1
00:00:05,880 --> 00:00:07,920
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name

2
00:00:07,960 --> 00:00:10,600
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday,

3
00:00:10,600 --> 00:00:12,680
Speaker 1: so that means it's time to venture into the vault

4
00:00:12,720 --> 00:00:15,880
Speaker 1: for a classic episode. That's right. This is the second

5
00:00:15,920 --> 00:00:19,360
Speaker 1: part of our our look at Aquatic Humanoids. This is

6
00:00:19,400 --> 00:00:24,200
Speaker 1: from January, and it's a look at everything from the

7
00:00:24,239 --> 00:00:27,440
Speaker 1: Sirens of the Odyssey to the creature from the Black Lagoon,

8
00:00:28,320 --> 00:00:33,000
Speaker 1: the Guild people from the the HP Leftcraft stories, and

9
00:00:33,080 --> 00:00:36,159
Speaker 1: it's going to get into territory explored by the recently

10
00:00:36,159 --> 00:00:39,559
Speaker 1: published sci fi podcast Transgenesis, which I wrote and created

11
00:00:39,840 --> 00:00:44,519
Speaker 1: along with the help of Alexander Williams, Lauren Vogelbaum, various

12
00:00:44,520 --> 00:00:46,640
Speaker 1: folks here at how stuff works in some very talented

13
00:00:46,640 --> 00:00:49,479
Speaker 1: people from outside the organization as well. Joe shows up

14
00:00:49,479 --> 00:00:51,360
Speaker 1: in the show at one point. I think I make

15
00:00:51,400 --> 00:00:53,599
Speaker 1: a creepy camey. You do, you may make an extended

16
00:00:53,600 --> 00:00:57,080
Speaker 1: creepy cameo. All ten episodes are gonna launch at once,

17
00:00:57,360 --> 00:00:59,480
Speaker 1: so that you can you can binge them. You can,

18
00:00:59,560 --> 00:01:01,960
Speaker 1: you can, you can spread them out over your commute,

19
00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:03,320
Speaker 1: you know, however you want to do it. You can

20
00:01:03,360 --> 00:01:06,520
Speaker 1: also find it online at Transgenesis dot Show. But it's

21
00:01:06,520 --> 00:01:09,680
Speaker 1: a sci fi podcast that has certain things to do

22
00:01:09,840 --> 00:01:13,640
Speaker 1: with the idea of deep sea intelligent life, deep sea

23
00:01:13,760 --> 00:01:16,440
Speaker 1: human ooid creatures, and that's the kind of thing that

24
00:01:16,560 --> 00:01:19,400
Speaker 1: we explore in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

25
00:01:19,720 --> 00:01:22,040
Speaker 1: That's right, So, without any further ado, I say, let's

26
00:01:22,040 --> 00:01:28,000
Speaker 1: go right to the episode. Welcome to Stuff to Blow

27
00:01:28,040 --> 00:01:37,119
Speaker 1: Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, welcome

28
00:01:37,120 --> 00:01:39,080
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert

29
00:01:39,120 --> 00:01:41,320
Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today is going to

30
00:01:41,360 --> 00:01:43,880
Speaker 1: be part two of a two part episode about the

31
00:01:43,880 --> 00:01:47,560
Speaker 1: aquatic humanoid. Now, last time we really focused on the

32
00:01:47,680 --> 00:01:53,840
Speaker 1: mythology and cultural beliefs about our aquatic counterparts, the humanoid

33
00:01:53,960 --> 00:01:56,840
Speaker 1: types who live in the depths and there this is

34
00:01:57,080 --> 00:02:00,520
Speaker 1: a trope all throughout fiction. You find it in all

35
00:02:00,600 --> 00:02:02,920
Speaker 1: kinds of human cultures. But one thing I think we

36
00:02:02,960 --> 00:02:05,760
Speaker 1: didn't discuss last time, or if we did, it's my

37
00:02:05,840 --> 00:02:09,440
Speaker 1: memory is not serving me well, is the movie Leviathan.

38
00:02:09,639 --> 00:02:12,320
Speaker 1: Oh Yes, one of the one of the several nineteen

39
00:02:12,360 --> 00:02:16,480
Speaker 1: eighty nine underwater peril movies that that we keep chatting about,

40
00:02:16,520 --> 00:02:18,959
Speaker 1: and at least in a previous episode, I'm not sure

41
00:02:18,960 --> 00:02:21,400
Speaker 1: if we we talked about it in The Aquatic Humanoids

42
00:02:21,440 --> 00:02:24,160
Speaker 1: Part one or not. We've talked about it so much recently,

43
00:02:24,240 --> 00:02:27,040
Speaker 1: I can't even recall when it happened. But anyway, Yeah,

44
00:02:27,040 --> 00:02:30,080
Speaker 1: so ninety nine you had James Cameron's The Abyss, but

45
00:02:30,120 --> 00:02:34,000
Speaker 1: you also had Deep Star six Leviathan, Lords of the Deep.

46
00:02:34,440 --> 00:02:39,280
Speaker 1: For some reason, everybody went nuts making underwater sci fi movies. Yeah,

47
00:02:39,440 --> 00:02:42,280
Speaker 1: we've been sort of trying to piece together in a

48
00:02:42,360 --> 00:02:45,160
Speaker 1: casual way. Why that was, you know, what what was

49
00:02:45,200 --> 00:02:47,560
Speaker 1: happening in the world was it did have to do

50
00:02:47,639 --> 00:02:50,880
Speaker 1: with that, with recent underwater exploration that really inspired everybody

51
00:02:50,880 --> 00:02:52,680
Speaker 1: at the same time. Or did everyone just know that

52
00:02:52,880 --> 00:02:55,600
Speaker 1: the Abyss was coming and it made sense for all

53
00:02:55,680 --> 00:02:59,280
Speaker 1: the various cinematic lamp preyest to converge upon it. Now,

54
00:02:59,400 --> 00:03:02,079
Speaker 1: Leviathan is a I think you'll back me up here,

55
00:03:02,160 --> 00:03:05,800
Speaker 1: a terrible movie, but a great terrible movie. It is. Uh,

56
00:03:06,760 --> 00:03:10,639
Speaker 1: it is a thoroughly enjoyable, flawed film. It's this the

57
00:03:10,680 --> 00:03:13,200
Speaker 1: type of bad movie that I just really eat up

58
00:03:13,240 --> 00:03:16,480
Speaker 1: that ends up in I think inspiring me more than

59
00:03:16,600 --> 00:03:20,160
Speaker 1: good underwater movies. Yeah, it's such an alien rip off

60
00:03:20,280 --> 00:03:24,120
Speaker 1: the DVD I had of it, it actually says alien

61
00:03:24,240 --> 00:03:28,160
Speaker 1: underwater that's the poll quote. Yeah, it is highly derivative.

62
00:03:28,200 --> 00:03:30,919
Speaker 1: But God that the cast is so good and the

63
00:03:31,080 --> 00:03:32,880
Speaker 1: look of the film, like it has a Stan Winston

64
00:03:33,320 --> 00:03:36,400
Speaker 1: Studios monster in it, so you know that's gonna look

65
00:03:36,440 --> 00:03:39,320
Speaker 1: like a million bucks. And the the overall sets that

66
00:03:39,360 --> 00:03:42,640
Speaker 1: are used, especially the interior sets for this underwater station,

67
00:03:42,960 --> 00:03:46,120
Speaker 1: are tremendous. Like the set does as much as the

68
00:03:46,160 --> 00:03:49,360
Speaker 1: cast does, really to create a sense of back story

69
00:03:49,440 --> 00:03:52,520
Speaker 1: for these characters. You know, in a way, the sleaziness

70
00:03:52,600 --> 00:03:55,440
Speaker 1: of Daniel Stearns performance in the movie is kind of

71
00:03:55,480 --> 00:03:58,160
Speaker 1: a set in its own. It's like a landscape of

72
00:03:58,240 --> 00:04:02,000
Speaker 1: sleeves and obnoxious nous. Yeah, he plays this sleazy character

73
00:04:02,120 --> 00:04:06,000
Speaker 1: named six Pack, I believe, and it's easy to think

74
00:04:06,040 --> 00:04:07,960
Speaker 1: back on the film and think that their moments where

75
00:04:07,960 --> 00:04:11,480
Speaker 1: the character reaches peak sleaziness, but he really just achieves

76
00:04:11,480 --> 00:04:15,960
Speaker 1: a high plateau of sleaziness throughout his time in the film. Okay,

77
00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:19,320
Speaker 1: let's not dwell on Leviathan too much, but it does

78
00:04:19,400 --> 00:04:21,440
Speaker 1: relate to what we're going to talk about today. So

79
00:04:21,520 --> 00:04:25,440
Speaker 1: today we wanted to address some of the biological ideas

80
00:04:25,480 --> 00:04:28,839
Speaker 1: about aquatic humanoids. And so one of the things in

81
00:04:28,960 --> 00:04:32,719
Speaker 1: Leviathan is you spoiler alert for this nineteen eighty nine

82
00:04:33,040 --> 00:04:36,240
Speaker 1: b movie. You find out that the Russians in the

83
00:04:36,279 --> 00:04:41,240
Speaker 1: movie are trying to create an aquatic humanoid through genetic alteration. Right,

84
00:04:41,320 --> 00:04:43,680
Speaker 1: of course, that ends up creating a monster. A monster

85
00:04:43,839 --> 00:04:46,360
Speaker 1: I should add that is in many ways kind of

86
00:04:46,400 --> 00:04:49,440
Speaker 1: an etheo centaur, of which we discussed in the first episode,

87
00:04:49,440 --> 00:04:52,960
Speaker 1: this sort of hybrid of different parts creating this this

88
00:04:53,040 --> 00:04:58,120
Speaker 1: kind of large centaur esque chimera. So, yeah, you've got

89
00:04:58,160 --> 00:05:00,760
Speaker 1: this giant monster that's basically got a at fish head

90
00:05:01,080 --> 00:05:03,520
Speaker 1: and then it's got Daniel Stearn's face sticking out of

91
00:05:03,520 --> 00:05:06,960
Speaker 1: its back and some other random tentacles and lampreys poking

92
00:05:07,040 --> 00:05:09,840
Speaker 1: off of it. But this was, in the context of

93
00:05:09,839 --> 00:05:13,560
Speaker 1: the film, an attempt to create Homo aquaticus, the human

94
00:05:14,000 --> 00:05:17,280
Speaker 1: version of an underwater creature, or maybe the underwater version

95
00:05:17,440 --> 00:05:20,320
Speaker 1: of the human today. We want to look at could

96
00:05:20,400 --> 00:05:24,520
Speaker 1: such a creature exist, and what would it look like biologically,

97
00:05:25,120 --> 00:05:29,800
Speaker 1: and if aquatic humanoids could exist in reality, how would

98
00:05:29,839 --> 00:05:34,479
Speaker 1: they figure into our our picture of human evolution. Yeah,

99
00:05:34,560 --> 00:05:37,080
Speaker 1: it's it's a fascinating question. Of course, the you know

100
00:05:37,120 --> 00:05:39,640
Speaker 1: the the The easy answer is, of course, yes, all

101
00:05:39,920 --> 00:05:42,080
Speaker 1: life came from the sea, and we have plenty of

102
00:05:42,120 --> 00:05:45,040
Speaker 1: cases of terrestrial life returning to the sea, so we're

103
00:05:45,080 --> 00:05:50,040
Speaker 1: not talking about just complete whackadoodle ideas about about life

104
00:05:50,320 --> 00:05:53,120
Speaker 1: emerging from one or descending into the other. Right, you

105
00:05:53,160 --> 00:05:55,839
Speaker 1: are correct to point out that that leaving the water

106
00:05:56,000 --> 00:05:59,880
Speaker 1: for terrestrial existence can happen, and then leaving terrestria is

107
00:06:00,040 --> 00:06:02,400
Speaker 1: that the now, and I guess leaving the land for

108
00:06:02,440 --> 00:06:05,839
Speaker 1: a watery existence can also happen. These are totally biologically

109
00:06:05,880 --> 00:06:09,279
Speaker 1: plausible scenarios and they happen all the time. But could

110
00:06:09,320 --> 00:06:12,680
Speaker 1: it happen with us? And in fact, has it already

111
00:06:12,760 --> 00:06:16,159
Speaker 1: happened with us? So I guess it's time to venture

112
00:06:16,320 --> 00:06:19,400
Speaker 1: into something that people have asked us to discuss on

113
00:06:19,440 --> 00:06:22,200
Speaker 1: the show before. We we've never done it before. But

114
00:06:22,320 --> 00:06:26,919
Speaker 1: it is a fringe hypothesis and human evolution called the

115
00:06:26,960 --> 00:06:30,760
Speaker 1: aquatic ape hypothesis. Yes, and and of course that instantly

116
00:06:30,800 --> 00:06:34,800
Speaker 1: summons the images of a guerrilla mermaid. I will not

117
00:06:34,880 --> 00:06:37,400
Speaker 1: I will not try to convince you to dismiss that

118
00:06:37,920 --> 00:06:41,640
Speaker 1: that apparition from your mind, but but it is almost

119
00:06:41,640 --> 00:06:44,039
Speaker 1: impossible not to think of that So now you're saying,

120
00:06:44,080 --> 00:06:47,520
Speaker 1: like fish tail with guerrilla top, yes, not like not

121
00:06:47,560 --> 00:06:51,159
Speaker 1: like Mermaid top with guerrilla legs. No, no, no fish

122
00:06:51,240 --> 00:06:54,119
Speaker 1: fish on the bottom. Uh, silver back grilla on the top.

