is mostly GRASS, so our ancestors were forced to diversify their diet due to ENVIRONMENTAL SELECTION PRESSURES.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                getting mad, huh? i'd be mad too if someone was going around poking holes in my bullshit.

                why? why are great apes magically able to do "tools", but not able to rise to a human, nothing close? why are they smart? why are they smart enough to birth homos, but not smart enough to change beyond something that digs in it's ass all day?

                neither were early hominids? how exaclty does one alter their diet so drastically and not starve? why didn't the chimp's ancestors just eat more meat and magically change their insides and not starve? you're talking right out of your ass.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >why are great apes magically able to do "tools", but not able to rise to a human, nothing close?

                Because they haven't had the same selection pressures, they weren't in the same ecosystem as our ancestors, those apes are forest apes, our ancestors were grassland apes. Grassland required more sophisticated tool usage.

                >why are they smart enough to birth homos, but not smart enough to change beyond something that digs in it's ass all day?

                Their intelligence was the foundation for our intelligence. Evolution capitalised on their intelligence to give us the edge in the grassland environment.

                >how exaclty does one alter their diet so drastically and not starve?

                You don't understand the fundamental concept of natural selection, that seems to be the problem. There are genes that code for the digestion of animal proteins. Chimpanzees don't have all these genes, they can only produce some of the enzymes necessary. So, if they ate too much meat, it would be a poor diet. However, what they can digest, is really good. However, the rainforest is full of a better alternative to meat - fruit. Fruit is better for chimps because their digestion has evolved for fruit.
                Our ancestors had that kind of digestion. When the ecosystem changed to grassland, a lot of our ancestors died off - not enough fruit. However, some grassland apes would have had slightly different genes - due to generational mutations. Very slightly, essentially indistinguishable. One might have meant they had slightly lighter skin, which would not have been beneficial in the grassland, so the gene doesn't proliferate. However, one lineage might have carried genes that allowed them to produce more of the enzymes needed to break down animal proteins. Now, the grassland has a lot more meat than fruit - small game, carcasses, etc. Those apes with the genes better suited to digest it would have had more kids.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                getting mad, huh? i'd be mad too if someone was going around poking holes in my bullshit.

                why? why are great apes magically able to do "tools", but not able to rise to a human, nothing close? why are they smart? why are they smart enough to birth homos, but not smart enough to change beyond something that digs in it's ass all day?

                neither were early hominids? how exaclty does one alter their diet so drastically and not starve? why didn't the chimp's ancestors just eat more meat and magically change their insides and not starve? you're talking right out of your ass.

                As the generations went on, the more meat-eating enzymes you could produce, the better you survived, the more children you had. Your genes come to dominate. Eventually, as a side effect, you have an animal protein surplus in your diet. The protein surplus allows the body to develop things like a denser neocortex, which it does because of other selection pressures in the environment - the need for more sophisticated socialisation, for tool usage, for planning, for problem solving. These events feed into one another in a cascade effect.

                doesn't explain why chimps (who do eat meat) didn't gain magical brain expansion, but when our ancestors did - brain upgrade complete. lol

                [...]
                i think he's trying to say evolution slowed down in humans because we went back to plants. our tech sure as hell didn't.

                [...]
                wasn't the world covered in rain forests Once Upon A Time?

                [...]
                why? why are they still eating where they shit? why can't they adapt faster? seems like these aren't human standards, but markers for success on the evolutionary faith?

                >chimps (who do eat meat) didn't gain magical brain expansion, but when our ancestors did - brain upgrade complete. lol

                Chimps are the most intelligent non-human great ape. They also have the highest meat consumption (3%).

                >wasn't the world covered in rain forests Once Upon A Time?

                The world was hotter and wetter before the Quaternary glaciation.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                sounds like bullshit, but we'll never be able to know, seeing as our presence is literally the only evidence. same problem creationists have when they try and use science. i for real gotta go though. thanks for taking the time to write tho. despite my cheekiness, i do find it all facinating.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You are so annoying

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >why are great apes magically able to do "tools", but not able to rise to a human, nothing close?

                they did, that's what humans are

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >who were in the same forests, eating the same stuff,

                They weren't in the same forests because WE WEREN'T IN FORESTS YOU MORON. The other primates that had to adapt to scrub and grassland weren't great apes, they were cercopithecids like baboons and vervets, which adapted other solutions to the grassland environment. The closest thing to other grassland apes were the few pockets of chimpanzees that have since spread to savannah woodland in Tanzania, in marginal ecosystems of patchwork woodland and savannah. These 'savannah chimpanzees' form unique social organisations with low population densities and large home ranges, and reflect the challenges of a forest species being forced to adapt its behaviour to a drier, more grassy ecosystem. These chimps are specifically studied by evolutionary biologists in order to learn, via analogue, about the potential social structures and behaviours of early humans. Chimps are the great apes most similar to us, remember.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                doesn't explain why chimps (who do eat meat) didn't gain magical brain expansion, but when our ancestors did - brain upgrade complete. lol

                Is someone really trying to argue that grain eating is what caused the human brain's evolution?

                No, it quite objectively evolved before all agriculture, due to eating meat. Agriculture was a cope for increasing populations beyond what game animals could sustain.

                i think he's trying to say evolution slowed down in humans because we went back to plants. our tech sure as hell didn't.

                https://i.imgur.com/zaUFD42.jpg

                [...]

                >don't chimps, bonobos, gorillas, and even monkeys do this? faced the same threats? they have all the building blocks, but just never made the leap despite evolving along side our ancestors.

