I recently read an article discussing the reasons that Pygmies were small and I came across a theory that I had never heard. I always thought that they were small because it was easier to travel through the jungle for very small people. The article mentioned the theory that is essentially the same as the reason Homo floresiensis is thought to be small. It is very difficult to find food in the area where Pygmies live. Over several thousand years of barely getting enough food to survive the smaller people tend to scrape by and there is not enough food for anybody to grow large. The individuals who are naturally small tend to do better than those who are "starved" into it.

The first hominids left Africa about 2 million years ago, according to the most popular theory. They may have found a huge new environment that was relatively free from competition. Some of the older fossils in Java are gigantic in size and are known as meganthropus or Homo erectus meganthropus. I wonder if that might be attributed to having many hundreds of generations with very little competition so getting enough food wasn't such a problem. In that environment, a larger animal should have the advantage. If the first arrivals had a relatively slow rate of reproduction, it could take many thousands of years to fill up the environment, so to speak. In a situation like that, it might give the larger animals the advantage. The number of predators would be reduced and it would give the larger animals a survival value. Larger males could control and protect the females better. After several thousand years in Asia, a giant version seems to have evolved which was much larger than the original group that left Africa.

It is a principle in biology that you need to have a separation of the population to form a new species. The separation doesn't have to be geographic. It can also be structural or behavioral. In this case, I think that size alone, structural, may have been the factor that separated them from their smaller ancestors. Over the vastness of time, almost ten times longer than the oldest known modern human fossil, several other migrations from Africa occurred but these populations had to compete with all the other hominids living there including the much larger forms that arrived there first. Eventually modern humans moved out of Africa and dominated and largely replaced all other types of hominids in Asia.

I thought of a possible reason that modern humans haven't become larger. We can reproduce very rapidly. We can quickly reproduce to the point where the environment just sustains us. Then we would have the problem of finding sufficient food again limiting our size. You essentially have two competing strategies. Our ancestors were capable of extremely rapid reproduction. It may be related to our increased technology, giving us relative dominance over other animals. A creature that is not dominant, or lacks our technology may find it impossible to support the large families that are a characteristic ability of modern humans. Then the strategy of larger individuals with a relatively low birthrate becomes a strategy that is favored.

I don't mean to oversimplify the reason some hominids seem to have grown large. I just focused on availability of food as a primary factor. In the case of modern humans, technology my play a part as well. When you are armed with poison arrows, even small humans can defend themselves. The evidence is not sufficient to conclude which, if any, group of hominids grew large to eventually cross into the Americas. This is just a possible explanation of how a relatively small hominid could evolve into Bigfoot. I think the first to arrive in Asia is the most likely of all the hominids, but the evidence is not sufficient to rule any of them out.

Reasons animals get big...

*Conservation of body heat in cold climates.

*To out-mass their prey & make hunting easier.

*To out-mass the animals that prey on them.

*Herbivores get big to contain the "fermentation tank" stomach(s) they use to digest their food.

*Ample supplies of food.

*Size of their environment.

*Sexual characteristics/selective breeding advantages... At least for males.

I fail to understand how food can be scarce in a tropical environment.

It seems to me that there are enough bugs alone there to eat to sustain armies (if you could talk them into eating them).

And why are the Tusis so tall? Both Tusis and pygmies are from central Africa, aren't they?

Who are the tusis ? I done a search with goggle and still can not figure it out. Could it be spelled wrong ?

I am not an expert on anthropology, but I believe that Pygmies are a different race than the Negros. There are also Bushmen in the Kalahari and Australnesians mixed with Negros in Madagascar. The Tutsis are thought to have come from the Sudan only 600 years ago. Link

I can only speculate on part of the reason. I think it is that the Bantu and many other groups took to raising cattle and that gave them a much greater source of food. The range requirements of the cattle, disease and culture limited the population and allowed them to grow larger. I think the jungle is very hard to find food in. Most of the plants fruit only sporadically and most are poisonous. Their large population may have made it difficult to find enough animals to eat in the forest. The larger size is likely do to the constant migration of human populations.

In my opinion, the jungle (or rain forest) where the Pigmys (or is it pigmies) live seems to be lush and full of food, but I think it is not as easy to find food as it seems. They relish grubs and any meat whenever they can get it. Gorillas are quite large but they live on a large quantity of relatively poor food.

Good links, Bob.

I knew Tutsis (thanks for the correct spelling, too) were in central Africa in large populations, but didn't realize that they had migrated there from the east.

