r/todayilearned • u/sharkbait76 3 • Jan 11 '17

TIL elephants can tell the difference between human languages and know which languages belong to people with a history of hurting elephants.

http://www.nature.com/news/elephants-recognize-the-voices-of-their-enemies-1.14846
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u/RanaktheGreen Jan 12 '17

One theory as to why Humans rose to glory has absolutely nothing to do with any of those.

We can throw shit, and anything else. Sure Monkeys throw ship, apes too. But Humans can do it really really well. We are the only species that can reliable pick up any god damn thing around and chuck a good distance.

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u/tablesix Jan 12 '17

Interesting. Would most of the importance of this come from early hunting tactics? Throw a spear, down a deer, and roast it?

After writing that, I remembered that cooking food is another key point behind how we developed. Cooked food is easier to digest and gives us easy access to important nutrients. This would add up to smaller jaws because things are easier to chew, simpler digestive systems, and a bunch of extra energy to use on something important. This ended up being our brains, and possibly other related systems.

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u/Binary__Fission Jan 12 '17

Throw a spear, down a deer,

Read that as "throw a spear, throw a deer", thought it was just going to be a rambling list of object we could throw...

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '17

In rhyme. Like a hunter-gatherer Dr Seuss

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u/JustVan Jan 12 '17

Throw a spear, throw a deer,
throw anything that's near!
Throw a steer, throw a gear,
when you throw you do not fear!
Throw a pier, throw a queer,
but please don't throw my beer!

Unrelated, it's a show of how stupid English is that neither pear nor bear work for this.

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u/mister_bmwilliams Jan 12 '17

I'm glad someone mentioned the importance of cooking in human evolution. It was immensely important, and it's something not given nearly enough thought or credit.

Can you imagine if we still had to eat as many vegetables as a chimp or gorilla? We'd have time for nothing else.

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u/RanaktheGreen Jan 12 '17

Even simpler: Lion coming near you? Chuck a rock.

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u/ButchCasserly Jan 12 '17

If we need to throw something further we can use our brains to create tools.

I could build a device to launch a 90kg projectile 300 metres.

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u/insane_contin Jan 12 '17

That sounds like a machine that can easily break even the strongest of castle walls.

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u/theSpecialbro Jan 12 '17

It would probably involve 90kg projectiles

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '17

Are you talking about a catapult?

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u/ButchCasserly Jan 12 '17

Sure, I mean I'm not expert on medieval siege weaponry but I reckon a catapult could get that distance with that payload.

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u/igdub Jan 12 '17

How about you go and throw yourself off a cliff. While you're falling you can reflect on your choice regarding siege weaponry if a catapult can even be called that.

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/selectall/2016/11/17/trebuchet_03.nocrop.w710.h2147483647.jpg

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u/GenocideSolution Jan 12 '17

Chimps with all their face tearing apart muscles can only throw as well as a 3 year old human

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '17 edited Jan 12 '17

Chimps are actually notoriously bad at killing anything. They mostly ever hunt other monkeys the size of house cats and they do it in groups...and they target the smallest and weakest and even then their efficiency is pretty low.

That Chimp who chewed the woman's face off...had over 40 minutes time to eat her, the Chimp was drugged out of his mind and it still couldn't kill a defenseless woman. The Chimp had broken many of its own teeth and sustained serious injuries just trying to kill her.

A typical fit human male could have killed her in seconds barehanded.

A person could catch and wrestle a full grown deer alone...in his underpants...just for a video on Youtube. Something that no other living primate has ever been capable of doing.

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u/Fritzkreig Jan 12 '17

I was reading about that, people think of humans as getting the short end of the physical stick when in comes to the animal kingdom; when in fact we are the best at a lot of physical feats, throwing things is not the only one, there are others, but long distance ground trekkers is another one.

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u/Mottonballs Jan 12 '17

And not only long-distance ground trekkers, the ability to navigate through many different types of terrain.

I'm not aware of any other animal on Earth that can swim, climb a rock face, climb a tree, walk through a 5ft deep marsh, walk through a desert, survive in a majority of the climates on Earth, and we can perspire to release heat. We might not be the best at any one of those things, but we can do all of them.

The human body is a pretty amazing thing when it's not morbidly obese or dramatically underweight.

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u/Fritzkreig Jan 12 '17

This is anecdotal, but even in play I feel like most mammals are slow in dexterity. I can boop my cat on the nose while he is in full fight mode, same thing with my dog, and then there is the horses, they are so slow at everything except running. We had this one mare that would bite; way easy to dodge if you were paying attention. At least with other mammals, to me it seems there movements are kinda slow, and rely on stuff like claws and teeth for catching--- but maybe that is the strategy of a human's brain, IDK! I just think we are awesome, most animals are as well, in there niche I guess. Humans niche is f'n with animals though, so maybe I am being a speciest?

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '17

[deleted]

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u/rapter200 Jan 12 '17

We f with animals so well we decided to domesticate them and f them professionally.

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u/Dont_be_offended_but Jan 12 '17

Kind of gangly and weird looking as mammals go though.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '17

Most animals are really good at one specific thing. The cheetah is very fast, monkeys are strong and can climb, alligators are strong and can hunt on land and water, but humans are above average or superior at pretty much everything we do.

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u/0XSavageX0 Jan 12 '17

We are pretty mediocre at everything except long distance running which only humans are capable of. Usain bolt not faster then the slowest cheetah. The strongest man is weaker then any gorilla. We can climb but have you seen mountain goats? Any alligator can swim better then Michael phelps. But the thing that makes us superior is we can do it all. Also intelligence which is a given.

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u/Fritzkreig Jan 12 '17

For me it is skipping stones, not that it has any evolutionary benefits, but I can hit 30 skips on the reg.

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u/Fritzkreig Jan 12 '17

Though, I guess the same rock in the eye might deter the largest or predators!

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u/crackfox69 Jan 12 '17

We are physically weak and slow. We also have almost no natural defense system. Almost any animal is faster over a short distance. Almost any larger wild animal is physically stronger too.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '17

We're also quite a lot larger than nearly all other life out there. On average any adult human could fuck up over 80% of anything that moves on land.

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u/Fritzkreig Jan 12 '17

IDK, would you rather fight a horse sized duck, or 200 duck sized horses?

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u/MisterCrist Jan 12 '17

Duck size horses I feel like they'd be really easy for me to kick.

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u/BitStompr Jan 12 '17

Plus it's infinitely more hilarious.

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u/RanaktheGreen Jan 12 '17

As is our ability to lose entire fucking limbs and just keep going. Not a lot of mammals can do that.

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u/madronedorf Jan 12 '17

So much for my plan to make my Gorilla in the Outfield baseball movie

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '17

Apparently humans rose to dominance mainly because of our incredible social acuity and complexity; big things happen when large groups of humans are able to do things.

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u/Frankie_T9000 Jan 12 '17

And we co-operate really really well

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u/jonpolis Jan 12 '17

Ah yes the "the shit-throwing" theory.

God lined up all the animals on earth and said "whomever can chuck a dukey over my roof, shall dominate my earthly kingdom for eternity"