123
00:06:54,240 --> 00:06:57,400
Speaker 1: That's the only way to put it together, Marilla. Yeah,

124
00:06:57,760 --> 00:07:00,359
Speaker 1: not exactly, but close. Now, before we get into the

125
00:07:00,400 --> 00:07:02,760
Speaker 1: specifics of the hypothesis, I just want to start by

126
00:07:02,760 --> 00:07:05,760
Speaker 1: cautioning that this is not a hypothesis that is widely

127
00:07:05,800 --> 00:07:09,960
Speaker 1: accepted by scientists or biologists. It's generally frowned upon by

128
00:07:10,560 --> 00:07:13,360
Speaker 1: paleo anthropologists and other people who study the history of

129
00:07:13,440 --> 00:07:17,440
Speaker 1: human evolution. But I think it's worth addressing, especially since

130
00:07:17,440 --> 00:07:20,720
Speaker 1: people have asked about it before, and it fits into

131
00:07:20,760 --> 00:07:24,560
Speaker 1: this model of the aquatic humanoid and creates at least

132
00:07:24,640 --> 00:07:27,800
Speaker 1: a plausible sounding scenario in which there could have been

133
00:07:27,840 --> 00:07:30,480
Speaker 1: an aquatic humanoid. Yeah, if we entered into it as

134
00:07:30,520 --> 00:07:33,480
Speaker 1: a as an alternate hypothesis, If we enter into it

135
00:07:33,520 --> 00:07:35,640
Speaker 1: as a thought experiment, and we do not enter into

136
00:07:35,720 --> 00:07:39,280
Speaker 1: it trying to make an argument for the existence of

137
00:07:39,440 --> 00:07:42,960
Speaker 1: Triton's or or mer people or some sort of underwater race,

138
00:07:43,120 --> 00:07:46,120
Speaker 1: then I think we're in safe waters. Okay, So it

139
00:07:46,240 --> 00:07:50,480
Speaker 1: starts with a simple observation. Our closest relatives in the

140
00:07:50,480 --> 00:07:53,480
Speaker 1: animal kingdom are the other great apes, also known as

141
00:07:53,480 --> 00:07:58,800
Speaker 1: hamanids or the family Homonida. This includes orangutans, guerrillas, chimpanzees,

142
00:07:58,840 --> 00:08:03,400
Speaker 1: and binobos, and metically we are extremely similar to these animals,

143
00:08:03,520 --> 00:08:08,960
Speaker 1: especially to chimpanzees and binobo's. Anatomically we're also extremely similar

144
00:08:08,960 --> 00:08:10,640
Speaker 1: to them if you look at all of our body

145
00:08:10,720 --> 00:08:13,680
Speaker 1: parts in the way they fit together, were very very

146
00:08:13,720 --> 00:08:17,120
Speaker 1: close to these animals. But there are a few key differences,

147
00:08:17,800 --> 00:08:20,400
Speaker 1: and some of the most major of these key differences

148
00:08:20,440 --> 00:08:26,520
Speaker 1: are that we are mostly hairless bipeds, were naked, smooth skinned,

149
00:08:26,640 --> 00:08:29,840
Speaker 1: and we walk on two legs. And meanwhile, all these

150
00:08:29,840 --> 00:08:33,360
Speaker 1: other animals are hairy quadrupeds. They're covered from head to

151
00:08:33,400 --> 00:08:37,800
Speaker 1: toe in in hair for and usually walk on four legs.

152
00:08:37,840 --> 00:08:41,280
Speaker 1: So why that difference? What happened in the history of

153
00:08:41,440 --> 00:08:45,640
Speaker 1: only the human branch of this family to drive our

154
00:08:45,760 --> 00:08:50,280
Speaker 1: ancestors to become relatively smooth and bipedal while the rest

155
00:08:50,280 --> 00:08:53,800
Speaker 1: of our closest cousins didn't. Now just a note, I've

156
00:08:53,800 --> 00:08:57,320
Speaker 1: often seen this framed in terms of questions like, quote,

157
00:08:57,480 --> 00:09:00,440
Speaker 1: how did we get from chimpanzees to human ends. That

158
00:09:00,559 --> 00:09:04,320
Speaker 1: question is obviously nonsense, because we didn't get from chimpanzees

159
00:09:04,320 --> 00:09:08,000
Speaker 1: to humans. Both chimpanzees and humans came from something that

160
00:09:08,080 --> 00:09:11,680
Speaker 1: lived more than four million years ago. Chimpanzees are our cousins,

161
00:09:11,760 --> 00:09:14,959
Speaker 1: not our ancestors. But the question is why do humans

162
00:09:15,080 --> 00:09:18,280
Speaker 1: look different from them and from every other hominid, given

163
00:09:18,320 --> 00:09:22,360
Speaker 1: that were such close cousins. Well, in March nineteen sixty

164
00:09:22,440 --> 00:09:26,200
Speaker 1: a British marine biologist named Alistair Hardy published an article

165
00:09:26,240 --> 00:09:29,760
Speaker 1: and New Scientists arguing for a pretty startling answer to this.

166
00:09:30,559 --> 00:09:34,480
Speaker 1: Hardy said, in the distant past, our ancestors distinguished themselves

167
00:09:34,480 --> 00:09:37,000
Speaker 1: from the other great apes or the other great ape

168
00:09:37,040 --> 00:09:41,760
Speaker 1: ancestors by becoming an aquatic organism. So the idea here's

169
00:09:41,760 --> 00:09:44,920
Speaker 1: our ancestors adapted to life in the water for a

170
00:09:44,960 --> 00:09:47,800
Speaker 1: while and then returned to land exactly, and that that

171
00:09:48,000 --> 00:09:52,560
Speaker 1: shaped the differences between humans today and the other great apes.

172
00:09:52,920 --> 00:09:56,000
Speaker 1: And so in this article, Hardy summarized his hypothesis about

173
00:09:56,040 --> 00:10:00,360
Speaker 1: how quote Man's immediate ancestors diverged from quote more ape

174
00:10:00,400 --> 00:10:04,920
Speaker 1: like forms as follows. My thesis is that a branch

175
00:10:05,040 --> 00:10:09,079
Speaker 1: of this primitive ape stock was forced by competition from

176
00:10:09,160 --> 00:10:12,400
Speaker 1: life in the trees to feed on the seashores and

177
00:10:12,440 --> 00:10:17,000
Speaker 1: to hunt for food shellfish, sea urchins, et cetera. In

178
00:10:17,040 --> 00:10:20,840
Speaker 1: the shallow waters off the coast. I suppose that they

179
00:10:20,880 --> 00:10:23,400
Speaker 1: were forced into the water, just as we have seen

180
00:10:23,480 --> 00:10:27,200
Speaker 1: happen in so many other groups of terrestrial animals. I'm

181
00:10:27,200 --> 00:10:30,160
Speaker 1: imagining this happening in the warmer parts of the world,

182
00:10:30,480 --> 00:10:33,319
Speaker 1: in the tropical seas, where man could stand being in

183
00:10:33,360 --> 00:10:37,080
Speaker 1: the water for relatively long periods, that is, several hours

184
00:10:37,120 --> 00:10:40,720
Speaker 1: at a stretch. I imagine him waiting at first, perhaps

185
00:10:40,720 --> 00:10:44,680
Speaker 1: still crouching almost on all fours, groping about in the water,

186
00:10:45,080 --> 00:10:48,960
Speaker 1: digging for shellfish, but becoming gradually more adept at swimming.

187
00:10:49,440 --> 00:10:52,400
Speaker 1: Then in time I see him becoming more and more

188
00:10:52,440 --> 00:10:55,600
Speaker 1: of an aquatic animal, going farther out from the shore.

189
00:10:56,000 --> 00:10:59,840
Speaker 1: I see him diving for shellfish, prizing out worms, burrowing

190
00:11:00,040 --> 00:11:03,000
Speaker 1: crabs and bivalves from the sands at the bottom of

191
00:11:03,040 --> 00:11:06,959
Speaker 1: shallow seas, and breaking open sea urchins, and then with

192
00:11:07,040 --> 00:11:11,480
Speaker 1: increasing skill, capturing fish with his hands. And of course

193
00:11:11,520 --> 00:11:13,640
Speaker 1: this matches up the what we know about human cultures

194
00:11:13,720 --> 00:11:18,160
Speaker 1: that have a legacy of existing close to the sea

195
00:11:18,200 --> 00:11:20,600
Speaker 1: and upon the sea. Yeah, now this is describing what

196
00:11:20,640 --> 00:11:23,520
Speaker 1: we might call a semi aquatic existence rather than a

197
00:11:23,559 --> 00:11:27,280
Speaker 1: fully aquatic existence. Right, So it's not that we became

198
00:11:27,480 --> 00:11:31,079
Speaker 1: whales and lived entirely in the water, but that the

199
00:11:31,160 --> 00:11:34,160
Speaker 1: hypothesis is that we sort of became like Homo beachicus,

200
00:11:35,160 --> 00:11:37,760
Speaker 1: that we live adjacent to the water and spent a

201
00:11:37,800 --> 00:11:43,080
Speaker 1: whole lot of time in it. Homo beach bummocus, Homo

202
00:11:43,120 --> 00:11:46,600
Speaker 1: biwa chicas. I like it. Now, this might sound crazy,

203
00:11:46,679 --> 00:11:49,280
Speaker 1: and as we said, it is certainly not accepted by

204
00:11:49,320 --> 00:11:52,839
Speaker 1: mainstream biologists or paleo anthropologists. But I want to say

205
00:11:52,920 --> 00:11:56,680
Speaker 1: that there's nothing in principle wrong with the idea of

206
00:11:56,679 --> 00:11:59,560
Speaker 1: a land dwelling mammal evolving to become an aquatic creature.

207
00:11:59,559 --> 00:12:02,440
Speaker 1: We mentioned this earlier, but just to reiterate, like, where

208
00:12:02,440 --> 00:12:05,920
Speaker 1: do you think whales and dolphins came from? More than

209
00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:09,000
Speaker 1: fifty million years ago? The ancestors of whales and dolphins

210
00:12:09,000 --> 00:12:12,320
Speaker 1: were four legged, land dwelling mammals that went through many

211
00:12:12,400 --> 00:12:15,880
Speaker 1: stages of evolution deeper and deeper into the water. They

212
00:12:15,920 --> 00:12:18,920
Speaker 1: started as these creatures that lived adjacent to the water

213
00:12:19,320 --> 00:12:21,640
Speaker 1: and spent more and more time in the water over

214
00:12:21,679 --> 00:12:24,800
Speaker 1: the generations, becoming more and more adapted to it from

215
00:12:24,840 --> 00:12:29,800
Speaker 1: the semi aquatic waiting lifestyle of pacacidas and into high

216
00:12:29,880 --> 00:12:33,360
Speaker 1: us to like this more otter like existence of this

217
00:12:33,440 --> 00:12:37,440
Speaker 1: creature called ambulositis, and then eventually two creatures like the

218
00:12:37,520 --> 00:12:40,080
Speaker 1: Dora don which start to look sort of like modern

219
00:12:40,120 --> 00:12:42,840
Speaker 1: whales with eyes on the side and the breathing hole

220
00:12:43,240 --> 00:12:47,040
Speaker 1: dorsally migrated up toward the top of the head. And

221
00:12:47,120 --> 00:12:50,320
Speaker 1: there's a similar story with pinnipeds like seals and sea lions.

222
00:12:50,360 --> 00:12:53,840
Speaker 1: They're believed to have evolved from land dwelling quadrupeds that

223
00:12:53,880 --> 00:12:57,640
Speaker 1: were something more like bears or musta Lloyd's meaning things

224
00:12:57,679 --> 00:13:01,920
Speaker 1: like skunks, raccoons, or weasels. So evolution of land dwelling

225
00:13:01,960 --> 00:13:04,960
Speaker 1: mammals into water dwelling mammals is not only possible, it

226
00:13:05,040 --> 00:13:07,920
Speaker 1: has happened lots of times. This is something that's totally

227
00:13:07,960 --> 00:13:12,200
Speaker 1: biologically plausible. The plausibility of that scenario is not something

228
00:13:12,360 --> 00:13:15,960
Speaker 1: that's necessarily a problem with the aquatic ape hypothesis. The

229
00:13:16,000 --> 00:13:19,640
Speaker 1: problems come in later because what's the real question? Did

230
00:13:19,679 --> 00:13:24,480
Speaker 1: it specifically happen to our ancestors? Right? Because if it,

231
00:13:24,600 --> 00:13:26,400
Speaker 1: if it did happen, we should be able to find

232
00:13:26,480 --> 00:13:29,520
Speaker 1: some evidence of it. Right. So, as we said this,

233
00:13:29,600 --> 00:13:32,760
Speaker 1: this hypothesis is not popular with scientists and experts in

234
00:13:32,800 --> 00:13:35,560
Speaker 1: the field, but it has really continued to capture the

235
00:13:35,640 --> 00:13:38,640
Speaker 1: interest of the public since it was first introduced. So

236
00:13:38,679 --> 00:13:41,280
Speaker 1: it was first proposed by, as we said, the British

237
00:13:41,280 --> 00:13:44,400
Speaker 1: marine biologist Alastair Hardy in nineteen sixty but it was

238
00:13:44,480 --> 00:13:48,760
Speaker 1: really most popularized by a Welsh author named Elaine Morgan

239
00:13:48,920 --> 00:13:52,920
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies and eighties, primarily through she She

240
00:13:52,960 --> 00:13:55,360
Speaker 1: wrote about it in a book called The Descent of Woman,

241
00:13:55,400 --> 00:13:58,319
Speaker 1: but then also in a book called The Aquatic Ape

242
00:13:59,000 --> 00:14:02,400
Speaker 1: and so more. His argument for the aquatic a hypothesis

243
00:14:02,640 --> 00:14:05,680
Speaker 1: is interesting, and she she summarized it in a TED

244
00:14:05,760 --> 00:14:08,160
Speaker 1: talk in two thousand nine before she passed away in

245
00:14:08,160 --> 00:14:10,760
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen. And so I think maybe we should

246
00:14:10,800 --> 00:14:13,319
Speaker 1: look at some of the specifics of her argument. Uh

247
00:14:13,400 --> 00:14:15,319
Speaker 1: so then we can we can think about them and

248
00:14:15,559 --> 00:14:17,600
Speaker 1: see how they stack up. All right, But before we

249
00:14:17,600 --> 00:14:19,120
Speaker 1: do that, let's take a quick break and when we

250
00:14:19,160 --> 00:14:22,560
Speaker 1: come back, we'll dive in to the aquatic ape theory

251
00:14:22,640 --> 00:14:27,400
Speaker 1: some more. Thank thank alright, we're back, all right. So

252
00:14:27,480 --> 00:14:30,680
Speaker 1: Morgan's talk has a lot of framing material in it,

253
00:14:30,720 --> 00:14:33,480
Speaker 1: where she sort of lays the context for her argument

254
00:14:33,560 --> 00:14:36,960
Speaker 1: by talking about the idea of paradigm shifts and science

255
00:14:36,960 --> 00:14:39,840
Speaker 1: and about how scientific consensus has often been wrong in

256
00:14:39,880 --> 00:14:44,200
Speaker 1: the past. That's absolutely true. Scientific consensus has very often

257
00:14:44,240 --> 00:14:47,640
Speaker 1: been disproved um. But one of the things I think

258
00:14:47,840 --> 00:14:50,080
Speaker 1: we should be cautious about is when you start to

259
00:14:50,080 --> 00:14:56,000
Speaker 1: hear somebody using that fact as an argument for their argument.

