Aquatic Ape – The Theory Evolves

Posted on 2013-05-26 by arjaybe

Photo Credit - Marc Verhaegen

Photo Credit – Marc Verhaegen

Those of you who read my post, Bipedal – The Aquatic Ape Theory, might be interested to learn of this guest blog on Scienceblogs by Marc Verhaegen. He is a much more learned and erudite writer than I, and you will get a much greater depth of information from his post than from my brief outline. Here is a short quotation:

“It is often assumed that Alister Hardy’s and Elaine Morgan’s aquatic ape theory (AAT) suggests that more than 5 Ma (million years ago) there was a semi-aquatic phase in our past (explaining e.g. human fur loss, fatness and upright bipedalism), which was followed by a savanna phase on the African plains. In 2011, AAT proponents published an eBook, ‘Was Man more aquatic in the past?’, which showed a rather different picture of AAT.” – Marc Verhaegen

He was kind enough to comment on my post, and you can see that at the link above. If you are interested in the Aquatic Ape Theory, or in human evolution in general, I encourage you to go and read his Scienceblogs guest blog.

rjb

June 09, 2013 – The theory continues to evolve. See this post and ensuing discussion at the blog, The Aquatic Ape.

rjb

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My Valley in May

Posted on 2013-05-26 by arjaybe

Photo Credit - Randy Houle

Photo Credit – Randy Houle

Here is yet another great photograph of my valley. It first appeared here. I know. I know. You’re choking on the bile of envy, aren’t you?-) I can’t help that, but I can at least share a little of my good fortune.

rjb

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Farming Snails

Posted on 2013-05-22 by arjaybe

Photo credit - slack12/Foter.com/CC-BY-NC-ND

Photo credit – slack12/Foter.com/CC-BY-NC-ND

You wouldn’t normally think of snails as farmers. If anything they’d be more like cows, grazing through the day. Cows aren’t that smart. When they’re relaxing, chewing their cud, they’re probably not planning how to grow their next crop of grass. So what of snails, then?

Snails aren’t very brainy, even compared to cows. There’s the question of whether they can even be said to have a brain. They have a nervous system which has a clump of neurons at the head end, which might be a brain. Or it might just be an aggregation of nerve cells, a mere ganglion. We have similar clusters in our nervous system. One example is the solar plexus, located in the abdomen just below the diaphragm. It does a lot of very important work but you wouldn’t call it a brain. Continue reading →

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