                They are all primarily RAINFOREST species. The difference is that our ancestors were forced, by the cooling of the planet, to adapt to GRASSLAND in East Africa. Other African great apes remained in RAINFOREST ecosystems where the same selection pressures did not exist. Only chimps expanded into some mixed forest-grassland environments in East Africa after the last Ice Age and they have adapted their behaviour and social structures accordingly.

                >but never bothered to walk across the grass lands where there was more to be found.

                Ironically, they are doing that. The grassland has expanded over the course of the Ice Ages.

                wasn't the world covered in rain forests Once Upon A Time?

                https://i.imgur.com/v2c6tvF.jpg

                >i wonder why we don't have talking dolphins. i mean they clearly communicate. seems to me like their ancestors been around longer? i could be mistaken about that, but it's interesting how nothing even remotely comes close to us.

                Because high intelligence doesn't directly translate to human-style intelligence. Evolution isn't a ladder leading to humans, it is a reaction by genomes to environmental selection pressures that decide who reproduces and who doesn't. There aren't enough selection pressures in dolphin ecosystems to lead them to require more advanced or sophisticated communication, at least currently. We are a product of our ancestry and our environment.

                >seems to me like their ancestors been around longer?

                Delphinids evolved around 20 million years ago, great apes around 17-18 ma ago, so it's not like they're a much more ancient family.

                >i could be mistaken about that, but it's interesting how nothing even remotely comes close to us.

                Every species is a unique reaction to environmental selection pressures. Our evolutionary history, going back hundreds of millions of years, produced a unique combination of traits that allowed us the cognitive and social intelligence to completely extricate ourselves from the food change and change the ecosystem around us in enormous ways. I don't get what your stupid point is.

                why? why are they still eating where they shit? why can't they adapt faster? seems like these aren't human standards, but markers for success on the evolutionary faith?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Primates evolved in a complex forest environment in which they had to closely observe the changing of the seasons and the resulting timing of the ripening of fruits
                squirrels and birds do this.

                real question: got anything that doesn't suck? all you're giving me is faith based fan-fic.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                https://i.imgur.com/AdB36cz.jpg

                >don't lions eat a strictly meat/protein diet? why don't we have talking lions?

                Primates are already far more intelligent than felids. Just eating meat doesn't translate to intelligence, but early grassland hominids had all of the cognitive sophistication of other great apes which, when coupled with a more meat-heavy diet, led to an even more enlarged neocortex. Being a predator or carnivoree doesn't directly translate to intelligence.

                Cognitive sophistication is generally a good thing for any animal and thus is selected for in many cases, but there are two big things limiting it: it takes a lot of resources, especially a brain as big as a human brain, and it takes a long time and of prioritisation for it to evolve, since it is extremely complex. The perfect combination of environmental factors and preexisting ancestral traits are necessary for advanced cognitive sophistication to develop, and this can come at the expense of evolving other valuable things (such as immunities).

                Primates evolved prehensile grips and opposable thumbs that can manipulate objects, and they evolved in environments that lent themselves to manipulation (as compared to, for instance, the open sea that whales and dolphins live in). Primates evolved in a complex forest environment in which they had to closely observe the changing of the seasons and the resulting timing of the ripening of fruits and other plants for their sustenance.

                At the same time, their natural habitat also included predators such as felids and arboreal snakes that they had to learn to avoid, including ground predators. So giving alarm calls to alert others to danger - and banding together in social groups that shared foods - brought them both more regular meals and fewer deaths from predation. These traits were then selected for by the forest environment, and primate intelligence, prehensile hands and feet, and complex social arrangements were important traits that allowed them to survive and continue. This doesn't mean that all forest creatures will have these traits, but primates discovered, by accident, an ecological niche where those traits were beneficial.

                By the time of great apes (hominids), these traits were typical to almost all primate species. Chimpanzees can make tools and use them to acquire foods and for social displays; they have complex hunting strategies requiring cooperation, influence and rank; they are status conscious, manipulative and capable of deception; they can learn to use symbols and understand aspects of human language including some relational syntax, concepts of number and numerical sequence.

                One common characteristic that is present in species of "high degree intelligence" (i.e. dolphins, great apes, and humans) is a brain of enlarged size. Along with this, there is a more developed neocortex, a folding of the cerebral cortex, and von Economo neurons. Said neurons are linked to social intelligence and the ability to gauge what another is thinking or feeling and are also present in bottlenose dolphins.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                don't chimps, bonobos, gorillas, and even monkeys do this? faced the same threats? they have all the building blocks, but just never made the leap despite evolving along side our ancestors. very odd.

                seems like chimps have been doing the same thing for a very long time. they can even torture other chimps, but never bothered to walk across the grass lands where there was more to be found.

                it's funny you mention dolphins. i wonder why we don't have talking dolphins. i mean they clearly communicate. seems to me like their ancestors been around longer? i could be mistaken about that, but it's interesting how nothing even remotely comes close to us.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                https://i.imgur.com/RRbm7nj.png

                >who were in the same forests, eating the same stuff,

                They weren't in the same forests because WE WEREN'T IN FORESTS YOU MORON. The other primates that had to adapt to scrub and grassland weren't great apes, they were cercopithecids like baboons and vervets, which adapted other solutions to the grassland environment. The closest thing to other grassland apes were the few pockets of chimpanzees that have since spread to savannah woodland in Tanzania, in marginal ecosystems of patchwork woodland and savannah. These 'savannah chimpanzees' form unique social organisations with low population densities and large home ranges, and reflect the challenges of a forest species being forced to adapt its behaviour to a drier, more grassy ecosystem. These chimps are specifically studied by evolutionary biologists in order to learn, via analogue, about the potential social structures and behaviours of early humans. Chimps are the great apes most similar to us, remember.