260
00:14:56,400 --> 00:14:58,400
Speaker 1: If you know what I mean, it's often the opening

261
00:14:58,520 --> 00:15:02,280
Speaker 1: argument of somebody who's about the some some some really

262
00:15:02,360 --> 00:15:05,880
Speaker 1: fringe theory on you. Right, So, it is true that

263
00:15:05,920 --> 00:15:08,920
Speaker 1: scientific consensus has often been wrong, but the fact that

264
00:15:08,960 --> 00:15:11,640
Speaker 1: it has often been wrong is not evidence that your

265
00:15:11,800 --> 00:15:17,280
Speaker 1: particular bucking of it is correct. Now, so what is

266
00:15:17,280 --> 00:15:20,480
Speaker 1: the evidence that Morgan presents for her hypothesis. Well, so,

267
00:15:20,520 --> 00:15:23,040
Speaker 1: first of all, she looks at the really obvious thing,

268
00:15:23,680 --> 00:15:26,920
Speaker 1: where's all the hair, right, the naked skin. When you

269
00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:31,040
Speaker 1: look for other mammals without body hair like us, they're

270
00:15:31,080 --> 00:15:34,920
Speaker 1: almost all, she says, water dwelling creatures, the doo gong,

271
00:15:35,160 --> 00:15:40,360
Speaker 1: the walrus, dolphins, whales, the hippopotamus, the manateee. Yeah. The

272
00:15:40,400 --> 00:15:42,040
Speaker 1: only other example that comes to mind is, of course

273
00:15:42,080 --> 00:15:45,000
Speaker 1: the naked mole ratum, which is also kind of a

274
00:15:45,040 --> 00:15:49,960
Speaker 1: special case given in it's a subterranean rodent that lives

275
00:15:50,280 --> 00:15:53,200
Speaker 1: with a with a hive like structure. Yes, she mentions

276
00:15:53,240 --> 00:15:55,720
Speaker 1: it actually, and then she says, wait a minute, Wait

277
00:15:55,720 --> 00:15:58,480
Speaker 1: a minute, what about the elephant. That's a land dwelling

278
00:15:58,520 --> 00:16:01,800
Speaker 1: mammal without much body hair. Morgan says, it turns out

279
00:16:01,920 --> 00:16:05,080
Speaker 1: that more recent studies have found that the elephant had

280
00:16:05,120 --> 00:16:08,160
Speaker 1: an aquatic ancestor. I looked this up to make sure

281
00:16:08,240 --> 00:16:11,360
Speaker 1: she's she's sort of correct about this. The elephants are

282
00:16:11,440 --> 00:16:15,520
Speaker 1: related to an ancient mammal called the more ethereum, which

283
00:16:15,680 --> 00:16:19,240
Speaker 1: apparently was semi aquatic lived in around swamps and rivers.

284
00:16:19,960 --> 00:16:22,720
Speaker 1: Maybe not necessarily a direct ancestor of the elephant, but

285
00:16:22,760 --> 00:16:26,920
Speaker 1: a very close ancient relative of elephants. She says, there's

286
00:16:26,920 --> 00:16:30,320
Speaker 1: a strong correlation between nakedness and water. There are some

287
00:16:30,400 --> 00:16:33,080
Speaker 1: hairy or furry mammals that do live in the water, right.

288
00:16:33,160 --> 00:16:35,400
Speaker 1: You can think of a few, Oh yeah, I mean

289
00:16:35,480 --> 00:16:38,240
Speaker 1: the otters, beavers. If you want to make a stretch,

290
00:16:38,280 --> 00:16:40,920
Speaker 1: you can even look at things like like the polar bear,

291
00:16:40,960 --> 00:16:44,360
Speaker 1: which does is not an aquatic mammal. Per se but

292
00:16:44,440 --> 00:16:46,440
Speaker 1: does spend a lot of time in the water and

293
00:16:46,760 --> 00:16:50,040
Speaker 1: is an adapted swimmer. Yeah, but there, she says, there

294
00:16:50,040 --> 00:16:53,800
Speaker 1: are almost no hairless or smooth mammals that do not

295
00:16:53,920 --> 00:16:57,040
Speaker 1: either live in the water or have fairly recent ancestors

296
00:16:57,080 --> 00:16:59,200
Speaker 1: that lived in the water. And she claims that the

297
00:16:59,280 --> 00:17:02,440
Speaker 1: only except and as we mentioned, is the naked Somalian

298
00:17:02,520 --> 00:17:05,639
Speaker 1: mole rat, which she says, quote never puts its nose

299
00:17:05,720 --> 00:17:08,560
Speaker 1: above the surface of the ground. Then there's the question

300
00:17:08,560 --> 00:17:12,960
Speaker 1: of bipedality, right, there's no real comparison in nature because

301
00:17:12,960 --> 00:17:16,200
Speaker 1: we're the only mammal that walks consistently on two legs.

302
00:17:16,200 --> 00:17:20,360
Speaker 1: According to Morgan, Yeah, you know, at times a cat

303
00:17:20,440 --> 00:17:22,720
Speaker 1: will rear up on two legs and look exceedingly creepy.

304
00:17:22,840 --> 00:17:25,200
Speaker 1: But but that's about it. It's four legs the rest

305
00:17:25,240 --> 00:17:27,199
Speaker 1: of the time. Now that's mammals. Of course, once you

306
00:17:27,200 --> 00:17:30,200
Speaker 1: start looking into birds and dinosaurs, of course you get

307
00:17:30,320 --> 00:17:36,400
Speaker 1: basically humanoids by this characteristic. But some four legged animals,

308
00:17:36,400 --> 00:17:38,560
Speaker 1: of course, as we say, can occasionally stand up on

309
00:17:38,600 --> 00:17:42,600
Speaker 1: two legs. When do our closest ape relatives walk on

310
00:17:42,680 --> 00:17:46,520
Speaker 1: two legs? Will Morgan claims there's only one circumstance when

311
00:17:46,560 --> 00:17:49,040
Speaker 1: they always walk on two legs, and it's when they're

312
00:17:49,080 --> 00:17:52,280
Speaker 1: wading through water. You should remember that, because I want

313
00:17:52,280 --> 00:17:55,119
Speaker 1: to take issue with that in a bit. Then she

314
00:17:55,119 --> 00:17:58,280
Speaker 1: she marshals some more evidence. She says that, how about

315
00:17:58,320 --> 00:18:02,280
Speaker 1: subcutaneous fat. Morgan says, we have a layer of fat

316
00:18:02,440 --> 00:18:05,920
Speaker 1: running underneath our skin, and other great apes don't have this.

317
00:18:06,400 --> 00:18:09,600
Speaker 1: They're fat is stored more internally around their kidneys and

318
00:18:09,640 --> 00:18:11,760
Speaker 1: so forth, And our fat is stored largely in this

319
00:18:11,840 --> 00:18:15,200
Speaker 1: layer under our skin, similar to other water dwelling animals,

320
00:18:15,280 --> 00:18:18,119
Speaker 1: kind of a blubber layer basically. Yeah. I mean, it's

321
00:18:18,160 --> 00:18:21,000
Speaker 1: kind of an unfair comparison to make here, but we've

322
00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:24,600
Speaker 1: all seen these images of a hairless gorilla and they're

323
00:18:24,640 --> 00:18:29,080
Speaker 1: just completely jacked, you know, they're just exceedingly ripped in ways.

324
00:18:29,080 --> 00:18:32,520
Speaker 1: It's like hilarious muscles comic book cover muscles. Yeah, that

325
00:18:32,800 --> 00:18:35,959
Speaker 1: it is a comic book of physique, and the kind

326
00:18:36,000 --> 00:18:40,280
Speaker 1: of which you you rarely see in in the average human.

327
00:18:40,800 --> 00:18:43,199
Speaker 1: Here's another one. She says, how about speech. This is

328
00:18:43,200 --> 00:18:45,520
Speaker 1: a pretty big difference, right, Oh yeah, I mean that's

329
00:18:45,560 --> 00:18:49,600
Speaker 1: the one of the defining properties of of humans. Yeah.

330
00:18:49,640 --> 00:18:52,400
Speaker 1: In fact, you know, there are a lot of people

331
00:18:52,400 --> 00:18:54,439
Speaker 1: who would make the case, including somebody we've had on

332
00:18:54,480 --> 00:18:56,639
Speaker 1: the show in the past. Friends at evolved that a

333
00:18:56,680 --> 00:18:59,080
Speaker 1: lot of the distinctions we try to make that really

334
00:18:59,240 --> 00:19:03,320
Speaker 1: separate humans and other animals by some hard line of division,

335
00:19:03,640 --> 00:19:06,080
Speaker 1: the linees a lot blurrier than you might think. But

336
00:19:06,560 --> 00:19:09,280
Speaker 1: one thing he sort of made allowances for is maybe

337
00:19:09,359 --> 00:19:12,719
Speaker 1: language that we that is the closest thing we've got

338
00:19:13,000 --> 00:19:16,240
Speaker 1: to like a real edge on other animals. And so

339
00:19:16,359 --> 00:19:18,840
Speaker 1: how come we can talk and other hominids can't. Well,

340
00:19:18,960 --> 00:19:21,359
Speaker 1: Morgan claims that the difference between a human and a

341
00:19:21,400 --> 00:19:25,119
Speaker 1: guerrilla is not in the speech producing organs of the

342
00:19:25,240 --> 00:19:29,160
Speaker 1: throat and the lungs, but in the ability to consciously

343
00:19:29,359 --> 00:19:33,520
Speaker 1: control the use of breath. And this is interesting to

344
00:19:33,520 --> 00:19:36,040
Speaker 1: me because I think I've asked this on the show before.

345
00:19:36,160 --> 00:19:40,840
Speaker 1: But why are some body processes controlled entirely by the

346
00:19:40,960 --> 00:19:46,000
Speaker 1: unconscious nervous system while others are conscious and others can

347
00:19:46,040 --> 00:19:50,200
Speaker 1: be toggled on and off between conscious and unconscious control,

348
00:19:50,640 --> 00:19:54,360
Speaker 1: Like you can't consciously toggle on and off your digestion

349
00:19:55,040 --> 00:19:58,400
Speaker 1: or your heart beat or your metabolism. But even though

350
00:19:58,600 --> 00:20:01,840
Speaker 1: most of the time you're breathing is unconscious and automatic,

351
00:20:01,960 --> 00:20:05,919
Speaker 1: you can take it over with your executive control and

352
00:20:05,960 --> 00:20:08,800
Speaker 1: consciously toggle your breath on and off if you want to,

353
00:20:08,880 --> 00:20:11,960
Speaker 1: Like what causes this difference? Yeah, I mean, if memory

354
00:20:12,080 --> 00:20:15,440
Speaker 1: serves me correctly, thinking back to our John C. Lily

355
00:20:15,480 --> 00:20:20,160
Speaker 1: episodes in the past, Uh, dolphins uh have such manual

356
00:20:20,200 --> 00:20:25,679
Speaker 1: control over their breathing that they can arguably decide to

357
00:20:25,760 --> 00:20:29,600
Speaker 1: just shut it down and to drown themselves. Yeah. Well,

358
00:20:29,640 --> 00:20:31,480
Speaker 1: I mean that would be an example that would sort

359
00:20:31,480 --> 00:20:34,800
Speaker 1: of go with her hypothesis, right. The idea is that, uh,

360
00:20:34,880 --> 00:20:37,680
Speaker 1: the only reason we would be able to evolve this

361
00:20:37,800 --> 00:20:41,080
Speaker 1: conscious control of our breath is if our past ancestors

362
00:20:41,080 --> 00:20:43,800
Speaker 1: were shaped by a selection pressure that favored the ability

363
00:20:43,840 --> 00:20:47,000
Speaker 1: to like hold the breath and dive underwater. She says,

364
00:20:47,040 --> 00:20:48,760
Speaker 1: this would explain a lot. I do think that's a

365
00:20:48,800 --> 00:20:52,280
Speaker 1: really interesting question of why we can do that. I'm

366
00:20:52,280 --> 00:20:54,440
Speaker 1: not sure I'm going to go along with her on

367
00:20:54,560 --> 00:20:59,920
Speaker 1: this being an exclusively human and aquatic mammal trade because

368
00:21:00,119 --> 00:21:02,720
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've seen videos of dogs diving deep

369
00:21:02,800 --> 00:21:06,240
Speaker 1: underwater and other mammals doing that. It seems that they

370
00:21:06,240 --> 00:21:08,399
Speaker 1: have some kind of ability to hold their breath and

371
00:21:08,440 --> 00:21:12,639
Speaker 1: they're not semi aquatic. Mammals. Yeah, I would agree with that. Okay,

372
00:21:12,680 --> 00:21:17,680
Speaker 1: another thing, she says, how about hydrodynamics, we are anatomically streamlined.

373
00:21:18,080 --> 00:21:20,000
Speaker 1: Do you ever think about why is the human body

374
00:21:20,080 --> 00:21:23,200
Speaker 1: basically a straight line? Why are we sort of dart

375
00:21:23,240 --> 00:21:27,320
Speaker 1: shaped where we can dive smoothly into the water? She says, quote,

376
00:21:27,320 --> 00:21:32,560
Speaker 1: try to imagine a gorilla diving into water. I think

377
00:21:32,560 --> 00:21:35,560
Speaker 1: I've seen it done in a cartoon. But that's about it. Well,

378
00:21:35,880 --> 00:21:38,200
Speaker 1: it's like a cannonball, right and make a big splash.

379
00:21:38,760 --> 00:21:42,840
Speaker 1: Morgan says, we're halfway between being a chimp into fish

380
00:21:42,880 --> 00:21:46,399
Speaker 1: and so Morgan, after marshaling this evidence, she says that

381
00:21:46,480 --> 00:21:49,800
Speaker 1: she wants to insist the idea is not lunatic fringe.

382
00:21:50,560 --> 00:21:53,960
Speaker 1: And I'd say I largely agree. I think it's probably wrong,

383
00:21:54,200 --> 00:21:57,440
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's like the ancient aliens hypothesis

384
00:21:57,520 --> 00:22:01,760
Speaker 1: or something. I think it is, and it straineous hypothesis

385
00:22:01,760 --> 00:22:04,719
Speaker 1: that that we don't really need to resort to, and

386
00:22:04,760 --> 00:22:09,560
Speaker 1: so it's not parsimonious. But I think it's like reasonable

387
00:22:09,680 --> 00:22:12,800
Speaker 1: to play around with this idea. Yeah, yeah, I would

388
00:22:12,840 --> 00:22:17,880
Speaker 1: agree it is certainly not ancient aliens. Uh, But there

389
00:22:17,920 --> 00:22:21,520
Speaker 1: are some some issues, some some problems and some gaps

390
00:22:21,520 --> 00:22:25,000
Speaker 1: that have not been filled in by uh fossil evidence

391
00:22:25,040 --> 00:22:27,600
Speaker 1: for example. Right, But the real question is, like, what

392
00:22:27,720 --> 00:22:31,879
Speaker 1: is the substance of the critique from biology and paleo anthropology.

