Study Shows Sasquatch Intelligence Impossible Without Fire.

[Guest]

I wonder this because the modern human population was scant until the industrial revolution when people started to move into "city" type communities, life became "better" (or at least easier), which allowed for better survival rates.

Actually, population started to take off around the time oil was being discovered AND put to use, the first oil well in 1859 jump started the population explosion. Oil = Food. Oil = transportation and mechanical planting/harvesting/transporting and refrigeration of food = more people. Didn't have anything to do with cities per se, but with oil use.

http://www.history.com/topics/oil-industry

And for oil = food, see http://www.postcarbon.org/issue/13914-food-agriculture

Also, read everything by Richard Heinberg

http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Growth-Adapting-ebook/dp/B0056C1V5U/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=13403

and

http://www.energybulletin.net/

http://www.cluborlov.blogspot.com/

http://poweringdown.blogspot.com/

http://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/16/what-is-peak-oil/

http://www.theoildrum.com/

http://www.postcarbon.org/

[Guest]

Thanks Madison - I meant cities as in people moved from isolated areas where they had a more difficult time obtaining food and shelter to a more populated area (by city I meant a more populated area where industry was starting). This move toward more populated areas wasn't totally the best in all aspects and new problems came about, but it did allow for a somewhat easier time in getting food and shelter making survival and propagation more successful.

As you post, any time in history where advances are made that allowed for ease in getting, growing, or keeping food and shelter allowed for population growth.

[kbhunter]

Hahaha, I don't cook most of my food, maybe that exlains it!

KB

[Guest]

Interesting perspective, though limited by looking only through the modern view with it's preconceived ideas about 'how things were' and all the assumptions needed to make it 'just so'....I prefer the model proposed by some of other anthropologists, Like Daniel Lieberman, who see it through the eyes of the modern endurance runner and by wondering how it was that we became the only primate capable of being the remarkable running animal we are...or at least were during the first couple of million years before we presumably discovered fire and became sedentary instead of running down game across the grasslands. Getting enough calories to support the brain would seem to be better fit to being able to run down other big juicy animals and knowing how to outsmart 'em...ability with fire, whether we could 'make it' or not, might have been natural in the grassland mosaic across Africa and Eurasia (and even North America) where we are just coming to fully appreciate the fire ecologies of a pre-modern world. Cheers

.

[Guest]

Actually the great apes are pretty easy to find and there are conservation efforts encouraged and put in place because of poaching.

Wrong again, Transformer

http://news.national...llas-congo.html

The claimed intelligence and language abilities of Koko are pretty controversial. Even given the supposed extent of her learning it still puts her at about the intelligence level of a 30 month old human child at the most.

And still wrong. Koko's intelligence is well-documented and beyond dispute. She has the ability to use abstract reasoning, and express complex emotional concepts and states. Just because she's not as smart (maybe) as you or I does not make her unintelligent.

More proof of gorilla intelligence:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0930_050930_gorilla_tool.html

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050930/full/news050926-14.html

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/oct/19/scientists_study_gorilla_who_uses_rocks_tools/?print

Edited October 28, 2012 by Mulder

[ShadowBorn]

Here is something to dwell on, how did these youngsters get taught. If their population growth rate is going down due to poaching then how is it that these young gorillas learned to dismantle these traps. We say that they are not intelligent ,but this says differently.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/07/120719-young-gorillas-juvenile-traps-snares-rwanda-science-fossey/

[Guest okiesquatchartist]

I think the plain and simple fact is we don't know anything about the Sasquatch digestive system or how much they are required to eat or even do eat during a day. "Sasquatch" shouldn't be included in the title of that particular study imo.

[Guest]

Just watched a bunch of happy heavily pregnant cows chowing down on corn and pumpkins at a farm/pumpkin patch. If they can get this big on grazing, some grain & hay (and corn on the cob and pumpkins), no problem BF should get so big... as far as intelligence, add in genetics and meat. Just a thought watching these huge animals fight over broken pumpkins...

[Guest]

Madison, you are correct, cows will get fat on a diet like that since they are ruminates, history showed us that through distillery dairies. Just another example of how introducing a non-native diet causes changes.

[Cotter]

How many calories in a small deer or elk?

How about possum, racoon?

How long does it take one to 'forage' one of those?

Interesting link. That's about it.

[Guest]

Cotter - you may find some of your questions at this link. Last I dug around in here they did list wild game. Haven't checked in a while so don't know if that has changed.

http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/

Cotter - found this regarding roasted possum (oh, my bad, "O"possum as I have been instructed to call it from a docent at the Virginia Living Museum)

399g roasted Opossum = 882 cals; total fat 41 g; cholesterol 515 g; protein 121g

at that 399g I'm wondering what that big fat bugger living in my backyard would yield.... hmmmm.

[Guest]

Wrong again, Transformer

http://news.national...llas-congo.html

The article describes the discovery as part of a "first ever ape census in northern Congo" and one reseacher is qouted as saying "We knew there were apes there, we just had no idea how many". It's not like it was being explored for decades and the gorillas weren't found. When the scientists went into the remote area, they found them.

[Guest BFSleuth]

I did and found nothing to suggest that the enzymes themselves change or that new enzymes are made or change due to dietary changes. Please link to a cite.

New "species"of enzymes aren't created. What changes in the gut is the distribution of enzyme population. Think of it as an ecosystem, like Yellowstone National Park. In YNP the ecosystem changed when the wolf population was removed. The elk were able to graze heavily on shrubs and small trees next to streams, which in turn removed food sources from beavers, and beaver population was reduced. Reintroducing wolfs meant the elk weren't able to graze at their leisure, trees were able to grow next to streams, and beavers began to make a come back, creating ponds and changing the landscape.

In a similar fashion if enzyme X is prevalent in a person's gut because they are eating a diet heavy in protein and fats, but they change to a high carb diet, then enzyme X will reduce and be that population will be replaced by enzyme Y. The balance of population of enzymes and bacteria in a persons gut will change with diet, with medications, and other factors.

A dramatic example was a friend of mine, whose gut was depleted of bacteria after getting infected by giardia. The antibiotics wiped out almost all his gut bacteria and he had a very difficult time digesting and getting nutritional value from his food for months after that. He saw a specialist that helped him with certain supplements to encourage regrowth of good bacteria so he could properly digest food.

It sounds disgusting but there are also treatments for reintroduction of good bacteria by basically taking enemas filled with feces from another person as a way of reintroducing a gut ecosystem in a person that doesn't have any of the correct species of bacteria remaining in their gut. The gut ecosystem is dynamic and will respond to a variety of issues that include diet changes, stress, disease, and drugs.

[indiefoot]

A "crapfusion" eh? I read about one recently where the donor was the person's mother.

[Guest BFSleuth]

Yeah, I think I'll take the disease over the treatment....

But I do understand that it works. Kind of like reintroducing wolves into an ecosystem, if you don't have any of the bacteria or enzymes in your gut, they need to get back in there somehow in order to properly digest food.