                >don't chimps, bonobos, gorillas, and even monkeys do this? faced the same threats? they have all the building blocks, but just never made the leap despite evolving along side our ancestors.

                They are all primarily RAINFOREST species. The difference is that our ancestors were forced, by the cooling of the planet, to adapt to GRASSLAND in East Africa. Other African great apes remained in RAINFOREST ecosystems where the same selection pressures did not exist. Only chimps expanded into some mixed forest-grassland environments in East Africa after the last Ice Age and they have adapted their behaviour and social structures accordingly.

                >but never bothered to walk across the grass lands where there was more to be found.

                Ironically, they are doing that. The grassland has expanded over the course of the Ice Ages.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >i wonder why we don't have talking dolphins. i mean they clearly communicate. seems to me like their ancestors been around longer? i could be mistaken about that, but it's interesting how nothing even remotely comes close to us.

                Because high intelligence doesn't directly translate to human-style intelligence. Evolution isn't a ladder leading to humans, it is a reaction by genomes to environmental selection pressures that decide who reproduces and who doesn't. There aren't enough selection pressures in dolphin ecosystems to lead them to require more advanced or sophisticated communication, at least currently. We are a product of our ancestry and our environment.

                >seems to me like their ancestors been around longer?

                Delphinids evolved around 20 million years ago, great apes around 17-18 ma ago, so it's not like they're a much more ancient family.

                >i could be mistaken about that, but it's interesting how nothing even remotely comes close to us.

                Every species is a unique reaction to environmental selection pressures. Our evolutionary history, going back hundreds of millions of years, produced a unique combination of traits that allowed us the cognitive and social intelligence to completely extricate ourselves from the food change and change the ecosystem around us in enormous ways. I don't get what your stupid point is.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                https://i.imgur.com/tpwEKyC.jpg

                [...]

                At the same time, their natural habitat also included predators such as felids and arboreal snakes that they had to learn to avoid, including ground predators. So giving alarm calls to alert others to danger - and banding together in social groups that shared foods - brought them both more regular meals and fewer deaths from predation. These traits were then selected for by the forest environment, and primate intelligence, prehensile hands and feet, and complex social arrangements were important traits that allowed them to survive and continue. This doesn't mean that all forest creatures will have these traits, but primates discovered, by accident, an ecological niche where those traits were beneficial.

                By the time of great apes (hominids), these traits were typical to almost all primate species. Chimpanzees can make tools and use them to acquire foods and for social displays; they have complex hunting strategies requiring cooperation, influence and rank; they are status conscious, manipulative and capable of deception; they can learn to use symbols and understand aspects of human language including some relational syntax, concepts of number and numerical sequence.

                One common characteristic that is present in species of "high degree intelligence" (i.e. dolphins, great apes, and humans) is a brain of enlarged size. Along with this, there is a more developed neocortex, a folding of the cerebral cortex, and von Economo neurons. Said neurons are linked to social intelligence and the ability to gauge what another is thinking or feeling and are also present in bottlenose dolphins.

                >and why aren't any of our primate cousins bipedal? weren't their ancestors in the same places with the same needs?

                No, you idiot, they remained in the forest. The only other surviving hominins are species of the genus Pan, ie chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest relatives. When the planet cooled over the course of the Miocene and Pliocene leading to the Ice Ages, over a process between 20-3 million years ago, the East African tropical forest began to retreat, being replaced by open grasslands. Some hominin apes remained in the West and Central African rainforest (Congo Basin) and they became the ancestors of chimpanzees and bonobos. For the apes stranded in East Africa, their environment changed from continuous forest to patches of forest separated by expanses of grassland, and some lineages adapted to a partly or fully ground-dwelling life.

                These environmental pressures caused selection to favour bipedalism, giving their eyes greater elevation and providing more efficient means of locomotion on flat ground. It also freed the arms from the task of walking and made the hands available for tasks such as gathering food. This eventually led to them developing the ability to pick up sticks, bones and stones and use them as weapons, or as tools for tasks such as killing smaller animals, cracking nuts, or cutting up carcasses. In other words, these primates developed the use of primitive technology.

                This is solely thanks to a combination of pre-existing primate and great ape intelligence, sociality and dextrousness coupled with the new requirements of a dry grassland environment.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                don't lions eat a strictly meat/protein diet? why don't we have talking lions? and why aren't any of our primate cousins bipedal? weren't their ancestors in the same places with the same needs? it's like they've stayed the same all this time while we evolved. very odd.

                At various points between the evolution of australopithecines about 6 million years ago (Late Miocene) and the extinction of the last archaic humans around 40,000 years ago (Late Pleistocene), there were multiple species of bipedal hominin at any one time. The genus homosexual has had at least 13 species confirmed, including homosexual sapiens. The fact that our species is the only one to survive is not just a testament to our intelligence, but also a testament to the massive environmental shifts that have reshaped the planet over the last 1.5 million years. We were the only homosexual species adaptable enough to survive and, eventually, thrive, while others buckled under the selection pressures and saw their lineages go extinct or become partially subsumed into our own. The belief that there's something therefore special about homosexual sapiens is a case of survivorship bias. In another 1 million years, we might be extinct and our genes may have come to a dead end. The only drive in evolution is to proliferate and pass on genes.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                i still don't quite understand why none of the other primates went bipedal and i still don't understand why our brains developed so much. all the stuff you type just skips over the juicey bits and presents it as matter of fact.

                survivorship bias seems to contradict the idea that evolution is a slow process. it's odd how everything can be faced with the same amount of time, threats, and changes, but only one adapts THIS WAY and the others stay dumb and animal.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                why did they remain in the forest? weren't the angiosperms going out of season with the changes? weren't the forests shrinking?

                how did the homids travel so far before they were bipedal? you're presenting a circular argument. they left and as a result of travel they became bipedal. well. how were they able to do that? why didn't the others leave too? why didn't all the apes travel? why did eyes change because of bipedalism? sounds awfully fantastic.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You're clearly having trouble with the geography.

