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Bipedalism

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Adaptations require a reproductive advantage to become fixed in a population. Bipedality has many negative factors including increased risk of injury, decreased speed and agility, and the inability to cooperatively carry infants. Considering these drawbacks of bipedality, there had to be an extreme selective pressure to adapt bipedality. Ape populations declined as the Miocene progressed, except for hominids. This was a result of the Miocene apes becoming increasingly K-selected. Unlike hominids, Miocene apes were unable to compensate for the extended interbirth interval and were outcompeted by OWM. Hominids decreased their interbirth intervals through increased male parental investment. A wholesale change in social structure among early …show more content…

They were forest floor omnivores, which means that bipedality did not arise on the savanna (Lovejoy et. al, 2009). Bipedalism became a fixed adaptation because it was reproductively advantageous as it allowed for more effective provisioning. Effective provisioning was important in early hominids because females would exchange copulations for foods that were high in fat and protein. Extended and continuous upright walking had to be practiced for bipedality to be under strong selection. The necessity to carry food back for females would be to enough to force this kind of locomotion to become constant (Lovejoy, 1981). Males with reduced canines had an advantage because it signaled to females that they would not waste energy in dominance displays and could, therefore, spend more time provisioning for them (Lovejoy et al. 2009). The advantage of bipedality was that males could carry food back to the females. The extra food would give the females more energy, which would decrease interbirth intervals. To keep receiving provisions from males, females would exchange copulations. Male-male competition would decrease as males spent more time provisioning and eventually the males would start to provision cooperatively for extra protection in their expanding territories. These changes in the social structure would have been reproductively advantageous because they would have combatted the extended interbirth interval

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Ancestors in Our Genome, addresses the continuingly advancing disagreement upon whom our closest ancestor is within the great apes, described as the hominoid trichotomy debate. The author, Eugene E. Harris examines many different sources of evidence within the book, and with the help of improvements in biological and DNA technology he helps discover who our closest ancestors were. Also when we were first separated from them and how the separation took place. Although there have been many recent advances in technology, a large number of unanswered questions are still a mystery within our genome and evolution from the great apes. Chapter one discusses the debate of morphology - studying fossil evidence of the great apes - versus molecular

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Flexibility was key to obtaining more energy (food), because it exposed the Australopithecus to more environments and allowed them to be more adaptable to different environments, rather than just the rain forest as the book suggested. Second key benefit which bipedalism provided was energy efficiency. Bipedalism allowed hands to be free, which provided the benefit of gathering more food, than be carried over long distances. More food meant a better chance of survival for the Australopithecus. As the article suggested “ Our hands were free to make and use tools, we could walk long distances to collect and carry food (and in doing so benefit from enhanced thermoregulation to prevent overheating), we could look over tall

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He also mentions that other advantages could have been lower air temperatures as the distance from the ground would be greater and the body would experience higher wind speeds which would evaporate the sweat from the skin faster (Wheeler 1991). The ground absorbs heat from the sun and then radiates heat off the surface so if a hominin never adapted bipedalism then the hominin would become hot a lot faster and therefore they would become tired a lot sooner. Bipedalism helps a lot to retain a lower body temperature than non-bipedal

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