It is remarkable that such tall people are found in the same region with the much shorter pygmies. The link you provided also pointed out facial distinctions that the Tutsis tend to have, which is markedly different from the other tribal folks of the area.

I suppose it's very possible to starve anywhere, but it's just hard for me to imagine how in the tropics. While you're correct that fruiting is seasonal and there are many poisonous fruits and vegetation, just the bugs ought to provide lots of food.

Heck, you couldn't escape the bugs and snakes if you tried. BIG bugs, too. But I'm sure lots of them are poisonous, too. It seems like everything there stings, bites, and is probably poisonous.

Interesting post. I remember reading an article where the author’s theory was that height was limited in humans by the fact that head injuries due to falls become exponentially more severe the taller we are. If Shaquille Oneal is running and trips and hits his head he is more likely to be killed than an average sized person.

But anyway, size/height must be driven by environmental pressures. Certainly an ample food supply is necessary to evolve to be bigger, but it’s not sufficient. There are lots of tiny critters with ample food supplies that don’t get bigger. There is no reason to evolve to be taller/bigger unless it gives a survival advantage, even if there is plenty of food and fast reproduction.

I think the evolution to bigness is either driven by sexual selection (as you point out) meaning it only helps get more mates (such as peacock feathers), or environmental pressures. For Bigfoot, that could either be competition with other big megafauna in the past, or I’ve wondered if it’s simply an adaptation to be able to quickly travel rough terrain.

Seems like from what I’ve read, a BF is more mobile than any other land critter in a rugged mountainous terrain, does anyone agree?

Yes, good links Bob. Interesting how language survives so long and can be used like DNA to track migrations.

As far as food in the tropics, there is the theory of a Population Bottleneck that may have reduced the human population to a few thousand just 70,000 years ago, perhaps by the Toba volcano.

If that is true, the tropics may have been the only habitable place, but the food supply would be drastically reduced. Also could have led to very small people.

Another good link, NW.

Obviously, I've never seen a sasquatch navigate rugged mountainous terrain.

But I have seen Dall sheep, mountain goat, black and brown bear, and even caribou on mountains and cliffs.

I've even witnessed Dall sheep run down a sheer cliff after being attacked by a lynx.

I can't imagine a biped doing that. Indeed, when on steep slopes, I go to all fours myself.

I would think a large biped would be more at home in an open savannah, but a tall, thick forest with a moderate to light undergrowth would fit the bill well (especially if the biped treasured his privacy). Mountainous terrain is fine, but the steeper the slope, the more quadrapedal movement would be required.

I would think blood pressure might be a serious difficulty to overcome as well. The feet and bones also need to change. Those are very simple structural changes compared to the myriad of changes needed for upright posture to evolve independently, assuming the original ape wasn't upright in the first place.


That is a good point. It is a very complex set of factors that determines the optimal size of any organism. It seems to me that two responses are likely in an environment of ample food. One would be to grow larger (if there is an advantage) and the other is to increase the birth rate. The first arrivals may have had different populations trying both strategies to different degrees.


The larger animals may have been able to swim the rivers and so the first group that arrived could have started out somewhat bigger. It would take many generations to also develop more suitable bone structures and become giants. (IMO)


There is an interesting thread that Chronic wrote about the subject. Someone speculated that Homo erectus preferred rough terrain because of the large number of fossils found in rough terrain.

I remember a time when I surprised a herd of about 10 elk in Wind Cave National Park. The whole heard ran over a 30+ foot cliff to get away from me. I sprinted the 50 yards and by the time I got there, they were running up the other side of the valley. It was one of the most astonishing things I have ever witnessed.

I just love these kind of theories..... there's no way to put them into practice.....

Belle

Yea, not much use in everyday life except for us science geeks.

True!

I think the tendency of a top predator is to get bigger where a food supply can sustain it. Bigger is better, at least for predators that don't rely on teeth or claws to compete for food and defense. BF becoming giants in a food rich environment are probably the norm, where humans have remained relatively slight in stature and are by far the weakest of the great apes. This is a testament to the advantages of increasing brain size. If we were predators competing for food on the Savannahs, we must have had an edge even before we used tools as weapons for hunting. Perhaps we survived by allowing all competing predators to have their way with a kill, then after the buzzards have finished picking at the bones we moved in for the marrow. Using our smarts to break into the bones meant we didn't need to rely on predation to get our protein. We were likely scavengers long before we became hunters and tool use compensated for our lack of physical prowess, which turned out to be a highly successful survival trait. By the time we extended into other environments such as forest habitat, we used our brains to avoid the environmental pressure to get bigger. Given the advantages of being a big predator with an adequate food supply, it seems logical to get as large as the largest competing predator, such as a bear. I wonder how prominent bear/BF encounters have played out in the past? And why are top predators such as bears naturally wary of any animals besides other bears? Have humans/BF had that much influence on their instinctive wariness? It certainly makes sense not to mess with humans if you want to survive as a species.