                Around 15 or so million years ago, there were large populations of forest-living hominin great apes living across tropical rainforests from West Africa to East Africa.
                As the planet cooled and dried, the rainforest shrunk until it could only survive in the Congo Basin, where it was fed by the regular rainfall and the river system. It was a lot smaller than its original size, but still large enough to maintain great ape populations. These hominins evolved into chimpanzees and bonobos.

                In East Africa, the rainforest ecosystem was gradually breaking up and become a mosaic of forest, scrubland and grassland. Many mammal groups had to adapt to these new challenges. Giraffids, for example, evolved longer necks to reach the tallest of trees, so that they would not have to compete with other browsers. The giraffids that remained rainforest browsers in the Congo, like the okapis, did not have to evolve such traits. Rhinoceroses were originally browsers, and so some (white rhinos) had to evolve new square lips to crop grass, and complex pseudoruminant digestion, while others (black rhinos) stuck to the patchwork of remaining forest as browsers.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                if only they just got up and left like homos did, huh? just up on two feet. eat a deer ancestor they were never able to hunt, but magically acquire one to upgrade their brains. then moving around those sparse forests would have been a lot easier!

                https://i.imgur.com/JXDihnn.jpg

                [...]

                Hominins also had to evolve new traits to survive. Bipedalism led them see over the long grass and travel further distances. Their ranges increases in size and their population density decreased. The seasonal nature of the grassland was different to that of the rainforest, and required them to migrate further to find food. This required them to be able to see further and better, so their long range vision improved, at the cost of their nocturnal vision. They became more active in the day time as well. Their social system changed, their kin groups increased in size compared to chimpanzees, but they would travel across great ground. Their diet changed - less fruit, and more tubers and scavenged meat. Those that exhibited traits that allowed them to survive had more descendants, and those whose genes kept the traits from the rainforest had fewer, or none. Eventually, the rainforest traits almost disappeared, unless they could be useful in the new environment - prehensile hands, complex social organisation, large brains, etc.

                >it's odd how everything can be faced with the same amount of time, threats, and changes, but only one adapts THIS WAY and the others stay dumb and animal.

                This is how evolution works. Genes react to the environment, using whatever they have and discarding what they don't need.

                yea, genetic flow, drift, mutation, and the fourth i can never remember... doesn't explain why we went bipedal or got these insane brains. it's literally "God willed it" tier response. out of many, only one. only ever one.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                i still don't quite understand why none of the other primates went bipedal and i still don't understand why our brains developed so much. all the stuff you type just skips over the juicey bits and presents it as matter of fact.

                survivorship bias seems to contradict the idea that evolution is a slow process. it's odd how everything can be faced with the same amount of time, threats, and changes, but only one adapts THIS WAY and the others stay dumb and animal.

                Hominins also had to evolve new traits to survive. Bipedalism led them see over the long grass and travel further distances. Their ranges increases in size and their population density decreased. The seasonal nature of the grassland was different to that of the rainforest, and required them to migrate further to find food. This required them to be able to see further and better, so their long range vision improved, at the cost of their nocturnal vision. They became more active in the day time as well. Their social system changed, their kin groups increased in size compared to chimpanzees, but they would travel across great ground. Their diet changed - less fruit, and more tubers and scavenged meat. Those that exhibited traits that allowed them to survive had more descendants, and those whose genes kept the traits from the rainforest had fewer, or none. Eventually, the rainforest traits almost disappeared, unless they could be useful in the new environment - prehensile hands, complex social organisation, large brains, etc.

                >it's odd how everything can be faced with the same amount of time, threats, and changes, but only one adapts THIS WAY and the others stay dumb and animal.

                This is how evolution works. Genes react to the environment, using whatever they have and discarding what they don't need.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                first off, grains are not vegetables, theyre fruit
                secondly, civilization is founded on grains, because wheat is actually really really good for you, the only thing youre missing is fats, which you can get from milk and/or eggs, and you get a lot of cheap energy from them. the only actual vegetable that could be the rise of society is potatoes

                odd how other omnivores never bothered to grow a big brain or walk upright.

                because walking upright is kinda shitty, and intelligence is an evolutionary mistake, because you need a lot of energy to be able to sustain it, about 30% of your caloric intake, but once you have intelligence you can easily sustain it and overcome its disadvantages, but again you wouldnt be disadvantaged if you never developed it in the first place.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >because walking upright is kinda shitty, and intelligence is an evolutionary mistake, because you need a lot of energy to be able to sustain it, about 30% of your caloric intake, but once you have intelligence you can easily sustain it and overcome its disadvantages, but again you wouldnt be disadvantaged if you never developed it in the first place.

