Humans Only Animal Not Suited to Their Environment?

[OkRad]

This has puzzled me so I thought I would ask it to the smartest people I know-----

Why are humans NOT suited to our environment? Fish do not need to kill other animals just to live in water. Bears don't. But we need to kill bears or we will die and freeze to death. Now there is Wal Mart of course, but you get my point. We would DIE if we did not protect ourselves. Are we from another planet that died or something?

 

[The Penguin]

I never understood humans and I do consider myself a penguin.

Anyhow, it seems many humans don't care about things until something effects their lives which is too late. Many things are preventable but humans are too slow to learn, never learn or they just don't care.

 

[Nitro]

Fish eat other fish and insects...I 'spose that isn't considered killing

 

[NothingToSeeHere]

Well, other animals kill each other all the time, for food, for sex, for territory, for fun, to defend themselves. We just take it to a whole new level.

It is our ability to use tools which sets us apart from other animals, giving us the ability to kill creatures which we would not stand a chance against without weapons, and to use parts of those kills, and other items which occur in our environment, to allow us to survive in areas where we other wise would not be able to (such as wearing bear skins to keep warm in conditions where we would otherwise freeze) and to change our environment to be more hospitable to us (by farming and building houses).

We evolved in an area where we were able to survive without using tools in order to survive, but as we developed this ability our species spread around the planet into areas which would previously have been inaccessible to us due inhospitable conditions. That is why we may appear ill suited to many of the places we live, but in truth our ability to consciously adapt (through changing ourselves and the environment) to any conditions makes us the most well suited species on the planet, and thus, the dominant species on the planet.

 

[OkRad]

I do not mean for food. I mean that way that we would actually DIE if we did not have things like coats, etc. I never see a polar bear needing a coat. In fact, I never see ANY animal that has to put someone on simply to survive in their own element. To me, that's odd.

 

[WereBear]

Most of us don't live in our original environment.

I think the latest thinking is we came down out of the trees in Africa, and dealt with grasslands and heat. Body hair would be a detriment in such a situation.

 

[NothingToSeeHere]

Exactly, as I said, we have long since spread from our original environment, to which we were adapted to survive in, to environments which we would not be able to survive in without our ability to use tools.

 

[WereBear]

There are animals who build elaborate structures to live in, like ants and birds. Apes and monkeys are now established tool users. I live with cats, and they are also tool users: they have a genome that lets them develop thumbs.

 

[OkRad]

Exactly, as I said, we have long since spread from our original environment, to which we were adapted to survive in, to environments which we would not be able to survive in without our ability to use tools.

I wonder what the original environment was? I ask because I think a lot of us who are autistic retain that inability to live in this environment and I wonder if we would have been happy in the original one.

 

[WereBear]

I wonder what the original environment was? I ask because I think a lot of us who are autistic retain that inability to live in this environment and I wonder if we would have been happy in the original one.

The time of Hunter/Gathering shaped us in current anthropology thinking. This was bands numbering 12-30 (small groups, anyway,) with apprenticeship according to talent, leaders by group acclaim for their individual qualities, and mingling with other groups for hybrid vigor mating purposes. Nomadic, close knit, with shunning and then exile (basically a death sentence) as the punishment for misbehavior.

Such "instinctual" precepts that seem to be hardwired in our species, such as the incest taboo, our tendency to handle only a dozen particularly close relationships, and even our ability to find a mate with a compatible immune system with our sense of smell; all stem from this long developmental period.

Civilization, which is only 10-15 thousand years old, has offered many advantages, but in many ways is at odds with our programming. We might develop prejudices because we have trouble handling huge groups of people; we elevate kings and priests to get a handle on complexity; we have grown intolerant of "difference" because of the stresses I have described.

So according to this theory, which I like; we are not living in a natural environment at all.

 

[NothingToSeeHere]

I wonder what the original environment was? I ask because I think a lot of us who are autistic retain that inability to live in this environment and I wonder if we would have been happy in the original one.

It is believed that the Homo genus (humans and our ancestors) evolved in Southern or Eastern Africa. As far as I am aware (this isn't a subject with which I keep up with the latest research, so I may be behind the times with this) the current most likely theory is that we evolved to survive in savannah habitat, where our ability to sweat and lack of hair allowed for efficient body cooling, the hair on top of ours heads protected us from the sun, and out long limbs allowed us to range long distances in small nomadic groups. We left Southern/Easter Africa and began to spread around the world around 60,000 years ago.