I'm always amazed at the agility and sure-footedness of the ungulates. Black-tailed deer pass thru my property every day and during a recent moonless night I heard a pair of deer bolting thru the bush at top speed navigating thru trees over very steep terrain without missing a beat. I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. This made me wonder if the deer's superior night-vision was in response to nocturnal predators such as mountain lion. Since BF is probably a nocturnal hunter, their night vision is probably nearly as acute as their prey's (deer for example). Perhaps an adaptation to night hunting has provided BF with the reliable food source needed to evolve into the giants we suspect they are.

My brother Jim remembered it being higher but this is how I remember the flying elk. It was one of those once in a lifetime experiences. I wanted to recreate it as best I could without spending too much time on it. They must not have even broken stride when they hit the bottom and were probably going over 40 mph. We were ~50 yards to the left and didn't get to see them fly but this is what I imagine they looked like.

Artist rendition

When I was a kid with garter snakes and iguanas, they would just grow to the size of their environment (the glass aquariums) and not to their natural size.

I'm not sure if that applies to this discussion, but thought I'd toss it out.

The height relative to the elk looks about right to me. What was truely amazing is that it was obvious that the first elk over the cliff was in the air while the many others were in the air right behind it. I don't know how the ones behind could see the ground. They must have hit the bottom on the very steep slope on the run and indeed their footprints made a mess of the slope below the cliff. Falling that far, I don't see how they weren't going faster than 40 mph. I was so astonished, I remember it all very well. I wouldn't have thought it possible if I didn't see it. It would be suicide for sure to try to follow them.

Cool experience Jim and Bob! What a sight.

Certainly they couldn't jump that far down and land on their legs without breaking them. They must skip down to slow their decent. I vaguely remember a nature show with wildebeasts going downhill and I think they slowed at the bottom by doing a belly landing.

Those are the experiences that are remembered for a lifetime.

It's truly amazing what such animals can do.

Ever wonder how a bull moose with antlers nearly 6' wide can run (fast!) through a forest thick with trees?

It's a wonder to see.

They must have hit the slope on the bottom at the perfect angle. How they learned to do that is a wonder. I guess they started at small cliffs and pretty soon learned that they could leap off any of the nearby cliffs. It was quite the getaway. They are not hunted there except maybe rarely so I don't think it was out of terror. I saw them go over the edge and I am pretty sure they were going way to fast to have run down the cliff face. Jim said he remembered the marks on the ground where they landed ~10 feet out. They were a couple of hundred yards away when I reach the edge of the cliff (~8 seconds later). They couldn't have stumbled much. These are solid limestone cliffs and I don't think it would be "safe" going down as you suggest.

I certainly think you are making a good and logical conclusion but to clarify what I (we) saw. There was a large herd of maybe 25 or 30 elk running away from us at top speed or close to it. They went right over the vertical rock cliff and had to be air born. I am almost certain they didn't touch the rock cliff face and they hit the steep dirt slope below the bottom of the cliff as my brother pretty accurately drew it. Even if the ones in front tried to slow down, the others behind them would have pushed them over but they didn't slow down that I could see. When we reached the cliff edge, the elk were running up the other side of the mountain as if they never broke stride and I can tell you, both Bob and I were very dumbfounded.

Amazing that none of those elk came up lame or worse. I suspect they didn't just take a leap on faith and knew the base of the cliff was soft enough to make the jump. Still, it's a pretty risky strategy considering a broken leg means it's game over. But what predator would be crazy enough to follow them? I've watched deer go down a vertical cliff face and when they were airborne, they touched the face with their front hooves, not to slow their decent, but to maintain their orientation in anticipation of the landing. When they hit the bottom, their momentum was distributed over several strides, which reduced the stress on their legs enough to avoid injury. In effect they hit the ground running, which prevented them from piling on each other.

I am a bit skeptical that BF would hunt very often. I think that fear of humans is the best reason to explain them going nocturnal. Perhaps fear may not be the correct word but somehow needing to avoid us to keep out of our way. If they had a club or a large rock, they could certainly kill any sort of deer at a distance and I don't mean to imply that I think they are totally peaceful with the other animals. I just tend to think they are mostly vegetarian because of the mess they would make of a deer and the noise of chasing them. Also the crest on the head is an indication of a need to process more food and would tend to indicate a large amount of vegetation in the diet.

