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Spiked on 17 June 2010
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Gnac said:
Spiked said:
Gnac said:

It makes us better suited for endurance. You might not be able to outrun most quadrapedal animals, but you'll be able to travel further.

I remember watching one of David Attenborough's programs, which demonstrated a hunting technique where you just run after an animal (and track it) to make it die of exhaustion. The narration explained that our posture gives us an amazing advantage.

Human Spine is not designed for bipedal locomotion at all.... which is why sooo many people have back problems as they age (sitting is also very stressful on the spine). Life is always adapting and those best suited will be the ones to move to the next generation :)

First of all, an office chair should be the last thing you expect to see while hunting wilderbeest.

Secondly, we get all kinds of problems as we age because our DNA decays each time cells are replaced.

Your last sentence is correct, though. Life adapts to its surroundings.

I added the sitting thing as an aside hence the brackets. The decay of DNA is much more complicated than that. Humans have linear DNA and the ends are not replicated by the polymerase. However, telomerase is an enzyme found in humans that mends the ends of the DNA restoring them to their initial length in each replication. The problem is that telomerase is not found in all cells and as we age it seems to disappear altogether thus causing our DNA to decay. This may seem like a big problem but the telomeres of DNA has a significant amount of nonsense and has no known function, nonetheless, this is what people believe the main cause of aging is. More research is needed.

Back to the spines though. You are very wrong in this regard.  Our spines are a heritage from distant ancestors who carried themselves horizontally, in water and on land. In those ancient creatures, as in modern quadrupeds, the spine functioned more like a flexible suspension bridge, supporting the body's organs, a role to which it is structurally well suited. The human spine has been transformed into a weight bearing column, putting it under unprecedented stresses and dooming us to the likelihood of back injuries and pain. (I went to look up my notes). For bipedal locomotion we should have short spines but alas, evolution is not perfect.