                That is perfect evolutionary irony, (genuinely) well said anon.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >first off, grains are not vegetables, theyre fruit

                You're partially correct. Grains are harvested as caryopsis (seed in kernel). The kernel is technically the fruit, but in the case of specifically wheat, you can process just the starchy caryopsis to make white bread (low in nutritional value, but contains most of the starch), or process the whole grain to make brown bread (higher in nutritional value - protein, fat, fibre and iron). In wheat, the seed of the grain is the part with more nutrients, the kernel is the part with more starch. Separating the germ/bran (seed and outer layer) from the endosperm (fruit) is part of the complex milling process, but it gives the white bread a longer shelf life because it doesn't contain the oils from the germ/bran that could potentially go rancid. Leave the kernel and seed together, you've got brown bread. With barley, oats and rye, there is nutrients in the kernel as well. Rice is fruit, wholesale.

                Grains are good for you but they are small and you must consume them in a great concentration to get the adequate nutrients on a regular basis. Processing wheat into bread increases the concentration of the carbohydrates, proteins, fats and minerals that wheat provides. Grain-based civilisations wouldn't function if they ate raw grain, grain must be processed into after products - bread, pasta, grits, tortillas, beer, etc.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Even then, modern wheat and other domesticated grains are far more nutritious than their wild ancestors, thanks to 10,000 years of selective breeding. The same reason other fruits are a lot tastier and richer in nutrients than the uncultivated ancestral strains.

                Rice, the seed of the grass Oryza, also contributed to the rise of civilisations. It takes less post-harvest processing, but require more complicated irrigation, including flooding rice paddies after planting, to cultivate. Likewise, modern Asian and African rices have been selectively bred and cultivated for around 10,000 and 3000 years respectively.

                As soon as grains became mass harvested, there was a need to process them afterwards in order to create a more nutritious product. This is because grass grains, while being the fruit of the grass as you said, are not evolved to be eaten by frugivorous animals and dispersed via endozoochery - ingestion and defecation. They are evolved to be dispersed via wind - anemochory. Therefore, they only contain the nutrients and carbohydrates intended for the seed itself once it has landed in a site suitable for germination. Fleshy fruit, on the other hand, while also being the ovaries of the plant, have evolved other, more attractive nutrients - complex carbohydrates, high-energy sugars like glucose and fructose, various minerals and vitamins. Fleshy fruits have evolved to be brightly coloured in order to advertise themselves to frugivores - just like flowers with insect or hummingbird pollinators. Grass fruit has done nothing of the sort, and grasses have actively evolved to resist grazers - phytoliths, and defensive trichomes. Grazing mammals have spent millions of years in an evolutionary arms race with grass - evolving endlessly growing teeth and complex multi-stomach digestive systems. There remains just enough carbohydrates in the caryopsis to jumpstart germination, but it's far from the rich variety of nutrients found in fruit.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                However, grasses are, by numbers alone, arguably the dominant terrestrial life form on earth. They are everywhere, on every continent except for Antarctica, and can colonise ever ecoregion and biome. After the end of the last ice age, vast swathes of the global landmasses were covered in deforested prairie region that was too dry for forests, but ideal for grassland. In the more fertile regions, it was possible to cultivate multiple grass species in the same place. Grass is plentiful and common. Once grazing mammals got the better of grass, they could travel everywhere. Once humans had figured out how to grow and process grains into a higher-calorie staple, then the foundations of civilisation could begin. The reason for this is partially that unlocking grasses' potential made it a great foodstuff, but also because it is everywhere, can grow everywhere, and is incredibly hardy. You can only grow most fleshy fruit plants in specific conditions - wheat can be harvested from Scotland to Sudan. Once the founder crops had expanded from the Fertile Crescent, they were exported across vast swathes of Asia, Africa and Europe, and laid the foundation for complex civilisations. In East Asia, rice acted in a similar way.

                However, it took thousands upon thousands of years of intentional selective breeding for the founder crops to become the nutritious grains we have today. Additionally, our digestion had to adapt. Originally, everyone was gluten intolerant. Our pre-Neolithic ancestors ate a grain-free diet. Compared to fleshy fruits, grains contain a lower amount of nutrients. Even in the modern day, most grainy foods are always artificially fortified with vitamins and minerals, and whole grains are only partially more nutritious than the refined grains. All the grains except rice contain gluten, which is a structural protein with stretches of repetitive amino acids, and actually very difficult to digest by the body.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                The prolamins in grains also have irritating effects on the immune system. It took thousands of years of human dietary changes and selective breeding (in both humans and grains) to reach the point where grains were the perfect staple. It's old thing - if you fed Palaeolithic man, it would make him sick, because the genes for gluten tolerance had not been selected for yet. Settled, agricultural societies eventually spread and dominated, and the genes for higher production of protease and thus better digestion of gluten. Still, gluten often remains partially undigested by the time it reaches the end of your gut. Most people can deal with the undigested leftovers, but many can't and it makes them shit themselves (gluten intolerance).

                Humans are primates, meaning many of our great ape ancestors were primarily frugivorous or folivorous. Fruit is comparatively easy to digest. Most plant material, including grass stems eaten by grazers (graminivores), are high in the carbohydrate cellulose - which mammals cannot digest by themselves. The only reason for eating leaves like lettuce and spinach is to get iron and other minerals and vitamins, but our gut cannot break down the cell wall efficiently enough to survive on cellulose alone. Even folivorous browsers that live off richer leafy greens rather than grass grazers require incredibly long digestive tracts and slow metabolisms, as well as the help of symbiotic bacteria that can digest the cellulose for them. Gorillas, for example, have a high-cellulose diet and thus an incredible complex gut microbiome to survive and produce the proteins they need, and they have to supplement their diets with a lot of fruit and some termites and ants.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Rabbits and horses also have delicate digestive systems to help with digesting cellulose-rich grass. They both have an organ called a cecum that is full of microorganisms to help break down grass. This is called hindgut fermentation.

