AND PROUD OF IT! (Pub November 8, 2024)

Race on Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Race on Friday, November 8, 2024

I didn't have much time to train for the half-marathon on November 17, but a few weeks ago I told myself: “if I can run 18 km before November 10, I'll run the half-marathon.”

Today was 18km, with several hills, so I'm ready.

In the last post,  I mentioned the great stone that fell to Earth about 65 million years ago. Just to remember, about 10 km in diameter, traveling through space at a speed of more than 36,000 km/h until colliding with the Earth, causing one of the largest massive extensions.

Among the changes that this caused was the predominance of phanerogams began. Many animals began to take advantage of them, including small mammals, the size of small squirrels. With this, they developed characteristics to live in trees. The first thing was not to fall, so they developed opposable thumbs to the rest of the fingers, which allowed them to grab onto trunks and branches. Also front view: both eyes are pointing forward, and thus stereoscopic view. Finally, a good part of the diet was fruit, it was important to know when these were ripe, and identifying the color was essential. Thus, a lineage of mammals with opposable fingers and color stereoscopic vision appeared. We call them Primates.

This group was very successful and began to diversify to adapt to different types of ecosystems. This gave rise to different groups. The first separation about 58 million years ago was between lemurs and their relatives, on the one hand, and, on the other, the other primates, the monkeys. 

Later, a group of monkeys arrived in America, so the monkeys were separated into two groups; “New World Monkeys” and “Old World Monkeys”, about 40 million years ago.

Among Old World Monkeys, some maintained arboreal life, but many with less dependence, and some even stopped living in trees. 

This group separated into two: the monkeys of Africa and Eurasia and the apes. This separation was about 25 million years ago.

About 20 million years ago, apes split into two groups. On the one hand, the lesser apes, the gibbons, and on the other, the great apes. Currently, all the great apes are in a single family; the Hominids.

Among today's hominids, only one continues to live in trees: orangutans, the largest arboreal animals that currently exist.  The others climbed down from the trees. Here we find gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and humans. Orangutans diverged from the other great apes about 18 million years ago. Gorillas separated about 15 million years ago, and chimpanzees and bonobos separated from humans about eight million years ago.

There are few fossils from the time when we separated from chimpanzees and bonobos, but some remains of possible common ancestors of chimpanzees and humans have been identified. But about 5.5 million years ago STANDING MONKEYS appeared. I mean upright, not just that they are bipedal, THEY ARE UPRIGHT. I always say that the differences between animals and humans are more of degree than kind. But walking upright is a unique characteristic of human beings. 

Currently, there is only one STANDING MONKEY left, but there were several species and several of them coincided in time. But nature is relentless and not everyone survives. For example, about 3.5 million years ago there was a sudden change in the climate of Africa, the place of origin of these apes. A process of desertification began; The vegetation cover decreased markedly and, with it, the food. This left the standing monkeys two options: specialize in something that was available, or figure out how to find new food. Two lineages appeared. One specialized in the vegetables present in the new conditions; I call them the nutcrackers. The other lineage worked hard to incorporate more animal protein into their diet; I call them crafty.

Calling them nutcrackers gives a pretty good idea of ​​what they look like. They developed a musculoskeletal structure in their skulls that allowed them to feed on extremely hard plants, of which they had to eat a lot because their nutritional value was very low. 

Now the crafty ones…

We are talking about animals that would reach 1.4 meters in height at most; Living in desert steppes, they did not have many advantages.

I suppose that, like chimpanzees, they included insects and other small animals in their diets, as well as vegetables, and, also like chimpanzees, they used tools to hunt them, small branches in the termite mounds to remove them, and so they began to make tools.

It is clear that there are many animals that use tools. There are also several animals that make tools, but the crafty ones were the first to make stone tools.

The standing monkeys that make stone tools are included in the genus Homo, humans, the first stone tools are from about 2.5 million years ago. 

Humans have existed on Earth for 2.5 million years.

So when, out of distraction, I commit something reckless while driving on the street and someone yells at me: ANIMAL!

I answer, with a hoarse chest: YES, AND PROUD OF IT!