393
00:22:31,960 --> 00:22:36,479
Speaker 1: Why would they not accept this hypothesis. So, starting with

394
00:22:36,520 --> 00:22:40,240
Speaker 1: a few answers, probably the biggest weakness for the hypothesis is,

395
00:22:40,440 --> 00:22:42,720
Speaker 1: and this might sound kind of silly when we say it,

396
00:22:42,800 --> 00:22:47,160
Speaker 1: but there's no direct evidence for it. There's no fossil

397
00:22:47,200 --> 00:22:51,560
Speaker 1: evidence whatsoever that we've ever had any instance of an

398
00:22:51,600 --> 00:22:55,119
Speaker 1: aquatic humanoid. Right, show me the remains of the aquatic humanoid,

399
00:22:55,680 --> 00:22:58,600
Speaker 1: and it is the directive, and we do not have

400
00:22:58,680 --> 00:23:01,880
Speaker 1: an answer. Yeah, nothing like that now. So this means

401
00:23:01,880 --> 00:23:05,600
Speaker 1: it's all inference and speculation. It doesn't make it necessarily

402
00:23:05,600 --> 00:23:08,840
Speaker 1: wrong because we're talking about the ancient past, and sometimes

403
00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:11,600
Speaker 1: when we're trying to figure stuff out about the ancient past,

404
00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:14,760
Speaker 1: we don't have direct evidence. Sometimes we're just in that

405
00:23:14,840 --> 00:23:18,320
Speaker 1: situation and all you've got is inference and speculation. So

406
00:23:18,400 --> 00:23:21,679
Speaker 1: you just try to find the best most plausible inferenceance

407
00:23:21,680 --> 00:23:25,439
Speaker 1: speculation to form your ideas around. But we have to

408
00:23:25,480 --> 00:23:28,000
Speaker 1: acknowledge that there is no direct evidence for it. And

409
00:23:28,040 --> 00:23:30,480
Speaker 1: so it's kind of in a weak starting place. Physical

410
00:23:30,520 --> 00:23:33,600
Speaker 1: evidence would make a huge difference. Now I came across

411
00:23:33,720 --> 00:23:37,360
Speaker 1: another criticism of the aquatic a hypothesis by the paleo

412
00:23:37,359 --> 00:23:41,720
Speaker 1: anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin Madison. Uh.

413
00:23:41,800 --> 00:23:44,879
Speaker 1: He runs a popular paleo anthropology blog, and he put

414
00:23:44,920 --> 00:23:48,119
Speaker 1: a post on his blog about this idea. Uh. Some

415
00:23:48,200 --> 00:23:50,400
Speaker 1: of the points he makes are are pretty interesting. One

416
00:23:50,400 --> 00:23:53,120
Speaker 1: of the things is that Hawks claims the aquatic ap

417
00:23:53,160 --> 00:23:58,919
Speaker 1: hypothesis is not parsimonious. Now, parsimony refers to the idea

418
00:23:59,080 --> 00:24:01,840
Speaker 1: of the number of assumptions you have to make without

419
00:24:01,920 --> 00:24:05,560
Speaker 1: evidence in order to entertain a hypothesis. So, for a

420
00:24:05,640 --> 00:24:08,760
Speaker 1: quick example, imagine you leave a sandwich sitting on your

421
00:24:08,760 --> 00:24:11,520
Speaker 1: desk at work. You walk away for a minute, you

422
00:24:11,600 --> 00:24:14,760
Speaker 1: come back, there is a human bite shaped chunk of

423
00:24:14,800 --> 00:24:18,800
Speaker 1: the sandwich missing. Okay, Now you look around, everybody's just

424
00:24:18,880 --> 00:24:22,200
Speaker 1: working like normal. No, no direct evidence of what happened.

425
00:24:22,359 --> 00:24:24,800
Speaker 1: So you have to make an inference. Right by the way,

426
00:24:24,800 --> 00:24:28,840
Speaker 1: I am picturing the scenario taking place in the movie Leviathan,

427
00:24:29,240 --> 00:24:33,240
Speaker 1: that those coworkers right, So, yeah, did did Daniel Stern

428
00:24:33,359 --> 00:24:35,920
Speaker 1: take a bite out of your sandwich or what happened.

429
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:39,680
Speaker 1: Since there's no unusual behavior, no sign of anything wrong,

430
00:24:39,840 --> 00:24:42,000
Speaker 1: you've just got to come up with a hypothesis that

431
00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:45,560
Speaker 1: seems reasonable. Now, you could hypothesize that Daniel Stern or

432
00:24:45,560 --> 00:24:47,560
Speaker 1: another one of your co workers took a bite out

433
00:24:47,600 --> 00:24:52,160
Speaker 1: of the sandwich. Or you could hypothesize that a polar

434
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:56,840
Speaker 1: bear snuck into your office undetected, and this was a

435
00:24:56,880 --> 00:25:00,119
Speaker 1: polar bear that had undergone a surgical body modification and

436
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:03,720
Speaker 1: so that its mouth had an uncharacteristically human shaped bite,

437
00:25:04,200 --> 00:25:06,080
Speaker 1: and then it took a bite out of your sandwich

438
00:25:06,119 --> 00:25:09,280
Speaker 1: with its surgical human mouth, and it didn't like it,

439
00:25:09,359 --> 00:25:12,560
Speaker 1: and it snuck away without being noticed. Yeah, that that

440
00:25:12,640 --> 00:25:16,920
Speaker 1: explanation is is much further removed from reality and requires

441
00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:19,560
Speaker 1: a number of different steps to get there. But like

442
00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:23,880
Speaker 1: the aquatic a hypothesis, it's internally consistent, right, I mean,

443
00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:27,480
Speaker 1: there's nothing on the face of it that makes that impossible.

444
00:25:28,119 --> 00:25:32,479
Speaker 1: It's just it requires a bunch of extra assumptions. Yeah, well,

445
00:25:32,480 --> 00:25:37,439
Speaker 1: I mean, like one, it's it's basically like any investigation, right, Like,

446
00:25:37,480 --> 00:25:41,840
Speaker 1: if you were investigating an actual sandwich incident in your workplace,

447
00:25:42,160 --> 00:25:44,320
Speaker 1: it's far more likely that someone in the office, did

448
00:25:44,359 --> 00:25:47,280
Speaker 1: it than someone from a neighboring office who would have

449
00:25:47,440 --> 00:25:51,320
Speaker 1: a harder time accessing the location in which the sandwich

450
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:54,080
Speaker 1: is stored. Yeah, then you'd also have to hypothesize them

451
00:25:54,119 --> 00:25:56,760
Speaker 1: sneaking in and all that. Right, And like, the further

452
00:25:56,840 --> 00:26:01,639
Speaker 1: away you get from the sandwich from your office, the

453
00:26:01,720 --> 00:26:04,040
Speaker 1: more to leap it becomes. Right. So the main reason

454
00:26:04,119 --> 00:26:07,280
Speaker 1: you'd favor the coworker hypothesis is that you have to

455
00:26:07,320 --> 00:26:11,600
Speaker 1: make many fewer assumptions without evidence to assume it. And

456
00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:14,680
Speaker 1: so at first glance, this kind of thinking can make

457
00:26:14,760 --> 00:26:18,200
Speaker 1: something like the aquatic a hypothesis look good actually, because hey,

458
00:26:18,200 --> 00:26:21,600
Speaker 1: wait a minute, it's just one assumption you have to

459
00:26:21,640 --> 00:26:24,719
Speaker 1: make in order to explain all this different stuff. But

460
00:26:24,880 --> 00:26:27,080
Speaker 1: the more you examine it, the more it becomes clear

461
00:26:27,119 --> 00:26:29,800
Speaker 1: that the aquatic a hypothesis actually requires a lot of

462
00:26:29,840 --> 00:26:32,760
Speaker 1: assumptions of things not in evidence that just sort of

463
00:26:32,800 --> 00:26:37,720
Speaker 1: get rolled up into one big scenario you're picturing. You

464
00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:42,879
Speaker 1: can say that all how about all evolutionary increments and

465
00:26:43,000 --> 00:26:45,959
Speaker 1: all steps in evolution of all creatures are caused by

466
00:26:45,960 --> 00:26:48,840
Speaker 1: the ghost of biology, which is a spirit that lives

467
00:26:48,840 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 1: in the sky that decides that a creature should change

468
00:26:52,040 --> 00:26:55,040
Speaker 1: and then makes little mutations to change it over time.

469
00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:59,000
Speaker 1: That's just one assumption that explains absolutely everything in biology.

470
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:02,320
Speaker 1: But yeah, but it's a bit assumption that that defies

471
00:27:02,440 --> 00:27:04,200
Speaker 1: or at least goes beyond the laws of science. It's

472
00:27:04,240 --> 00:27:06,520
Speaker 1: like saying a ghost took a bite out of the sandwich.

473
00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:09,960
Speaker 1: It's only one step, but it's a step that that

474
00:27:10,119 --> 00:27:15,000
Speaker 1: goes beyond, uh, the scientific understanding of the workplace or

475
00:27:15,160 --> 00:27:19,080
Speaker 1: the world itself. But then actually Hawks makes another point

476
00:27:19,240 --> 00:27:21,800
Speaker 1: that I think is a crucial extension of this idea.

477
00:27:21,840 --> 00:27:24,800
Speaker 1: So it's not just what we've already mentioned about some

478
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:29,160
Speaker 1: types of assumptions appearing parsimonious but actually requiring a lot

479
00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:31,920
Speaker 1: of assumptions even though they only seem to be one scenario.

480
00:27:32,280 --> 00:27:35,639
Speaker 1: Hawks actually shows a second way that it's not parsimonious,

481
00:27:35,680 --> 00:27:39,040
Speaker 1: and he writes, quote, certainly, it makes sense that hominids

482
00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:42,680
Speaker 1: would develop new anatomies to adapt to such an alien environment.

483
00:27:42,680 --> 00:27:45,760
Speaker 1: He's talking about adapting to the water. But once those

484
00:27:45,800 --> 00:27:51,200
Speaker 1: hominids return to land, forsaking their aquatic homeland, the same

485
00:27:51,280 --> 00:27:54,040
Speaker 1: features that were adaptive in the water would now be

486
00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:58,960
Speaker 1: maladaptive on land. What would prevent those hominids from reverting

487
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:02,360
Speaker 1: to the features of their land based ancestors, as well

488
00:28:02,400 --> 00:28:06,640
Speaker 1: as nearly every other medium sized land mammal. More than

489
00:28:06,680 --> 00:28:10,119
Speaker 1: simple phylogenetic inertia is required to explain this, since the

490
00:28:10,240 --> 00:28:13,760
Speaker 1: very reasons that the aquatic ape theory rejects the savannah

491
00:28:13,800 --> 00:28:17,240
Speaker 1: model would apply to the descendants of the aquatic apes

492
00:28:17,400 --> 00:28:20,960
Speaker 1: once they moved to the savannah. This is far from trivial,

493
00:28:21,040 --> 00:28:24,720
Speaker 1: since fossil hominids did inhabit open woodland starting by eight

494
00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:27,760
Speaker 1: million years ago and did move to the open savannah

495
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:31,160
Speaker 1: by three million years ago. Okay, so the idea here

496
00:28:31,200 --> 00:28:34,119
Speaker 1: is that want you could maybe reasonably make the argument

497
00:28:34,160 --> 00:28:36,560
Speaker 1: that all right, the aquatic humanoids move out of the water,

498
00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:38,640
Speaker 1: but they're still living close enough to the water. There's

499
00:28:38,680 --> 00:28:41,040
Speaker 1: still going in the water. Uh, you know, there's still

500
00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:43,920
Speaker 1: a coastal species. You can say, well, maybe they retain

501
00:28:44,040 --> 00:28:46,719
Speaker 1: some of those features. But if they're moving further inland,

502
00:28:46,720 --> 00:28:50,040
Speaker 1: if they're becoming an inland species of savannah species, then

503
00:28:50,400 --> 00:28:54,320
Speaker 1: they wouldn't need those adaptations anymore. The the the economy

504
00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:57,719
Speaker 1: of natural selection would drive those away. Yeah. One thing

505
00:28:57,760 --> 00:29:00,440
Speaker 1: to be clear about here is that a very commonly

506
00:29:00,600 --> 00:29:05,240
Speaker 1: still believed but actually now obsolete. Hypothesis is the idea

507
00:29:05,360 --> 00:29:09,840
Speaker 1: that anatomical modernity in human beings evolved on the savannah,

508
00:29:09,840 --> 00:29:13,080
Speaker 1: that we became basically the animals we are now on

509
00:29:13,120 --> 00:29:16,200
Speaker 1: the savannah landscape. That used to be believed, and now

510
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:19,120
Speaker 1: that's not true anymore. What what generally is believed is

511
00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:23,560
Speaker 1: that we became basically Homo sapiens in a woodland environment

512
00:29:23,920 --> 00:29:28,000
Speaker 1: in some you know, basically a tree oriented existence, and

513
00:29:28,040 --> 00:29:31,440
Speaker 1: then later moved to the savannah. Now, the aquatic a

514
00:29:31,600 --> 00:29:34,760
Speaker 1: hypothesis is saying, no, somewhere in there, before we got

515
00:29:34,800 --> 00:29:38,720
Speaker 1: to the savannah, we were in the water if if

516
00:29:38,760 --> 00:29:41,959
Speaker 1: that's true, though, we eventually moved back to the savannah,

517
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 1: and these traits that we've still got had to somehow

518
00:29:45,760 --> 00:29:48,680
Speaker 1: be adaptive to the savannah. So why aren't you just

519
00:29:48,760 --> 00:29:52,880
Speaker 1: assuming that they're the traits that were adaptive on the savannah. Yeah,

520
00:29:53,160 --> 00:29:55,600
Speaker 1: this is this is a strong point. Yeah, and so

521
00:29:55,920 --> 00:29:58,800
Speaker 1: to continue, hawks says quote. In other words, the aquatic

522
00:29:58,800 --> 00:30:02,120
Speaker 1: ape theory exp blaines all of these features, but it

523
00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:07,200
Speaker 1: explains them all twice. Every one of the features encompassed

524
00:30:07,200 --> 00:30:10,440
Speaker 1: by the theory still requires a reason for it to

525
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:15,840
Speaker 1: be maintained after hominids left the aquatic environment. So it

526
00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:18,880
Speaker 1: feels like it becomes less of an exercise and explaining

527
00:30:18,920 --> 00:30:22,280
Speaker 1: what we are with this aquatic explanation, and it becomes

528
00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:26,920
Speaker 1: more about shoehorning the aquatic period into our evolutionary history.