                In ruminants, there's a more advanced version of this called the rumen, which is the largest stomach compartment and is the ideal chemistry lab for breaking down cellulose, as it's full of the bacteria Ruminococcus, which are specifically evolved to break down cellulose. We also have Ruminococcus in our guts, inherited from folivorous ancestors. Breaking down cellulose in the rumen is called foregut fermentation, and it is the most successful cellulose digestion method ever evolved in mammals. All ruminants are artiodactyls, which is why artiodactyls are, arguably, a lot more successful as grazers than perissodactyls, which are all monogastric pseudoruminants.

                Vertebrates cannot produce cellulase, the enzyme for breaking down cellulose. In fact, it seems like all metazoans, ie all animals, are incapable. Only fungi, bacteria and protozoans can produce that. Problem is, cellulose is a starchy polysaccharide, a good source of energy, and only the most abundant organic polymer on Earth. So, many metazoans, from termites to cows, have developed symbiotic relationships with gut bacteria that CAN produce cellulase, to help out in getting energy from plant cell walls. In grasses, that's extra difficult, so an extra advanced digestive system is required. Humans don't have that, so we process the grasses for their endosperm and seed.

                Basically, grass cultivation is another high-risk high-reward situation. It's not an ideal food for primates by any means, but it is fricking everywhere.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                first off, grains are not vegetables, theyre fruit
                secondly, civilization is founded on grains, because wheat is actually really really good for you, the only thing youre missing is fats, which you can get from milk and/or eggs, and you get a lot of cheap energy from them. the only actual vegetable that could be the rise of society is potatoes
                [...]
                because walking upright is kinda shitty, and intelligence is an evolutionary mistake, because you need a lot of energy to be able to sustain it, about 30% of your caloric intake, but once you have intelligence you can easily sustain it and overcome its disadvantages, but again you wouldnt be disadvantaged if you never developed it in the first place.

                >grains are not vegetables

                'Vegetables' is not a botanical or scientific word, it means nothing other than 'parts of plants that are consumed as food'. Seed and fruit are two botanical terms, referring to the embryonic plant that emerges from a fertilised ovule, and fruit being the seed-bearing structure that forms from the ovaries of an angiosperm/flowering plant.
                If you look at a very primitive vascular plant like a fern (which evolved in the Middle Devonian), it doesn't reproduce via seeds or flowers, but by spores. Plants and algae have a type of life cycle called heterogenesis, or the alternation of generations. There are two stages that traditionally alternative by generation. One is the sporophyte, a multicellular diploid asexual phase with two sets of chromosomes. The other is the gametophyte, a multicellular haploid sexual phase with a single set of chromosomes, that functions more like sexual reproduction in animals (requires fertilisation to occur outside the organism). A mature sporophyte produces haploid spores by meiosis, a process which reduces the number of chromosomes to half, from two sets to one. The resulting haploid spores germinate and grow into multicellular haploid gametophytes. At maturity, a gametophyte produces gametes by mitosis, the normal process of cell division in eukaryotes, which maintains the original number of chromosomes. Two haploid gametes, originating from different organisms or from the same organism, undergo traditional sexual reproduction and fuse to produce a diploid zygote. This cycle is the way in which all land plants and most algae undergo sexual reproduction.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                However, the extent of each of these generations varies across plants. In vascular plants, the gametophyte stage is greatly reduced. In ferns, the visible plant is the diploid sporophyte. The haploid spores develop in sori on the underside of the fronds and are dispersed by the wind or water.
                In seed plants, or spermatophytes, the sporophyte is the dominant multicellular phase; the gametophytes are strongly reduced in size and very different in morphology. The entire gametophyte generation is contained within the sporophyte. Most angiosperms and gymnosperms follow this process.

                However, flowering plants (including grass) have in addition a phenomenon called 'double fertilisation'. Two sperm nuclei from a pollen grain (the microgametophyte), rather than a single sperm, enter the ovum of the female gametophyte, one fuses with the egg nucleus to form the zygote, the other fuses with two other nuclei of the gametophyte to form 'endosperm', which nourishes the developing embryo. This fertilised zygote then becomes the seed. The endosperm becomes the fruit.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Wow! That's really in depth. In-a-nutshell evolution is long-term "biological-gambling".

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You're only posting on Wauf because your ancestors ate a lot of meat so their brains expanded, you're free to leave this website and return to monke if you wish

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Wauf
                Nugay, morongay? Both? Yes.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Damn. I remember you from months ago. At firts I thiught you were moronic and had a hateboner for pajeets, but now I don't know anymore.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Termites were one of those animals that was thought to have been an absolutely non-meat eater. But as it turns out, they’ve been observed eating meat.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Really, the hard part is figuring out what DOESN’T eat some meat
            >city moron has never seen an aphid in his life

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Aphids are invertebrates though. Many non-primate vertebrates aren’t capable of purely herbivorous diets. Actually, there’s no evolutionary reason for baboons and chimps to consume meat because they lack the adoptions for meat consumption for omnivorous diet like what ungulates and rodents have.

              For instance, impalas consume insects through grazing and have proper anti-predator defense through speed. Which also reflect very low reproduction rate.

              Bonobos get intoxicated when consuming freaking termites and their only defense against predators are their insane sexual adoptions to outnumber the losses caused by predation.

