Re: OT: This dimwit wants to be President?

On Mar 26, 11:49 am, risky biz <43086...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 26 2007 6:46 AM, Will in New Haven wrote:

First of all, again, I never said that meat had to be taken from predators. I'm saying it was
meat
scavenged from predator leftovers or from naturally deceased animals. It didn't have to be a
large
amount and probably was quite small for a long time. At the dawn of agriculture the average
human
diet was only about 20% meat.

You couldn't get five percent of your diet from what you descrbe. Meat
protein is valuable and it is defended.

I don't know how you came up with the 5% figure but it isn't necessarily incorrect given that the
diet was only 20% meat when agriculture first appeared about 11 - 12,000 years ago in Mesopotamia.







There is also a huge rational hole in what you keep saying. You say it was easier to hunt large
animals than scavenge predator leftovers. Where did this take place? On the other side of the
glass
wall that separated six-foot-long jackals and bigger leopards from the eighty pound hominids?
Your
scenario of predators zealously guarding their kill down to the last morsel must necessarily
mean
that those same predators wouldn't take an interest in the little, two-legged bastards running
around spearing the prey they thought was theirs. Wouldn't the six-foot-long jackals just wait
for
the humans to kill something and then move in?

No, because they would be afraid of the hyenas. I don't know where you
get your six-foot long jackals but there were enough worse things
around that it doesn't matter. On the other hand, the usual way that a
predator that can't defend his kill gets fed is to eat as much as he
can before the hyenas, lions or wolves show up. This makes it MUCH
more worthwhile to hunt small game as it is a: easier and b: you
aren't going to get to eat the whole thing anyway.

Are you counting insects as small game? That was a significant part of the hominid diet the last
million or more years.



Scavenging is simple. You wait until the predator is far enough away that it appears it is no
longer
interested in what's left.

"Lions are also expert scavengers, and obtain as much as 40 percent of their food by stealing it
from other predators, or finding already dead animals. As soon as the prey is dead, a single lion
will often drag it's catch to a less open spot. The abdomen is opened, and the meal usually starts
with the entrails. Lions vary widely in their tastes, which tend to vary on a region by region
basis. Almost all lions eat the heart, liver and kidneys. Some lions will often then bury the
stomach and intestines, but frequently just make an attempt at doing this. Why they do this is
unknown. Other lions will eat everything in the body cavity except the stomach, showing a strong
preference for the intestines. The meal then proceeds with the hindquarters, which is the fleshiest
part of the animal. The lions will then work forwards towards the head. It is also unusual for lions
to open the skull. Individuals in a group of lions feeding will go for whatever they can get their
teeth into, with the strongest individuals getting the best morsels. If the pride male is present,
he will often (but not always) hog the kill for himself, until he is sated. The females eat next,
and then, the cubs. In some locales, the males prefer the flesh and will start eating the
hindquarters of a fresh kill while the females fight over the entrails.

Just because a lion suceeds in making a kill doesn't always mean it gets to eat it. Frequently,
other predators, especially hyenas, will pester a lion to the point where he will abandon a kill to
them. Smaller predators aren't as sucessful, but often grab scraps when the lion isn't looking. This
works in reverse, too. Often one or more lions will scare another predator off of it's kill.

Lions are scavengers, too. They will eat most anything they find dead. For many old males too old to
run down live game, scavenging may be their only way to find food.

A lion will gorge itself, if possible, on a kill. An adult will typically eat 40 pounds (18 Kg.) of
meat at a time, with reports of as much as 75 pounds (34 Kg.) consumed in one sitting. A single lion
may take two or more meals from a kill over a 2-3 day period, while prides usually cannot get more
than one meal for everybody after an average kill. After eating a large meal, lions will sleep for
as long as 24 hours (what a life!). A good, full meal for a pride may result in four days of little
activity, and no great desire to hunt until the sixth day."http://www.lionlamb.us/lion/lionfact.html







Remember that early man lived in Africa. Then realize that lions lay
up NEAR their recent kill and defend it. Hyenas don't leave enough of
THEIR kills (or the ones they steal from lions) to matter.

It would also be pretty funny to watch an 80 to 140 pound human, max, chasing down a zebra with
a
thrusting spear, which wasn't around, anyway, until the latter part of the period we're
discussing.

They would starve to death while trying to "ambush" one. It's much easier to eat leftovers.

You keep imagining leftovers. There aren't enough leftovers around to
matter. Early hominids not only weren't big and tough enough to take a
kill, they weren't nimble enough to take meat from a kill and expect
to get away with it. Even Jackals, which are small and quick, don't
always survive raiding a kill. It is much easier to eat vegetation,
which is what they did most of the time.

I can't figure out if you are saying hominids hunted or they didn't hunt. I'm saying that for most
of the last 1 million or more years hominids were prey or meat scavengers more than they were
predators, ruling out insects as prey. Most of their diet was vegetation and insects. The hominids
weren't dominant or even significant predators. They were survivors by avoiding and scavenging from
the leftovers of dominant predators. That changed when some of the large predators died out.

I am saying hominids, within the same lifetime, were hunters AND
hunted. Ruling out insects, even though some of them are quite tasty,
they still hunted and killed things and they were hunted and they were
killed. They were not dominant or significant predators? Well, I never
said that they were. I disputed the scavenging nonsense. The idea that
there were leftovers available in any kind of significant amounts does
not jibe with any wilderness area today.

Also, some of the large predators dying out was probably NOT a
significant factor. The large predators remaining are, obviously by
evolutionary logic, quite enough comptetition. Except for the Short-
faced bear, which was North American, I can think of no predatory land-
dwelling neighbors more dangerous than prides of lions and clans of
hyenas. The end of the saber-tooth cats and their relatives would not
have meant much.

What changed modern humans into dominant or at least significant
predators was:
1: The fact that they were much bigger than our eighty-pound ancestors
2: More importantly, they were better-armed
3: The partnership with the dog.


Remember, we're talking about a million and more years back. How smart, aggressive, and
dangerous do
you think they were 700,000 years ago?

Probably about as aggressive as chimpanzees, which hunt occasionally.
"Both hunters and prey" is what I said. Of course, chimpanzees are not
much preyed on but the only major predator around, they don't
generally live in lion country, is the leopard. Leopards don't seem to
have much success preying on them, which surprises me but I guess it's
because leopards are pretty small. Phil Akley killed one with his bare
hands and he was not nearly as powerful as a chimpanzee.

Will in New Haven

Hominids left the trees and forests and set out on the savannah when it became safe to do so. Prior
to that they clung to the forest edges and lived opportunistically.

Chimpanzees, by the way, don't have well organized hunting parties. It's more like a mob which
changes composition and methods with each hunt and, as I mentioned before, they are infrequent and
could well be simply a habitual behavior the purpose of which is to wipe out other monkeys who
compete for the same food resources.

That is nonsense. Colobus are largely leaf-eaters

http://anthro.palomar.edu/primate/prim_6.htm

and Chimpanzees don't eat much in the way of leaves themselves. They
hunt baboon babies and they sharve few food preferences with baboons
and they hunt infant gazelles and they do not eat grass, which is what
the gazelles eat. I don't know where you heard that but it does not
fit the facts.

Will in New Haven

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