529
00:30:26,960 --> 00:30:28,800
Speaker 1: Another thing I think we should do is just look

530
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:31,960
Speaker 1: a little bit closer at some of those individual planks

531
00:30:31,960 --> 00:30:34,840
Speaker 1: of the argument that people like Hardy and Morgan brought up,

532
00:30:34,840 --> 00:30:37,680
Speaker 1: because a lot of them they sound so synsical, right,

533
00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:40,960
Speaker 1: They sound very, very truthy at a distance, but they

534
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:43,680
Speaker 1: become a lot weaker, I think once you start looking

535
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:48,880
Speaker 1: up close at them. For example, the idea of hairlessness. Right,

536
00:30:49,320 --> 00:30:53,960
Speaker 1: Morgan talks about the strong link between aquatic existence in

537
00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:56,960
Speaker 1: mammals and hairlessness. Now, first of all, I think it's

538
00:30:56,960 --> 00:31:01,320
Speaker 1: worth pointing out that we are not hairless. It's true.

539
00:31:01,400 --> 00:31:04,360
Speaker 1: We do have hair, some more than others, but it's there. Yeah,

540
00:31:04,480 --> 00:31:06,960
Speaker 1: Our body hair coverage is not total. It's not nearly

541
00:31:07,080 --> 00:31:09,480
Speaker 1: at the level of the other great apes, but neither

542
00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:11,320
Speaker 1: is the body hair coat. You know, the body hair

543
00:31:11,360 --> 00:31:14,320
Speaker 1: coverage of other great apes is also not total. Our

544
00:31:14,360 --> 00:31:17,000
Speaker 1: hair patterns are different, but we do still have a

545
00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:20,440
Speaker 1: pretty decent amount of natural body hair. Also, the distinction

546
00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:24,040
Speaker 1: between hairy land dwelling mammals and smooth aquatic mammals isn't

547
00:31:24,040 --> 00:31:27,320
Speaker 1: as start stark as Morgan suggests. Now she does to

548
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:30,400
Speaker 1: be fair acknowledge otters and stuff like that, But there

549
00:31:30,400 --> 00:31:35,600
Speaker 1: are also so many other hairy and furry semi aquatic mammals.

550
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:39,520
Speaker 1: We mentioned furry beavers, but there's also the furry platypus,

551
00:31:39,560 --> 00:31:43,600
Speaker 1: the water opossum, which is furry alan swamp monkey, which

552
00:31:43,640 --> 00:31:46,320
Speaker 1: is native Central Africa. It's covered in brown, gray, and

553
00:31:46,400 --> 00:31:51,200
Speaker 1: green fur. Semi Aquatic cats, semi aquatic her pestids like

554
00:31:51,240 --> 00:31:54,320
Speaker 1: the crab eating mongoose. You've got polar bears that we

555
00:31:54,400 --> 00:31:58,840
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. You've got water diving bats. So a semi

556
00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:02,640
Speaker 1: aquatic lifestyle clearly doesn't always lead to the loss of

557
00:32:02,680 --> 00:32:06,960
Speaker 1: hair or fur. Furthermore, there are other hypotheses that could

558
00:32:07,040 --> 00:32:11,160
Speaker 1: explain why we have relatively less hair than our closest relatives.

559
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:15,000
Speaker 1: So there was an explainer in Scientific American where a

560
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:18,600
Speaker 1: researcher named Mark Pagel, the head of the Evolutionary biology

561
00:32:18,600 --> 00:32:21,479
Speaker 1: group at the University of Reading in England and the

562
00:32:21,600 --> 00:32:25,719
Speaker 1: editor of the Encyclopedia of Evolution explained some recent thinking.

563
00:32:26,680 --> 00:32:29,160
Speaker 1: One of the most common ideas about why humans lost

564
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:32,160
Speaker 1: a lot of their body hair has to do with thermoregulation.

565
00:32:32,640 --> 00:32:34,720
Speaker 1: It says we lost a lot of body hair because

566
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:38,080
Speaker 1: we needed a better way to keep cool. Now, this

567
00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:40,840
Speaker 1: could have been a pressure introduced by other changes in

568
00:32:40,840 --> 00:32:44,680
Speaker 1: our ancestors survival needs. Maybe if we migrated from a

569
00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:49,200
Speaker 1: cooler climate like underneath a thick tree canopy to a

570
00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:53,160
Speaker 1: hotter climate like an open sun exposed woodland or a savannah,

571
00:32:53,480 --> 00:32:56,240
Speaker 1: we might need to lose the hair. Or if our

572
00:32:56,280 --> 00:33:01,720
Speaker 1: survival niche became more oriented around intense prolonged exercise, such

573
00:33:01,720 --> 00:33:07,360
Speaker 1: as the prolonged chasing of prey animals. Yeah, exactly. Another explanation.

574
00:33:07,600 --> 00:33:11,800
Speaker 1: This one's pretty interesting to me. Parasite resistance. Oh yeah,

575
00:33:11,800 --> 00:33:14,080
Speaker 1: because when you think of of animals with hair, you

576
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:17,840
Speaker 1: think of the various nasty parasites that can be crawling

577
00:33:17,840 --> 00:33:20,960
Speaker 1: around in there. I mean, we've talked about the the

578
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:25,280
Speaker 1: extent to which mammalian, especially primate social bonding is based

579
00:33:25,320 --> 00:33:29,360
Speaker 1: around grooming, sitting around and picking stuff out of other

580
00:33:29,400 --> 00:33:32,800
Speaker 1: people's hair. Yeah, and you think of the constant thread

581
00:33:32,800 --> 00:33:35,640
Speaker 1: of lice. I mean, my child is in an elementary school,

582
00:33:35,680 --> 00:33:38,760
Speaker 1: so that the threat of that the head lies explosion

583
00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:42,920
Speaker 1: uh is always there. Uh. So by by losing the

584
00:33:42,960 --> 00:33:44,840
Speaker 1: body here, we've kind of what driven the lice to

585
00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 1: the head in the pubic region, right, Yeah, I mean

586
00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:50,960
Speaker 1: they should solve that by having just like grooming time

587
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:52,920
Speaker 1: where the kids sit around and pick lice out of

588
00:33:52,920 --> 00:33:55,920
Speaker 1: each other's hair. They probably go for that. Kids are

589
00:33:56,000 --> 00:34:00,440
Speaker 1: chriss So Pagel and a colleague named Walter bottom Or

590
00:34:00,520 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 1: published research in two thousand three in Royal Society Biology

591
00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:08,759
Speaker 1: Letters supporting the hypothesis that we lost our body hair

592
00:34:08,840 --> 00:34:13,200
Speaker 1: to protect ourselves against parasites as as we all know.

593
00:34:13,320 --> 00:34:15,840
Speaker 1: You know, ticks and lice and biting flies. They all

594
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:18,480
Speaker 1: make this happy home in thick body hair. They love it.

595
00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:22,279
Speaker 1: And these ectoparasites are not only annoying, they can spread disease.

596
00:34:22,520 --> 00:34:25,319
Speaker 1: Like we don't want our kids to get lice, but

597
00:34:26,000 --> 00:34:28,879
Speaker 1: lots of these kinds of parasites are are worse than lice.

598
00:34:29,000 --> 00:34:31,640
Speaker 1: They can give you something that will kill you. Yeah,

599
00:34:31,640 --> 00:34:34,520
Speaker 1: I just I'll direct our listeners back to our episode

600
00:34:34,520 --> 00:34:38,360
Speaker 1: on on on ticks if you want some more information there.

601
00:34:39,760 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 1: But here's something interesting to think about. Once our ancient

602
00:34:43,120 --> 00:34:49,000
Speaker 1: ancestors could build fires and construct clothing, suddenly they just

603
00:34:49,160 --> 00:34:51,920
Speaker 1: did not need as much hair to keep warm at

604
00:34:52,000 --> 00:34:55,560
Speaker 1: night when it got cold. But the hair could still

605
00:34:55,560 --> 00:34:59,000
Speaker 1: serve as a refuge for these disease spreading parasites. So

606
00:34:59,080 --> 00:35:01,720
Speaker 1: once you can build fires, and once you can wear

607
00:35:01,800 --> 00:35:04,920
Speaker 1: other animal skins and stuff is clothing, there would have

608
00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:08,719
Speaker 1: been a pressure against body hair, because body hair is

609
00:35:08,760 --> 00:35:12,880
Speaker 1: this parasite vulnerability without much comparative benefit to make up

610
00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:15,600
Speaker 1: for it. If you can keep warm anyway, why have

611
00:35:15,719 --> 00:35:19,759
Speaker 1: this parasite vulnerability hanging around. Yeah, Like when we were

612
00:35:19,760 --> 00:35:24,040
Speaker 1: talking about aquatic apes supposedly returning to the land, like

613
00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:26,320
Speaker 1: I instantly thought, well, when I get out of a shower,

614
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:29,120
Speaker 1: I grab a towel. So perhaps you know, the the

615
00:35:29,200 --> 00:35:33,239
Speaker 1: naked ape emerges, it murders a hairy animal of some

616
00:35:33,320 --> 00:35:36,920
Speaker 1: pomp of some form, puts on its fur. Like it's

617
00:35:36,960 --> 00:35:39,279
Speaker 1: one thing to think of that, but then this, the

618
00:35:39,280 --> 00:35:43,680
Speaker 1: the use of fire technology, would be an even greater step. Yeah, So,

619
00:35:43,760 --> 00:35:47,200
Speaker 1: Pagel writes, quote, human lice infections, which are confined to

620
00:35:47,239 --> 00:35:49,759
Speaker 1: the hairy areas of our bodies, seem to support the

621
00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:54,280
Speaker 1: parasite hypothesis. Naked mole rats, animals that can be described

622
00:35:54,320 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: as resembling quote, overcooked sausages with buck teeth, also seem

623
00:35:59,239 --> 00:36:02,480
Speaker 1: to support the theory. They live underground in large colonies

624
00:36:02,520 --> 00:36:06,000
Speaker 1: in which parasites would be readily transmitted, but the combined

625
00:36:06,120 --> 00:36:10,400
Speaker 1: warmth of their bodies and the confined underground space probably

626
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:13,160
Speaker 1: negate the problem of losing heat to cold air for

627
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:17,200
Speaker 1: these animals, allowing them also to become naked. So the

628
00:36:17,280 --> 00:36:21,080
Speaker 1: same kind of like other warmth sources that could have

629
00:36:21,120 --> 00:36:24,640
Speaker 1: selected for body hair loss in humans, could also select

630
00:36:24,680 --> 00:36:28,440
Speaker 1: for body hair loss in naked mole rats, and then

631
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:32,920
Speaker 1: there's a totally different kind of answer sexual selection. Sexual

632
00:36:32,920 --> 00:36:37,560
Speaker 1: selection occurs when a pressure on some type of trait

633
00:36:37,680 --> 00:36:40,240
Speaker 1: in the body is selected for, not because it provides

634
00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:43,680
Speaker 1: a survival advantage, but because members of the opposite sex

635
00:36:43,800 --> 00:36:48,120
Speaker 1: prefer to breed with people possessing that that trait, and so,

636
00:36:48,280 --> 00:36:52,680
Speaker 1: like the peacock's tail, relatively smooth and hairless skin could

637
00:36:52,680 --> 00:36:55,400
Speaker 1: have been selected for because it's a way to advertise

638
00:36:55,440 --> 00:36:57,759
Speaker 1: to mates that you have good health and a lack

639
00:36:57,800 --> 00:37:00,799
Speaker 1: of parasites. It's a way of showing off that you

640
00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:03,719
Speaker 1: don't have parasites on you. Yeah, I hadn't really thought

641
00:37:03,760 --> 00:37:08,040
Speaker 1: about that, but but yeah, you have a hairless, shirtless

642
00:37:08,120 --> 00:37:11,439
Speaker 1: so hominid walking around it showing showing itself off and saying, look,

643
00:37:11,480 --> 00:37:13,600
Speaker 1: do you how many bites do you see? How many?

644
00:37:13,640 --> 00:37:16,520
Speaker 1: How many crawling parasites do you? Say? None? I'm a

645
00:37:16,560 --> 00:37:19,520
Speaker 1: desirable mate, I mean good shape. Yeah, here's the question

646
00:37:19,560 --> 00:37:21,319
Speaker 1: I actually don't know the answer to this. Is there

647
00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:25,480
Speaker 1: a reason I can't think of hairy body builders? Is that, like,

648
00:37:25,640 --> 00:37:28,440
Speaker 1: is there a biological reason that like super muscle e

649
00:37:28,600 --> 00:37:30,719
Speaker 1: dudes don't have hair on their chests or do they

650
00:37:30,719 --> 00:37:33,680
Speaker 1: shave it off or what I think generally what's happening

651
00:37:33,719 --> 00:37:36,799
Speaker 1: is they're they're having it waxed, Yeah, so they can

652
00:37:36,840 --> 00:37:38,720
Speaker 1: better show off the muscles. I mean, there are plenty

653
00:37:38,719 --> 00:37:42,880
Speaker 1: of muscular Harry dudes. I mean you can do a

654
00:37:42,920 --> 00:37:45,680
Speaker 1: search on that and you will get some answers. But yeah,

655
00:37:46,120 --> 00:37:48,719
Speaker 1: but yeah, my understanding is that it's a it's about

656
00:37:48,760 --> 00:37:50,719
Speaker 1: waxing of the body hair so that you can show

657
00:37:50,719 --> 00:37:53,200
Speaker 1: off the muscle. I'm just thinking about like the movie

658
00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:57,200
Speaker 1: Pumping Iron, where there's just like it's just really really smooth.

659
00:37:57,400 --> 00:38:01,160
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, you those guys are waxing in Shathan.

660
00:38:01,200 --> 00:38:03,759
Speaker 1: I'm sure. Well, anyway, it's not clear to me that

661
00:38:03,800 --> 00:38:06,800
Speaker 1: there's an obvious winner among the proposed ideas about how

662
00:38:06,880 --> 00:38:10,160
Speaker 1: we lost our body hair. But uh, any any of

663
00:38:10,160 --> 00:38:13,399
Speaker 1: these are still viable ideas awaiting the arrival of new

664
00:38:13,440 --> 00:38:16,799
Speaker 1: supporting evidence. And so I don't see a reason that

665
00:38:16,960 --> 00:38:20,520
Speaker 1: the aquatic a hypothesis is like a better alternative that

666
00:38:20,600 --> 00:38:23,320
Speaker 1: you have to go to now to address another plank

667
00:38:23,320 --> 00:38:26,719
Speaker 1: of the argument, the bipedality like that's also a great

668
00:38:26,760 --> 00:38:29,400
Speaker 1: ongoing debate. The old theory, of course, was that we

669
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:31,840
Speaker 1: had to stand up to see over tall grass on

670
00:38:31,880 --> 00:38:34,600
Speaker 1: the savannah. That's been debunked. Now we you know, we

671
00:38:34,600 --> 00:38:38,560
Speaker 1: were in a more woodland type environment when we when

672
00:38:38,600 --> 00:38:42,120
Speaker 1: we evolved bipedality. But anyway, what made us stand upright

673
00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:45,000
Speaker 1: in that woodland environment? Charles Darwin thought we might have

674
00:38:45,040 --> 00:38:48,279
Speaker 1: evolved bipedalism to free up our hands for tool use.