              Apes are physically weak and slow because of being truly vegan, therefore they are fricking fast breeders.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >they lack the adoptions for meat consumption for omnivorous diet
                >what are incisors, canines, bicuspids, and molars

                >Apes are physically weak and slow because of being truly vegan, therefore they are fricking fast breeders.
                >takes 8 months of gestation
                >for 1 child
                >takes 9 years for said child to reach maturity
                >this means theyre fast breeders
                what the frick is this schizoid post

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Antivegans are inherently schizophrenic

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Good, the vegan and antivegan schizo energy will cancel each other out thus saving the world

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Explain pic-related then.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Modern medicine and nutrition
                Frick off

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Only possible because we are predators and killed the competition. Humans are more bear than cow.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Schizoid just means introvert

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            That's funny because the same can be said for most non-religious vegetarians and vegans. Saw my "vegan" coworker sneak a corn dog one nightshift. Never met one that didn't cheat.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            You’re full of crap. Everyone ITT pretending that herbivores suddenly eating meat is fine. They aren’t built to digest it so it will mess them up. Just because you can eat something doesn’t mean you should.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Meat and all the stuff that comes with it.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        They're owners stop fricking them for 20 minutes to film them killing baby animals. The cooming he does then prevents them getting fricked for at least an hour.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Converting plants to energy costs a lot of energy in itself
        Transforming already converted energy does not

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Ever thought that not everything an animal does has a logical reason behind it?
        For all you know it eating the chick could be due to , an attraction to the color, texture of the chick rather than an instinct to specifically eat baby bird for nutrients.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I'm not a biologist, but what I can remember from the rules of nutrition is that there is no such thing as a pure carnivore or pure herbivore.

        For example; Lions eat the buffalos because they themselves can't digest the thick grass they roam on, and the buffalos can only digest the material thanks to their in-gut bacteria and system. One of the disadvantages of a plant based diet is your entire body is turned into a refinery to extract nutrients from an extremely low-quality and stubborn source. It's a quantity over quality issue, and the carnivorous equivalent is the leatherback turtle that survives by engulfing jellies in the open ocean, (coincidentally, the aquatic version of the savanna).

        Meat is basically the "fast-food" of nature, you can get more calories from eating something that already has done the refining for you. However, where, and how you get your nutrition is a matter of adaption and opportunity, you can technically eat anything, so as long it does not kill or clog-up your system.

        (Image note: These spikes run down the entire esophagus of the animal, however I couldn't find a detail diagram of this species, without bordering on the upsetting or vague.)

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >but what I can remember from the rules of nutrition
          You mean from what you read on reddit? Yes, there is no such thing as a herbivore is a common NPC cope.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >redditredditredditreddit
            >buzzwords
            Mindbroken

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >be part of the reddit hivemind
              >get called out on it
              >NOO!! I'M THE REBEL! I'M IN CHARGE HERE!!!

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >confirms that he is indeed mindbroken
                Thanks for proving the point. Now go back.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      that's fricked up
      I hate animals now, kill all fricking animals right fricking now

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Start from yourself

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Son, I am disappoint

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >stileproject
      That takes me back. Is it still a thing?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      The calf is skinny and you can see the string tied to the chick keeping it in place. This sicko was creating conditions for carnivorous cattle to film.

  20. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    there were some historically, but they were outcompeted by carnivorans. Not sure if andrewsarchus is still considered an ungulate but the entelodonts would surely count, right?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Andrewsarchus is a member of cetancodontamorpha, which includes hippos, whales, whale ancestors and entelodonts. Cetancodontamorpha is a total clade within artiodactyls, which means they are ungulates. So yes, Andrewsarchus and entelodonts were ungulates.
      Mesonychians were also basal ungulates related to the ancestors of artiodactyls. In fact, the ancestral group of artiodactyl ungulates were a small group of ''condylarths'' called Arctocyonids, small raccoon- to bear-sized omnivores from the Palaeocene. So, all Artiodactyls (including camels, pigs, peccaries, hippos, deer, cows, antelope, sheep, goats and whales) have omnivore or carnivore ancestors.
      Perissodactyls (horses, rhinos, tapirs) potentially have their roots in the more herbivorous Phenacodont lineage of ''condylarths''. It's also theorised that the enigmatic Dinoceratans of the Palaeocene and Eocene, including giants like Uintatherium, may have been related to the ancestors of perissodactyls.

