Bipedalism Research Paper
“On land, tropical forests underwent reduction or, more commonly, broke up into mosaics where patches of forest were interspersed with savanna or other types of open country. With the breaking up of forests, our early ancestors found themselves spending more and more time on the ground and had to adapt to this new open environment.” There are many different theories trying to explain why and how our ancestors came to be bipeds. This quote is stating the theory that our ancestors faced many obvious problems through having to deal with the forest-savanna change. The major problems here are that as forests shrank, we had to move from patch of trees to other patches of trees, but the major problem was food gathering. As trees became scarce,
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It’s probably harder and we cannot run fast doing so just because we have evolved out of being quadrupeds. But looking at the fastest animals in the world, most of the fastest animals run on four legs. I’m not saying that we should run on all fours but that speed was no longer a necessity in our survival. There are many disadvantages of being biped as well as advantages. I have noticed that almost all of these disadvantages are directly correlated with the advantages. Basically, everything in our evolution process was a system of trade-offs. A perfect example of this is shown here, “Still other advantages of Bipedalism would have enhanced survivability. With their heads up well above the ground, bipeds are able to spot predators before they get too close for safety.”, which can be compared to, “ Bipedalism makes an animal more visible to predators, and exposes its ‘soft underbelly’.” See how it’s all a system of trade-offs? I could show many more examples, but you get the point. More disadvantages of Bipedalism are limiting the ability to run faster or change direction quicker when running. “Quadrupedal baboons and chimpanzees are 30 – 34 percent faster than
It’s probably harder and we cannot run fast doing so just because we have evolved out of being quadrupeds. But looking at the fastest animals in the world, most of the fastest animals run on four legs. I’m not saying that we should run on all fours but that speed was no longer a necessity in our survival. There are many disadvantages of being biped as well as advantages. I have noticed that almost all of these disadvantages are directly correlated with the advantages. Basically, everything in our evolution process was a system of trade-offs. A perfect example of this is shown here, “Still other advantages of Bipedalism would have enhanced survivability. With their heads up well above the ground, bipeds are able to spot predators before they get too close for safety.”, which can be compared to, “ Bipedalism makes an animal more visible to predators, and exposes its ‘soft underbelly’.” See how it’s all a system of trade-offs? I could show many more examples, but you get the point. More disadvantages of Bipedalism are limiting the ability to run faster or change direction quicker when running. “Quadrupedal baboons and chimpanzees are 30 – 34 percent faster than