675
00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:52,480
Speaker 1: This seems unlikely, since there's fossil evidence for bipedalism from

676
00:38:52,520 --> 00:38:55,600
Speaker 1: before we have evidence of ancient tools. But there are

677
00:38:55,640 --> 00:38:59,960
Speaker 1: other ideas, like perhaps bipedalism emerged from a gathering lifestyle

678
00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:03,080
Speaker 1: where our ancestors began to walk on two legs so

679
00:39:03,080 --> 00:39:06,440
Speaker 1: they could use two arms to carry things. Uh. This

680
00:39:06,480 --> 00:39:10,040
Speaker 1: seems possible given observations that chimpanzees tend to walk on

681
00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:13,320
Speaker 1: two legs and use two arms to carry food items

682
00:39:13,320 --> 00:39:17,480
Speaker 1: that they consider rare or having great value. Now, going

683
00:39:17,480 --> 00:39:20,400
Speaker 1: back to Morgan's argument about bipedality, she says, you know,

684
00:39:20,480 --> 00:39:23,120
Speaker 1: wind to our closest tape, relatives walk on two legs.

685
00:39:23,120 --> 00:39:25,959
Speaker 1: She says, they always walk on two legs when they're

686
00:39:25,960 --> 00:39:29,080
Speaker 1: wading through water, and that's the only time they always

687
00:39:29,080 --> 00:39:33,000
Speaker 1: walk on two legs. Uh. This is apparently not true, because,

688
00:39:33,080 --> 00:39:35,640
Speaker 1: as we've said, like, chimpanzees will walk on two legs

689
00:39:35,680 --> 00:39:39,000
Speaker 1: and use two arms if they're carrying something valuable. Also,

690
00:39:39,120 --> 00:39:41,200
Speaker 1: I was like, well, let's let's see. I bet there's

691
00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:44,160
Speaker 1: video of gorillas wading through water on the internet. I

692
00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:47,720
Speaker 1: looked it up. Uh, nope, I mean, there are lots

693
00:39:47,719 --> 00:39:50,560
Speaker 1: of videos of guerrillas waiting in the water, and most

694
00:39:50,640 --> 00:39:53,040
Speaker 1: of the time they're doing it on four legs. I mean,

695
00:39:53,080 --> 00:39:55,520
Speaker 1: there are a few instances where they'd rear up on

696
00:39:55,560 --> 00:39:59,279
Speaker 1: two legs. Uh. So this doesn't totally disprove the hypothesis,

697
00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:02,000
Speaker 1: but it really kind of undermines this plank of it. Well,

698
00:40:02,040 --> 00:40:04,040
Speaker 1: I mean it makes sense because if you're going into

699
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:06,600
Speaker 1: the water, there's a good chance you you want to

700
00:40:06,719 --> 00:40:10,799
Speaker 1: use your hands to feel for things. And granted primates

701
00:40:10,880 --> 00:40:14,960
Speaker 1: don't have exactly the same hand foot scenario is humans,

702
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:17,520
Speaker 1: but you're probably going in there you want to feel

703
00:40:17,560 --> 00:40:19,080
Speaker 1: the feel around for the rocks. You want to feel

704
00:40:19,080 --> 00:40:22,040
Speaker 1: around for something that you're scavenging for, right, Yeah, exactly,

705
00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:25,400
Speaker 1: And so definitely guerillas will walk on four legs in

706
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:27,600
Speaker 1: the water. I've seen it. But I guess we have

707
00:40:27,640 --> 00:40:30,719
Speaker 1: to come back to this question of like, obviously we

708
00:40:30,760 --> 00:40:33,640
Speaker 1: can't wholly judge. I mean, it's it's possible that something

709
00:40:33,680 --> 00:40:36,960
Speaker 1: like the aquatic ape hypothesis has some grain of truth

710
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:40,960
Speaker 1: to it. But uh, if the biologists and paleo anthropologists

711
00:40:40,960 --> 00:40:45,320
Speaker 1: are correct that this hypothesis is wrong, it's not not parsimonious.

712
00:40:45,320 --> 00:40:48,160
Speaker 1: There's no reason to resort to it. Why is it

713
00:40:48,280 --> 00:40:51,239
Speaker 1: so tenacious? Like we have had lots of people right

714
00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:53,920
Speaker 1: to us and say, do the aquatic ape theory? You know,

715
00:40:54,040 --> 00:40:56,680
Speaker 1: we we want to hear about it. And it's not

716
00:40:56,719 --> 00:40:58,759
Speaker 1: that I don't think it's interesting to talk about, but

717
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:03,000
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not really taken seriously by experts in

718
00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:05,719
Speaker 1: the field. So why is it so captivating in the

719
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:08,480
Speaker 1: public imagination. Well, I think part of the answer is

720
00:41:08,640 --> 00:41:12,399
Speaker 1: our entire first episode, where we talked about our mythological

721
00:41:12,440 --> 00:41:15,680
Speaker 1: and fictional obsession with the idea of of humans that

722
00:41:15,719 --> 00:41:18,120
Speaker 1: live in the water, humans that live beneath the waves.

723
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:21,879
Speaker 1: But there is a there is a deep cultural attraction

724
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:25,120
Speaker 1: to that idea, and it kind of bleeds over into

725
00:41:25,160 --> 00:41:28,040
Speaker 1: aquatic aight theory sometimes. I mean even even in cases

726
00:41:28,080 --> 00:41:30,840
Speaker 1: when it's you know, it's not somebody saying, hey, I

727
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:33,680
Speaker 1: think mermaids are real and here's some science to pack

728
00:41:33,719 --> 00:41:36,239
Speaker 1: it up, right. Yeah, it's one of it's kind of

729
00:41:36,239 --> 00:41:38,960
Speaker 1: a sticky hypothesis. It's one of those things that, like

730
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:40,680
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I want to be fair to it.

731
00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:43,600
Speaker 1: I don't think it's like lunatic fringe. I don't think

732
00:41:43,640 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 1: it is ancient aliens, but I don't think there's a

733
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:48,960
Speaker 1: good reason to resort to it. But it's one of

734
00:41:48,960 --> 00:41:52,439
Speaker 1: those things that's just so interesting to the mind. It's

735
00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:56,200
Speaker 1: so fun to picture and so fun to entertain that

736
00:41:56,280 --> 00:41:59,800
Speaker 1: it's sort of like overrides our sense of disinterest in

737
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:04,320
Speaker 1: there things that seem, you know, not necessary to believe in. Uh.

738
00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:07,239
Speaker 1: There's actually a paper from nine in the Journal of

739
00:42:07,280 --> 00:42:11,840
Speaker 1: Human Evolution by John H. Langdon called Umbrella Hypotheses and

740
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:16,000
Speaker 1: Parsimony and Human Evolution a critique of the aquatic a hypothesis,

741
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:20,520
Speaker 1: and Langdon talks about this idea of these umbrella hypotheses,

742
00:42:20,920 --> 00:42:25,000
Speaker 1: which he says, our quote esthetically appealing because they appear

743
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:29,840
Speaker 1: to be parsimonious, so they're internally consistent. And by offering

744
00:42:29,920 --> 00:42:34,200
Speaker 1: this one umbrella hypothesis that explains a range of things,

745
00:42:35,239 --> 00:42:38,000
Speaker 1: and they appear to explain a whole lot, as we

746
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:41,560
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier, without making you, without requiring you

747
00:42:41,600 --> 00:42:45,040
Speaker 1: to assume a whole lot, but they actually are requiring

748
00:42:45,040 --> 00:42:48,120
Speaker 1: you to assume more than they appear to. And so,

749
00:42:48,239 --> 00:42:51,200
Speaker 1: in trying to explain why these types of ideas stay

750
00:42:51,239 --> 00:42:54,239
Speaker 1: popular with the public, he says, quote one reason for

751
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:57,279
Speaker 1: this is that simple answers, however wrong, are easier to

752
00:42:57,360 --> 00:43:00,640
Speaker 1: communicate and are more readily accept up to than the

753
00:43:00,680 --> 00:43:05,440
Speaker 1: more sound but more complex solutions. Evolutionary science must wrestle

754
00:43:05,480 --> 00:43:08,000
Speaker 1: with this problem, both in its own community and in

755
00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:10,640
Speaker 1: the education of the public. I agree, I mean, we

756
00:43:10,680 --> 00:43:13,120
Speaker 1: see we see this time and time again. It reminds

757
00:43:13,160 --> 00:43:17,480
Speaker 1: me of ongoing discussions regarding climate change, which we've discussed

758
00:43:17,480 --> 00:43:19,480
Speaker 1: on on the show, and just sort of the challenges

759
00:43:19,480 --> 00:43:22,239
Speaker 1: of science communication in general. Yeah, there are so many

760
00:43:22,280 --> 00:43:26,160
Speaker 1: ideas that just because they're simple to communicate and easy

761
00:43:26,280 --> 00:43:29,799
Speaker 1: to say and easy to remember, they there's almost like

762
00:43:29,840 --> 00:43:34,320
Speaker 1: a survival advantage they have. There's like a selection pressure

763
00:43:34,360 --> 00:43:38,240
Speaker 1: against things that are hard to explain, and a multiplication

764
00:43:38,840 --> 00:43:44,720
Speaker 1: incentive on ideas that are interesting visually to imagine and

765
00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:48,560
Speaker 1: have sort of like the the truthiness feeling, the feeling

766
00:43:48,600 --> 00:43:51,719
Speaker 1: of explaining a lot and are easy to communicate, and

767
00:43:51,760 --> 00:43:54,840
Speaker 1: I think the aquatic a hypothesis falls in that category. Yeah. Like,

768
00:43:54,880 --> 00:43:58,240
Speaker 1: for instance, I come back to what a physicist Brian

769
00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:02,480
Speaker 1: Green said about climb it science and the most recent

770
00:44:02,560 --> 00:44:05,080
Speaker 1: World Science Festival in New York. He talked about how

771
00:44:05,080 --> 00:44:06,880
Speaker 1: he decided, right, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna bone

772
00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:09,920
Speaker 1: up on climate science so that I can talk about

773
00:44:09,920 --> 00:44:12,080
Speaker 1: it and defend it. And he just he gave up

774
00:44:12,080 --> 00:44:14,400
Speaker 1: on it because and this is a this is a

775
00:44:14,440 --> 00:44:16,400
Speaker 1: lifetime of work. It's a lifetime of work, and this

776
00:44:16,440 --> 00:44:19,200
Speaker 1: is an accomplished physicist saying yeah, I can't. I can't

777
00:44:19,200 --> 00:44:21,160
Speaker 1: get up to speed on this in the way that

778
00:44:21,200 --> 00:44:23,400
Speaker 1: would be required for me to go to bat for

779
00:44:23,480 --> 00:44:27,960
Speaker 1: it against climate change deniers and so forth. So, but

780
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:29,759
Speaker 1: on the same hand, it seems like it would be

781
00:44:29,800 --> 00:44:33,279
Speaker 1: it would be far easier for Brian Green, uh, for

782
00:44:33,320 --> 00:44:36,760
Speaker 1: you or I as well to bone up on aquatic

783
00:44:36,800 --> 00:44:39,000
Speaker 1: ape theory. You know, if someone said, all right, Joe,

784
00:44:39,239 --> 00:44:42,680
Speaker 1: you're going on Fox News tomorrow to defend aquatic ape theory,

785
00:44:42,960 --> 00:44:45,520
Speaker 1: I could do it. Yeah. I mean I wouldn't want to,

786
00:44:45,560 --> 00:44:48,040
Speaker 1: but I could do it. Yeah, it's gotten his favor,

787
00:44:48,160 --> 00:44:50,839
Speaker 1: that truthiness gravity. Yeah, all right, And then now we're

788
00:44:50,840 --> 00:44:52,680
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,

789
00:44:52,800 --> 00:44:57,200
Speaker 1: we're going to talk to genetics a little bit. All right,

790
00:44:57,239 --> 00:45:00,840
Speaker 1: we're back. Hey. You know, so in the break, I

791
00:45:00,960 --> 00:45:04,040
Speaker 1: was just thinking about this. Uh. I wonder if I

792
00:45:04,400 --> 00:45:07,759
Speaker 1: have aquatic humanoids, if this, if this works true, would

793
00:45:07,760 --> 00:45:11,040
Speaker 1: they have an easier time urinating in the water? Best

794
00:45:11,120 --> 00:45:15,160
Speaker 1: off my conversation ever, No, I know what you're talking about,

795
00:45:15,320 --> 00:45:18,080
Speaker 1: Like you can kind of when somebody's peeing in the water,

796
00:45:18,200 --> 00:45:19,960
Speaker 1: you can, like you were saying, you can see it

797
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:22,120
Speaker 1: on their face. Yeah, there's a look there's a there's

798
00:45:22,200 --> 00:45:24,480
Speaker 1: kind of a stillness to the body. I mean in

799
00:45:24,600 --> 00:45:26,680
Speaker 1: my own case, like if I'm not in the pool,

800
00:45:26,719 --> 00:45:28,959
Speaker 1: but if I'm in the ocean or something, I feel

801
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:30,759
Speaker 1: like I I have a I have to really go

802
00:45:30,920 --> 00:45:33,719
Speaker 1: into a certain um you know, state of mind to

803
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:37,479
Speaker 1: pull it off, and I probably look like I'm peeing

804
00:45:37,520 --> 00:45:40,640
Speaker 1: in the ocean. Thanks a lot, Robert colluding the ocean

805
00:45:40,760 --> 00:45:42,560
Speaker 1: for the rest of us. Well, you know, the fish

806
00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:45,520
Speaker 1: do it, themur folk do it, so you know, why

807
00:45:45,560 --> 00:45:47,480
Speaker 1: should I have to walk back to the conduct. I

808
00:45:47,560 --> 00:45:49,759
Speaker 1: know exactly what you're talking about. There's this kind of

809
00:45:49,880 --> 00:45:52,400
Speaker 1: like you see people with like the the kind of

810
00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:55,160
Speaker 1: the eyes roll up and they kind of tents up

811
00:45:55,239 --> 00:45:57,560
Speaker 1: and grit their teeth a little bit. Yeah, So I

812
00:45:57,600 --> 00:46:00,239
Speaker 1: wonder if if this would be something if this would

813
00:46:00,239 --> 00:46:02,480
Speaker 1: be in favor of the aquatic ape, like it's something