I try to imagine the hunting of deer at night with superior night vision and I can believe they are capable of it, at least on occasion. Deer are fast and agile, but mule deer can be very stupid. I think they would get wise very quickly though if you started actually hunting and killing them. Perhaps if Bigfoot is very rare and migratory they could kill them more often without chasing them which would be heard for miles in the forest at night.

It is kind of ironic that the ancestor I favor is thought to have hunted the ancestor favored by many. Giganto is supposed to be a vegetarian. I seem to be in the minority that thinks BF is primarily a vegetarian, yet I seem to be in the minority in thinking its ancestor was a predator. It all comes down to if BF could find a source of food in the winter other than meat.

I just want to point out that this was in the forest so counting them was just about impossible. After hearing the noise I headed in that direction and did get to see several go over the edge. His estimate is a more typical size herd but I never was able to see all of them.

Yes, a crest would likely support large jaw muscles for grinding vegetation. Wonder how large the canines are on the males? IMO, BF are likely opportunists when it comes to hunting and more systematic when foraging for plants/insects. If they are nocturnal hunters, then I suspect they ambush their prey. Otherwise, becoming nocturnal strictly to avoid humans isn't too far-fetched considering how effective a strategy it's been.

I agree, at least large prey.

Lots of folks might be surprised to realize how seldom bears hunt and kill adult ungulates. Ungulate calves in the spring of their birth is a bear smorgasbord, but adult moose and caribou are either too fast and/or too dangerous to take on. Most of their meat consists of small animals, like squirrels, or fish, and their overall diet is mostly vegetarian.

I think sasquatches eat/hunt/graze similarly.



I agree with that, too.

Great thread guys, very interesting. that must have been quite a sight --- the only time I have ever seen an animal go over a cliff and survive was on Saturday mornings....sorry couldn't resist...

...unless of course they were made that way.

Wow!

I have to say the theories and ideas expressed here are quite thought provoking but allow me to add fuel to the fire.

Looking back on evolution I remember being presented with the notion that most animals WERE larger 'back in the day'. Giganto, if I'm not mistaken was supposed to be around 10 foot tall. Saber tooth tigers were bigger than any cat today and sharks were much bigger too.

Keeping this in mind it makes more sense to me that living beings are getting smaller rather than larger. It doesn't make much sense for anything to evolve to be larger.

Assuming BF is Giganto if it is evolving larger would it not be bigger than the 10 feet it was said to be? Why aren't cats still as large as Sabertooth?

When I think small, I think cockroaches....they've been around forever. Talk about being around for the long haul. This lends more credibility to things evolving to be smaller...

Territories and food supplies are shrinking due to deforestation and outright competition for resources. The larger an animal is the more food it needs to maintain its size and structure. Bears pretty much have that market cornered. Even bears amongst themselves are dwindling in number...maybe not at an alarming rate but competition amongst themselves may not even be what it was.

According to most of the info I've found on human diets is that a human male needs about 12 times it's body weight in calories for it to function properly when it isn't being that active and about 17 times it's body weight in calories when it is highly active. A 200 pound man needs 2400 calories a day just to do nothing and 3400 calories a day to be highly active.

How many calories does an animal weighing in the neighborhood of 800 lbs need to survive on an average daily basis? IF it is anything like a human male it would need 9600 calories a day just to get by and over 10,000 if it is active at all. Assuming it is vegetarian and if you have to carry an 800 lb body around everyday through dense growth and hilly/rocky terrain youd have to be pretty active I would guess...

Fellow forum members, I am not a scientist, much less an anthroplogist. If I said anything that was off base please feel free to straighten me out and enlighten me. I merely present these ideas as more food for thought. I'm interested in hearing your ideas...

Thanks
D

It might also be important to discuss geographical variation since bf seem to exist across the US.

-Geographical variation, as exhibited by the mammals and birds of North America, may be summarized under the following heads: namely, (1) variation in general size, (2) in the size of peripheral parts, and (3) in color; the latter being subdivisible into (a) variation in color with latitude, and ( with longitude. As a rule, the mammals and birds of North America increase in size from the south northward.-

from: http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/biogeog/ALLE1877.htm

I wonder if the Fla skunk ape's size is smaller than that reported in states such as Ohio.