      >yfw pic related is the most successful macropredatory ungulate of the Holocene

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Early omnivorous and carnivorous ungulates like the Arctocyonids, Mesonychians and Cetancodontamorphs would have been outcompeted by the late Eocene and early Oligocene. The Grande Coupure extinction event (33 ma ago) saw these archaic ungulate hunters eclipsed by the ''creodonts'' - a polyphyletic term referring to the Oxyaenids and Hyaenodonts, two large families of generalist predators, scavengers and omnivores that ranged from the size of a weasel to the largest mammalian land predators in history, including Simbakubwa, Megistotherium, Sarkastodon and Hyainailouros. These were both members of the mirorder Ferae which includes modern Carnivorans and pangolins, and had already evolved the shearing carnassial teeth seen in modern Carnivorans, which gave them dietary benefits over carnivorous ungulates, permitting as they did the more efficient consumption of meat. 'Creodont' carnassials were, however, structurally different to modern Carnivoran ones and were probably evolved independently. Oxyaenids had plantigrade feet, but many Hyaenodonts shared the digitigrade feet of the Carnivorans (also seen in Mesonychians), which made them more agile and better pursuit hunters.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          However, it seems that the 'creodonts' obligate hypercarnivory was to be a thorn in their side. Early Carnivoramorpha included small, opportunistic hunters like the Miacids and Viverravids, who often resembled mustelids or viverrids in their bauplans and niches. Their new carnassials were modified from the last upper premolar and the first lower molar, allowing the rearmost molar teeth to evolve adaptations for feeding on non-meat foods, while 'creodonts' had no molars left for non-meat. The early Carnivorans exploited mesocarnivore and omnivore niches, which also meant their limbs adapted to a variety of different lifestyles, and their advanced digitigrade posture lent itself to greater manoeuvrability, meaning they could turn their wrists and forearms inward to trip, slash, or grab prey, while 'creodonts', even digitigrade Hyaenodonts, had limb structures that limited leg movement to a vertical plane, as in ungulates. 'Creodonts' relied entirely on their jaws to catch prey, often having a larger and more robust head, and a smaller brain. As Earth transitioned from the Oligocene into the Miocene, the climate began slowly cooling towards the ice ages, increasing the presence of new grasslands and leading ungulates to proliferate in small, agile forms. Hyaenodonts, evolved for hunting and crushing more slow-moving browsers in prairie-brush environments, including running rhinoceratoids, robust three-toed equids, oreodonts, protoceratids and, in North America, camelids.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            The end of the Oligocene saw forest finally losing their battle to the new grasslands, and the progressive cooling across the Miocene made C3 grasslands more and more common. Hyaenodonts were highly adaptable and thrived in grassland environments, but their robust ungulate prey started to decline while gracile ruminant artiodactyl ungulate lineages like cervids, bovids and giraffids dominated the new prairies and savannahs. Even monogastric perissodactyls like horses evolved high speed and manoeuvrability in this new landscape. During the Middle Miocene, the Antarctic ice sheets began to grow, and shifting ocean currents caused global temperatures to drop. The world was turning towards the ice ages, and C3 grass easily spread in these now dry and cooler plains, and gracile ruminants went with them. Grass evolved to defend itself, filling their leaves and stems with phytoliths - minute bits of silica harvested from the soil that grind down mammalian teeth. In response, ungulates evolved tall-crowned hypsodont teeth that grew constantly and so could be constantly worn down, and the multi-stomach ruminant digestive system to squeeze out what small nutrients grass could provide, and break down troublesome cellulose. These new lineages of giraffes, horses, camels, deer and antelopes were unsuitable prey for Hyaenodonts, but the adaptability and agility of early Carnivorans, as well as their mesocarnivorous and opportunistic diets, led them to eclipse the 'creodonts'. The Miocene plains of Eurasia, Africa and North America were now filled with bone-crushing dogs and sabre-toothed cats. The youngest Hyaenodont in the fossil record, Dissopsalis, disappeared only a few million years before the first recorded bipedal hominin ape, Sahelanthropus, which was also adapting to a transitional forest-grassland environment.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Since then, Carnivorans have filled almost every land predator niche on the planet, and also returned to the oceans in the form of pinnipeds. Caniforms, the more successful branch, benefit from a mesocarnivorous and omnivorous lifestyle, and a body structure that befits it. Even hypercarnivorous Felids exhibit traits of agility and manoeuvrability that would have developed when their ancestors were small, opportunistic predators living in the shadows of giant Hyaenodonts. Meanwhile, canids and ursids, two of the most successful branches, reflect some traits of the old 'creodonts', but are more intelligent, opportunistic, adaptable and, in the case of canids, most likely far more social. But the most successful and species-rich branch of modern Carnivorans is by far the mustelids, who, while filling a huge variety of niches, still reflect the fundamental adaptability of the Carnivorans (for now).

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                It's interesting how you see cycles in evolution. I can see a reflection here of the development of large macropredatory dinosaurs and how small, adaptable coelurosaurs eventually eclipsed the colossal carnosaurs to become apex predators thanks to ecological shifts, at least in the Northern hemisphere

                >mesonychians = megalosaurs
                >creodonts = carnosaurs, Allosaurids and Carcharodontosaurids
                >tyrannosaurids and dromaeosaurs = carnivorans

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Me on the bottom left.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        i love all these weird, moronic lineages of ancient mega-predator mammals that just look slightly wrong, like evolution was trying to figure out how to make a dog or a bear and took like 50 million years to get it right

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >dog or bear

          how about beardog?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I raise you dog bear

  21. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Why don't they exist?
    because you've defined the word carnivore to exclude things like pigs that regularly kill and eat animals, or cows, horses, and deer that sometimes kill and eat animals.

    basically false dichotomy, like everything else you think you know.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      pseud post

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      ok since you want to be a pedantic frick, not considering that pigs are artiodatcyls, ok. EXCLUSIVELY OBLIGATE CARNIVORES

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        they're all extinct because carnivorans were better at it.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        You have to always be hyper-autistically specific with this new reddit generation because they all think they're clever.

        UM A COW ISN'T A HERBIVORE BECAUSE I FED ONE A FISH AND IT ATE IT!!!

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Shut up b***h

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      They hated him because he told tne truth.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        But he doesn't. This is just new age demon-gay cope. Everything is evil. Everything is a carnivore. Nothing is sacred. If we speak lies enough times, they become true. This age will end in fire.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >actual biology-denying schizo

  22. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >horse_eating_chick.webm

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous
      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Hey Descartes, if animals are automatons without inner life, why did that mom chicken have a fit of impotent rage?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >why did that mom chicken have a fit of impotent rage?
          And then quickly lost interest and hobbled away. lol

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Wasn't impotent rage, they evolved to defend their offspring, once it realizes it's too late it just walks away like nothing happened

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >mmm chickun nuggets..

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