814
00:46:02,600 --> 00:46:06,240
Speaker 1: that we lost that we would have lost upon returning

815
00:46:06,320 --> 00:46:08,680
Speaker 1: to land or is it just evidence that we were

816
00:46:08,760 --> 00:46:12,400
Speaker 1: never uh some sort of an aquatic commoned species that

817
00:46:12,640 --> 00:46:17,040
Speaker 1: was totally at ease peeing in the pool. Okay, let's

818
00:46:17,080 --> 00:46:20,800
Speaker 1: get beyond the aquatic ap hypothesis, which imagines this semi

819
00:46:20,920 --> 00:46:25,279
Speaker 1: aquatic UH period in human history. As as we've said,

820
00:46:25,640 --> 00:46:28,960
Speaker 1: we're not convinced by this idea. It's not absolutely impossible,

821
00:46:29,040 --> 00:46:31,520
Speaker 1: but I don't think there's a good reason to go there. However,

822
00:46:32,000 --> 00:46:35,760
Speaker 1: if we want to entertain the idea of a totally

823
00:46:35,800 --> 00:46:38,960
Speaker 1: aquatic humanoid, a humanoid of the deep, what would we be,

824
00:46:39,200 --> 00:46:41,920
Speaker 1: what would we be looking at? What would that entail? Well,

825
00:46:41,960 --> 00:46:44,200
Speaker 1: I suppose there are basically two ways to look at it, right,

826
00:46:44,280 --> 00:46:48,200
Speaker 1: Either something humanoid evolves independently of humans in the deep,

827
00:46:48,800 --> 00:46:52,120
Speaker 1: or a hominid variety splits and involves into a primarily

828
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:55,560
Speaker 1: aquatic species. Okay, so this would be an example of

829
00:46:55,640 --> 00:46:59,799
Speaker 1: either convergent evolution where some kind of aquatic species converges

830
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:03,880
Speaker 1: on basically the humanoid form, or it would be a

831
00:47:04,160 --> 00:47:06,799
Speaker 1: divergent but basically the same kind of thing we see

832
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:09,520
Speaker 1: in the evolution of whales and dolphins. They were land

833
00:47:09,600 --> 00:47:13,160
Speaker 1: dwelling mammals, then they became semi aquatic mammals, and then

834
00:47:13,200 --> 00:47:16,120
Speaker 1: they became totally aquatic mammals. Right now, I think the

835
00:47:16,239 --> 00:47:20,560
Speaker 1: idea of covergent evolution in the deep. I mean, I

836
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:26,240
Speaker 1: can't think of anything that that lives a primarily aquatic

837
00:47:26,400 --> 00:47:30,560
Speaker 1: lifestyle that looks anything like a human being. Sometimes you

838
00:47:30,600 --> 00:47:34,960
Speaker 1: get some kind of creepy human behavior convergence with octopi.

839
00:47:35,400 --> 00:47:38,480
Speaker 1: That's true. I'm sorry, I said octopi. Octopuses. Yeah, there

840
00:47:38,560 --> 00:47:42,359
Speaker 1: there are. There are some some cephalopods that have kind

841
00:47:42,400 --> 00:47:46,080
Speaker 1: of a walking technique on on the bottom of the sea.

842
00:47:46,239 --> 00:47:49,520
Speaker 1: There are some fish that quote unquote walk on the

843
00:47:49,560 --> 00:47:51,480
Speaker 1: bottom of the sea. They move around with their fins.

844
00:47:52,080 --> 00:47:54,640
Speaker 1: But that's a far cry from having something that that

845
00:47:55,040 --> 00:47:59,600
Speaker 1: really has anything like a human body, like even in

846
00:47:59,719 --> 00:48:02,319
Speaker 1: just you know, very broad strokes. You know, we've touched

847
00:48:02,360 --> 00:48:04,800
Speaker 1: on a number of the different examples though, of of

848
00:48:05,040 --> 00:48:07,880
Speaker 1: of creatures, I've got the other direction mammals that have

849
00:48:08,040 --> 00:48:11,160
Speaker 1: returned to the sea, But I think perhaps the manatee

850
00:48:11,239 --> 00:48:14,040
Speaker 1: and its skin are our best examples to look to

851
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:17,680
Speaker 1: for you know, for what for what a creature like

852
00:48:17,800 --> 00:48:22,120
Speaker 1: this would would be, what an aquatic humanoid would consist of? Right,

853
00:48:22,200 --> 00:48:24,960
Speaker 1: And you know, we call them the sirenians for a reason.

854
00:48:25,000 --> 00:48:28,319
Speaker 1: It's ironic that these these are creatures that partially inspired

855
00:48:28,400 --> 00:48:31,600
Speaker 1: our visions of mermaids. So we're talking about the manatees

856
00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:35,400
Speaker 1: here and the doo gong. They're the world's only marine

857
00:48:35,760 --> 00:48:40,120
Speaker 1: mammal herbivores, and the only herbivorous mammals ever to have

858
00:48:40,239 --> 00:48:43,240
Speaker 1: become totally aquatic. I've never thought about that, the only

859
00:48:43,440 --> 00:48:49,040
Speaker 1: marine mammal herbivores. All all the others eat eat the flesh. Yeah,

860
00:48:49,560 --> 00:48:52,320
Speaker 1: even if it's very tiny bits of flesh, very tiny creatures,

861
00:48:52,320 --> 00:48:55,319
Speaker 1: They're still eating creatures. So Sirenians have existed for more

862
00:48:55,400 --> 00:49:01,160
Speaker 1: than fifty million years, having diverged from the pan Galata clade.

863
00:49:01,840 --> 00:49:06,880
Speaker 1: The closest living land relatives to these Iranians are the

864
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:10,759
Speaker 1: elephants and the high axes. Now a, this is a

865
00:49:10,920 --> 00:49:13,600
Speaker 1: pretty interesting In two thousand and sixteen study by Maria

866
00:49:14,360 --> 00:49:19,359
Speaker 1: Hikina and Nathan Clark looked to three major independent evolutionary

867
00:49:19,440 --> 00:49:22,400
Speaker 1: events in which mammals returned to the sea and what

868
00:49:22,640 --> 00:49:26,800
Speaker 1: sort of evolutionary tradeoffs took place. So they used a

869
00:49:26,880 --> 00:49:32,120
Speaker 1: fifty nine placental mammal genomes to calculate the relative rates

870
00:49:32,160 --> 00:49:36,320
Speaker 1: of evolution for all branches in eighteen thousand and forty

871
00:49:36,400 --> 00:49:40,440
Speaker 1: nine gene trees. They calculated a genome wide average rate

872
00:49:40,480 --> 00:49:43,319
Speaker 1: of evolution across all species. Basically, they wanted to see

873
00:49:43,719 --> 00:49:49,840
Speaker 1: if these uh oceanic returns entailed and evolutionary acceleration or deceleration.

874
00:49:50,239 --> 00:49:54,200
Speaker 1: That's interesting. So they identified three main themes, a burst

875
00:49:54,239 --> 00:50:00,360
Speaker 1: of adaptation, then relaxation, and additional constraint. They identical fied

876
00:50:00,880 --> 00:50:03,880
Speaker 1: marine accelerated genes to the tune of about nine percent,

877
00:50:04,000 --> 00:50:07,600
Speaker 1: and they related to these different features new functions for

878
00:50:07,760 --> 00:50:14,040
Speaker 1: genes forming skin and connective tissue, sensory systems, muscle function,

879
00:50:15,000 --> 00:50:18,359
Speaker 1: skin and connective tissue, lung function. So an example here

880
00:50:18,400 --> 00:50:22,560
Speaker 1: would be accelerated adaptation for a gene encoding a lung

881
00:50:22,840 --> 00:50:26,400
Speaker 1: uh surfactant protein that may have been necessary for diving,

882
00:50:27,200 --> 00:50:32,000
Speaker 1: and then lipid metabolism. But they also identified marine deceller

883
00:50:32,120 --> 00:50:35,759
Speaker 1: accelerated genes even more than the you know, the accelerated,

884
00:50:36,000 --> 00:50:39,160
Speaker 1: and these related to a general loss of the number

885
00:50:39,200 --> 00:50:42,200
Speaker 1: of sensory genes for smell and taste. No, no more

886
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:44,080
Speaker 1: taste once we get in the water. Yeah, I mean,

887
00:50:44,120 --> 00:50:47,640
Speaker 1: it's it seems to be the case that that aquatic

888
00:50:47,800 --> 00:50:52,960
Speaker 1: mammals have have a much decreased sense of taste. So

889
00:50:53,040 --> 00:50:54,960
Speaker 1: I guess once you're a sperm whale and you're like

890
00:50:55,120 --> 00:50:57,279
Speaker 1: trying to eat giant squids, you just don't want to

891
00:50:57,320 --> 00:51:01,359
Speaker 1: be tasting that well uh thing like that. Now, other

892
00:51:01,440 --> 00:51:05,600
Speaker 1: marine decelerated genes included molecular molecular maintenance strategies such as

893
00:51:05,640 --> 00:51:10,640
Speaker 1: DNA repair, chromosomal maintenance, immune response, and program cell death.

894
00:51:11,640 --> 00:51:14,400
Speaker 1: So all of this, they said, meshes with the increased

895
00:51:14,520 --> 00:51:18,440
Speaker 1: constraint on somatic cell maintenance for such creatures. And I

896
00:51:18,520 --> 00:51:21,520
Speaker 1: have a quote from the paper here. Quote hundreds of

897
00:51:21,640 --> 00:51:26,240
Speaker 1: genes accelerated their evolutionary rates in all three marine mammal

898
00:51:26,320 --> 00:51:30,560
Speaker 1: lineages during their transition to aquatic life. These marine accelerated

899
00:51:30,600 --> 00:51:34,640
Speaker 1: genes are highly enriched for pathways. The control recognized functional

900
00:51:34,680 --> 00:51:40,000
Speaker 1: adaptations in marine mammals, including muscles, physiology, lipid metabolism, sensory systems,

901
00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:43,960
Speaker 1: and skin and connective tissue. The accelerations resulted from both

902
00:51:44,000 --> 00:51:47,400
Speaker 1: adaptive evolution as seen in skin and lung genes, and

903
00:51:47,640 --> 00:51:52,160
Speaker 1: loss of function as in gustatory and olfactory genes. In

904
00:51:52,239 --> 00:51:56,080
Speaker 1: regard to sensory systems, this finding provides further evidence that

905
00:51:56,200 --> 00:51:59,600
Speaker 1: reduced senses of taste and smell are ubiquitous in marine

906
00:51:59,680 --> 00:52:04,440
Speaker 1: mammal So naturally, this is not a blueprint for evolved

907
00:52:04,440 --> 00:52:06,560
Speaker 1: aquatic humanoids, but I think it does give give us

908
00:52:06,600 --> 00:52:09,399
Speaker 1: some sort of idea of the genetic changes that might

909
00:52:09,560 --> 00:52:12,400
Speaker 1: take place over millions of years until we reach the

910
00:52:12,440 --> 00:52:16,200
Speaker 1: point that we're Kevin Costner from from water World. Yeah,

911
00:52:16,520 --> 00:52:18,120
Speaker 1: but but how do we reach the point that we're

912
00:52:18,160 --> 00:52:21,120
Speaker 1: Dennis Hopper in water World? Well, all I can say

913
00:52:21,440 --> 00:52:24,800
Speaker 1: is that Kevin Costner's character would probably not have a

914
00:52:24,840 --> 00:52:27,400
Speaker 1: good sense of taste based on this research. It's a

915
00:52:27,480 --> 00:52:29,920
Speaker 1: bummer man. Yeah, all right, So let's come back to

916
00:52:30,000 --> 00:52:33,040
Speaker 1: the reverse though, something from the deep evolving to life

917
00:52:33,080 --> 00:52:35,600
Speaker 1: on the surface. This is of course the story of

918
00:52:35,760 --> 00:52:39,040
Speaker 1: all terrestrial life, dating back to the terrestrial land invasion

919
00:52:39,120 --> 00:52:41,640
Speaker 1: of the Devonian era. But when we try and think

920
00:52:41,680 --> 00:52:44,600
Speaker 1: of a humanoid creature evolving under the water, it gets

921
00:52:44,600 --> 00:52:46,960
Speaker 1: a little sticky. We get into the creature from the

922
00:52:47,000 --> 00:52:51,279
Speaker 1: Black Lagoon territory, we get into u Z or Bloodwaters

923
00:52:51,280 --> 00:52:55,560
Speaker 1: of dr C territory. Because in these cases, uh they

924
00:52:55,640 --> 00:52:58,840
Speaker 1: often will bring up certain fish that can walk on

925
00:52:59,080 --> 00:53:02,759
Speaker 1: land as examples of how this might work, or a

926
00:53:02,840 --> 00:53:06,520
Speaker 1: fish that can breathe both above and below the water.

927
00:53:07,120 --> 00:53:10,960
Speaker 1: And we do have ambulatory fish walking fish such as

928
00:53:11,000 --> 00:53:13,840
Speaker 1: the mud skipper. We have the the hand fish and

929
00:53:13,960 --> 00:53:16,680
Speaker 1: frog fish, which quote unquote walk on the seafloor with

930
00:53:16,760 --> 00:53:19,400
Speaker 1: specialized fins. And of course there are the there's the

931
00:53:19,480 --> 00:53:23,040
Speaker 1: walking catfish of Southeast Asia, which we should be clear

932
00:53:23,120 --> 00:53:25,800
Speaker 1: does not so much as walk as it flops and

933
00:53:25,920 --> 00:53:30,759
Speaker 1: flips and wriggles around. And uh, the lungfish, the fish

934
00:53:30,840 --> 00:53:34,400
Speaker 1: highlighted in the creature movies. Uh, this creature does boast

935
00:53:34,440 --> 00:53:36,440
Speaker 1: a lung and gil combo existing as a sort of

936
00:53:36,520 --> 00:53:39,560
Speaker 1: call back to the three seventy five million year old

937
00:53:39,600 --> 00:53:42,800
Speaker 1: evolution of land oil and creatures from a long extic

938
00:53:42,920 --> 00:53:46,719
Speaker 1: species of lobe fin fish. But it still doesn't give

939
00:53:46,800 --> 00:53:49,160
Speaker 1: us quite the recipe for a gill man that we

940
00:53:49,239 --> 00:53:51,120
Speaker 1: would we would like. Yeah, there are a lot of

941
00:53:51,160 --> 00:53:56,120
Speaker 1: problems I can see here for a humanoid evolving in

942
00:53:56,320 --> 00:54:01,040
Speaker 1: the water itself. I mean bipedality whatever you want to

943
00:54:01,080 --> 00:54:03,719
Speaker 1: think about it, Like, even if you're still attracted to

944
00:54:03,760 --> 00:54:07,920
Speaker 1: the aquatic a hypothesis, um, which I don't necessarily think

945
00:54:07,960 --> 00:54:10,480
Speaker 1: you should be, But even if you're attracted to that,

946
00:54:10,680 --> 00:54:14,279
Speaker 1: it says bipedality was sort of a transitionary feature, right,

947
00:54:14,360 --> 00:54:17,720
Speaker 1: It was a product of wading in maybe deep water,

948
00:54:18,520 --> 00:54:21,120
Speaker 1: but not totally deep water, not like water deeper than

949
00:54:21,160 --> 00:54:26,120
Speaker 1: you could stand in, and so having like a bipedality

950
00:54:26,280 --> 00:54:30,120
Speaker 1: and legs is not really useful. If you are a

951
00:54:30,200 --> 00:54:33,399
Speaker 1: fully aquatic creature, you would eventually lose them. It would

952
00:54:33,400 --> 00:54:36,080
Speaker 1: be much better to have fins, right, Well, I get

953
00:54:36,160 --> 00:54:38,319
Speaker 1: The only case I can see to be made here

954
00:54:38,440 --> 00:54:42,000
Speaker 1: is that the creature from the Black Lagoon must come

955
00:54:42,080 --> 00:54:46,000
Speaker 1: out of the lagoon to acquire prey and of course women.

956
00:54:46,600 --> 00:54:49,680
Speaker 1: But but you know it it is It is not

957
00:54:49,840 --> 00:54:53,640
Speaker 1: an obligate um marine creature. It is a creature that

958
00:54:54,080 --> 00:54:56,399
Speaker 1: that that must come out of the water to prey,

959
00:54:56,680 --> 00:54:59,480
Speaker 1: a creature that is perhaps in the process of becoming

960
00:54:59,560 --> 00:55:02,880
Speaker 1: a land creature. So yeah, almost anything you could think

961
00:55:02,920 --> 00:55:07,160
Speaker 1: of as a humanoid in shape at all would really

962
00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:10,920
Speaker 1: need to be semi aquatic, right. It would need to

963
00:55:10,960 --> 00:55:13,719
Speaker 1: be at least or mostly aquatic. It would need to

964
00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:15,960
Speaker 1: have some reason to come out of the water if

965
00:55:16,000 --> 00:55:18,080
Speaker 1: it was going to have legs like human legs, because

966
00:55:19,120 --> 00:55:22,840
Speaker 1: legs are made for for fighting gravity. Legs are not

967
00:55:23,120 --> 00:55:25,520
Speaker 1: made for swimming around in a you know, in a

968
00:55:25,560 --> 00:55:28,360
Speaker 1: buoyancy situation. That's true. And if you don't have a

969
00:55:28,400 --> 00:55:32,279
Speaker 1: switch to magically turn your fins in defeat, then you're

970
00:55:32,320 --> 00:55:34,839
Speaker 1: probably out of luck. Yeah, So I think if there

971
00:55:34,920 --> 00:55:37,759
Speaker 1: were an aquatic humanoid. It would more likely be a

972
00:55:37,920 --> 00:55:41,640
Speaker 1: mermaid with a fish butt than a humanoid like the

973
00:55:41,680 --> 00:55:44,960
Speaker 1: gill man with legs. I think so. I think that

974
00:55:45,080 --> 00:55:48,560
Speaker 1: makes the most sense. In fact, since they spend most

975
00:55:48,600 --> 00:55:50,200
Speaker 1: of their time under the water, even if they did

976
00:55:50,280 --> 00:55:51,960
Speaker 1: come out of the water water, I'd guess is that

977
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:53,839
Speaker 1: to be a mermaid with a fish butt that would

978
00:55:53,840 --> 00:55:57,160
Speaker 1: crawl around with its upper arms. Yeah, yeah, we do

979
00:55:57,280 --> 00:56:00,320
Speaker 1: see that model sometimes the what is it happened in

980
00:56:00,320 --> 00:56:02,800
Speaker 1: the Woods movie? Oh? I had a had a mirman

981
00:56:03,080 --> 00:56:07,720
Speaker 1: creature that comes comes crawling across the floor after it's victims.

982
00:56:08,200 --> 00:56:12,000
Speaker 1: Here's another question, though, how do you think if there

983
00:56:12,040 --> 00:56:15,400
Speaker 1: were such a thing as an aquatic humanoid, how would

984
00:56:15,560 --> 00:56:20,319
Speaker 1: tool use evolve differently at the bottom of the ocean. Oh? Yeah,

985
00:56:21,000 --> 00:56:23,520
Speaker 1: that brings us back to some some discussions we've had

986
00:56:23,520 --> 00:56:25,520
Speaker 1: in the past, particularly as it pertains to the use

987
00:56:25,560 --> 00:56:28,960
Speaker 1: of fire technology and the idea of any technology existing

988
00:56:29,000 --> 00:56:32,400
Speaker 1: without fire. Um, I mean I keep coming back to.

989
00:56:33,360 --> 00:56:34,520
Speaker 1: I guess it would a lot of it would have

990
00:56:34,600 --> 00:56:38,200
Speaker 1: to be sort of biologically based, you know, I mean

991
00:56:39,120 --> 00:56:41,759
Speaker 1: it would it could not be fire based because you

992
00:56:42,000 --> 00:56:44,680
Speaker 1: you cannot really have fire under water. I mean, you

993
00:56:44,760 --> 00:56:47,480
Speaker 1: see some things that get kind of classified as rudimentary

994
00:56:47,560 --> 00:56:52,040
Speaker 1: tool use by by like octopuses right where they I mean,

995
00:56:52,520 --> 00:56:54,680
Speaker 1: maybe this isn't tool use, but the idea of like

996
00:56:55,120 --> 00:56:58,480
Speaker 1: pulling a rock over the entrance of their dwellings, they

997
00:56:58,520 --> 00:57:01,160
Speaker 1: can cover it up and protect them selves. That that's

998
00:57:01,400 --> 00:57:04,320
Speaker 1: interesting behavior. Yeah, I mean that's the use of I

999
00:57:04,360 --> 00:57:06,680
Speaker 1: believe the distinction is that's a nature fact. That is

1000
00:57:06,719 --> 00:57:10,160
Speaker 1: taking something in nature and using it for a purpose. Now,

1001
00:57:10,320 --> 00:57:12,960
Speaker 1: and then you could say, well, I can imagine an

1002
00:57:13,040 --> 00:57:17,600
Speaker 1: underwater humanoid making an artifact, taking something and sharpening it

1003
00:57:17,720 --> 00:57:21,160
Speaker 1: into a skewer or shaping it to better protect them,

1004
00:57:21,240 --> 00:57:23,840
Speaker 1: so that that level of technology I could I could see.

1005
00:57:24,240 --> 00:57:26,600
Speaker 1: I mean one thing though, is that under the water,

1006
00:57:27,040 --> 00:57:30,760
Speaker 1: both the resistance density of the water and the buoyancy

1007
00:57:30,800 --> 00:57:34,760
Speaker 1: effects all would kind of mitigate against some of the

1008
00:57:34,880 --> 00:57:38,280
Speaker 1: benefits you get from say stone tools are our most

1009
00:57:38,320 --> 00:57:41,720
Speaker 1: basic tools are very often things that are designed to

1010
00:57:41,960 --> 00:57:46,120
Speaker 1: maximize kinetic energy delivery. Right, So it would be something

1011
00:57:46,280 --> 00:57:49,120
Speaker 1: that you could throw really hard and hit something and

1012
00:57:49,240 --> 00:57:51,880
Speaker 1: kill it, or something that you could hit another thing

1013
00:57:52,000 --> 00:57:54,520
Speaker 1: with and break it, and kind of a gravity assisted

1014
00:57:54,640 --> 00:57:57,760
Speaker 1: swinging motion, all of which is a little bit harder

1015
00:57:57,800 --> 00:58:00,480
Speaker 1: to do underwater because you can't swing as fast underwater

1016
00:58:00,680 --> 00:58:04,240
Speaker 1: to the resistance of the water. I mean, I don't know.

1017
00:58:04,440 --> 00:58:07,640
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could have a tool using creature

1018
00:58:07,760 --> 00:58:10,320
Speaker 1: evolve under the water. Well, more than more than likely

1019
00:58:10,320 --> 00:58:12,600
Speaker 1: you have to depend upon them originally being an alien

1020
00:58:12,680 --> 00:58:17,400
Speaker 1: species crash landed in the water. Um. Yeah, this is

1021
00:58:17,480 --> 00:58:20,680
Speaker 1: reminding me a lot of the the old nautical maps

1022
00:58:20,800 --> 00:58:23,200
Speaker 1: which were on which you had mermaids and sea monsters,

1023
00:58:23,360 --> 00:58:26,680
Speaker 1: but also all of these different hybrids. Sea lion, a

1024
00:58:26,760 --> 00:58:28,400
Speaker 1: sea lion that is not like our sea lion, but

1025
00:58:28,480 --> 00:58:32,280
Speaker 1: an actual lion with a fish uh portion to its body.

1026
00:58:32,760 --> 00:58:34,640
Speaker 1: And a lot of this was based on the idea

1027
00:58:34,880 --> 00:58:38,400
Speaker 1: that the ocean contains a parallel version of everything that

1028
00:58:38,480 --> 00:58:41,720
Speaker 1: we have on the surface and it and you can

1029
00:58:41,800 --> 00:58:45,760
Speaker 1: extrapolate that to include not only the animals, but the resources,

1030
00:58:45,800 --> 00:58:47,760
Speaker 1: and say so you end up falling in the trap

1031
00:58:47,840 --> 00:58:50,560
Speaker 1: of thinking, well, the underwater creatures they would have their

1032
00:58:50,600 --> 00:58:53,840
Speaker 1: own minerals somehow, they would somehow, you know, smelt them

1033
00:58:53,920 --> 00:58:57,120
Speaker 1: and and craft them into weapons. Without really thinking about it.

1034
00:58:57,240 --> 00:59:00,760
Speaker 1: That the the the aquatic world is is it's a

1035
00:59:00,800 --> 00:59:02,680
Speaker 1: part of our world, but is a very different, very

1036
00:59:02,720 --> 00:59:06,320
Speaker 1: alien environment compared to the surface. Yeah, it's not exactly

1037
00:59:06,400 --> 00:59:09,240
Speaker 1: the mirror world. It's more through a glass darkly. Yeah.

1038
00:59:09,760 --> 00:59:12,280
Speaker 1: All right, So there you have it. In these two episodes,

1039
00:59:12,320 --> 00:59:15,920
Speaker 1: I hope we've we've given everybody a lot of fresh

1040
00:59:15,960 --> 00:59:21,560
Speaker 1: perspective to consider not only the evolution of humans maybe,

1041
00:59:21,680 --> 00:59:24,040
Speaker 1: but but also just o our myths and our fictions

1042
00:59:24,120 --> 00:59:28,520
Speaker 1: regarding underwater people and underwater hybrids. And of course we

1043
00:59:28,560 --> 00:59:31,000
Speaker 1: want to hear back from everybody concerning their favorite uh

1044
00:59:31,520 --> 00:59:35,560
Speaker 1: underwater humanoids in myth in uh, in literature and cinema.

1045
00:59:36,040 --> 00:59:40,160
Speaker 1: What's your favorite nine Underwater Peril movie? Totally? I know

1046
00:59:40,320 --> 00:59:43,280
Speaker 1: we've got some deep Star six partisans out there. I

1047
00:59:43,360 --> 00:59:45,680
Speaker 1: think people get attacked. What is it a killer clam

1048
00:59:45,960 --> 00:59:48,920
Speaker 1: or something in that movie? Uh, it's I haven't rewatched

1049
00:59:48,960 --> 00:59:51,640
Speaker 1: it yet, um, but it's some sort of an underwater critter.

1050
00:59:51,760 --> 00:59:55,120
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah um. And also Mermaid movies. What's your favorite

1051
00:59:55,160 --> 00:59:57,720
Speaker 1: did you like? Did you grow up like me watching

1052
00:59:57,840 --> 01:00:01,160
Speaker 1: Splash on VHS? Over into over akend? I didn't know

1053
01:00:01,240 --> 01:00:05,160
Speaker 1: that about you. It's a solid mermaid romantic comedy. Okay,

1054
01:00:05,200 --> 01:00:07,160
Speaker 1: I'll have to check it out. Yeah, yeah, Tom Hanks,

1055
01:00:07,280 --> 01:00:10,720
Speaker 1: Darryl Hannah, John Candy tremendous. Did they ever do a

1056
01:00:10,880 --> 01:00:13,920
Speaker 1: Jetson's Meet the Flintstones kind of thing with Leviathan and

1057
01:00:14,040 --> 01:00:20,600
Speaker 1: Splash Leviathan? Oh you mean, did Leviathan Meet Splash movie?

1058
01:00:21,440 --> 01:00:23,080
Speaker 1: I don't think it exists, or at least not yet.

1059
01:00:23,720 --> 01:00:28,160
Speaker 1: Movie executives, high powered industry players out there, if you're listening,

1060
01:00:28,320 --> 01:00:32,320
Speaker 1: take note. Yes, opportunity knocks all right. Hey. In the meantime,

1061
01:00:32,400 --> 01:00:34,080
Speaker 1: check out stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That

1062
01:00:34,200 --> 01:00:36,520
Speaker 1: is where you will find all of our podcast episodes.

1063
01:00:36,680 --> 01:00:39,720
Speaker 1: You'll find that, blog posts and other material as well.

1064
01:00:40,200 --> 01:00:42,880
Speaker 1: Links out to our social media accounts will be found

1065
01:00:43,080 --> 01:00:47,760
Speaker 1: on that page. Also, we're talking about Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram,

1066
01:00:48,200 --> 01:00:50,840
Speaker 1: We're on all those things. Follow us where you will.

1067
01:00:51,400 --> 01:00:55,160
Speaker 1: Thanks as always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams

1068
01:00:55,200 --> 01:00:57,000
Speaker 1: and Torry Harrison. And if you want to get in

1069
01:00:57,120 --> 01:01:00,240
Speaker 1: touch with us directly to let us know feedback about

1070
01:01:00,240 --> 01:01:02,280
Speaker 1: this episode or any other let us know topics you

1071
01:01:02,360 --> 01:01:04,600
Speaker 1: might want us to cover in the future. Uh to

1072
01:01:05,160 --> 01:01:08,600
Speaker 1: ramble on and on about nine underwater movies. You can

1073
01:01:08,720 --> 01:01:11,960
Speaker 1: email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works

1074
01:01:12,160 --> 01:01:24,880
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics,

1075
01:01:25,080 --> 01:01:36,160
Speaker 1: does it, how stuff works, dot com bo