I brought this up in another thread on this board speculating that eastern BF was smaller than northwestern ones due to the geography and less (dense) forest compared to the northwest.

Might as well point out too that I theorized about the 3 toed southern BF's due to their need to get around in more swampy areas. could also be that the 3 toed prints could be faked...it's all speculation like I pointed out on that thread as well...

D

The main argument of this thread was to suggest that the only reason Giganto is considered the best candidate for Bigfoot is not entirely valid. There have been other examples of when hominids have grown much larger. We don't really even know how big Giganto was because all we have is teeth, parts of the lower mandible and maybe a fragment of the skull. It may have just had oversized teeth like Australopithecus robustus or Australopithecus bosei. The examples were not intended for Gigantopithicus because in my opinion there is not enough evidence to suggest it as a likely candidate for Bigfoot. That lack of evidence makes it impossible to totally dismiss them as a candidate. What most paleontologist think about Giganto is that it is a very large quadrupedal ape more closely related to orangutans. I very much doubt the idea that it became bipedal recently. At least one quadruped ape, Chimpanzees, seem to have evolved from an upright ancestor. In my opinion, that indicates that upright posture is not ideal in deep forest environments and is unlikely to evolve independently in a distantly related creature.

I don't think that most animals are evolving into smaller species. Humans probably caused the extinction of a large number of the megafauna due to Folsom spear and similar technology. I have heard the climate change theory as the cause of the extinction of the megafauna, but I think it is put forward by people that think humans were not capable of killing mammoth. I totally disagree with that opinion but climate change may have played a role. The reason it didn't happen in Africa is because the animals had learned to live with modern humans for a very long time. In North America and the far north, a new technology likely enabled the rapid expansion and exploitation before the megafauna had a chance to react.

Humans do seem to be shaping some animals. I have heard that a large percentage of Asian elephants have no tusks. I suspect there are many examples of similar changes caused primarily by the influence of humans. There may be pressure from human hunters to decrease the size of their game by always selecting the largest most fit animals. In the time frame of modern humans, most changes would not be obvious and it is anybody's guess as to the direction.

The more I think about it the more futile it seems to try to peg BF to any ancient fossils or hominid. Gigantopithecus captures the imagination because it give credence to the idea that a huge hominid could exist. But BF, if it exists, could have branched off just about anywhere, ancient or recent.

I agree. Based on the available evidence, it is all just speculation. Gigantopithicus is just one possibility and in my opinion there are several better candidates in the fossil record. I might even put undiscovered ancestor in front of it based on what most paleontologist seem to think about Giganto. There are too many similarities to humans for me to favor anything outside of the hominids (upright walkers). Convergent evolution could explain an ape having so many humanlike features, but it is simpler for me to believe one of the known hominids or their close relatives grew larger.

I agree.

I discovered the "bigfoot/Giganto" hypothesis a few years ago, and it piqued my interest to start reading up on Sasquatch again. (I'm a big proponent of historical precedence.) But now I'm less inclined to consider Giganto as ancestral, and consider Homo erectus - or something similar - as perhaps equally likely.

Still I think there are two things that make H erectus an unlikely sasquatch ancestor. First, there is the whole 8' tall, 800lb thing. I've been trying to learn more about H. e. meganthropus. Do we really have any evidence that they were robust like sasquatch, or just tall like Masai, Dinkas, Tutsis, etc? If they really were "bigfoot" big, then can someone comment on their specualted distribution or length of appearance in the fossil record? I've looked for some original papers on this, but none I've found address my meaty questions.

My second hesitation to a Homo ancestor for Sasquatch is technological. H. erectus was, as far as i know, a tool maker, fire user, etc. With the exception of rock throwing and perhaps club use on unfortunate raccoons, I don't see anything in Sasquatch reports that points to any great degree of technological know-how. It's hard to imagine a species from a genus that had been developing gray matter and technology over brawn actually abandoning technologies it had already mastered when faced with competition.

Anyone have some thoughts on these musings? Apologies in advance if I'm far off-base with respect to anthropology and/or key sasquatch anecdotes. I guess my overall point is that this thread has been a good reminder for me to not get too locked in to any one hypothesis of alleged sasquatch ancestry. "Proving" giganto and H. erectus as lousy potential ancestors doesn't mean that there is no sasquatch branch on the family tree, it may just mean we don't have the whole branch in the fossil record.

Cheers,
~Saskeptic

Are you familiar with Stephen Jay Gould’s analogy of the ‘left wall’? The analogy is that a drunk walks out of a bar, there is a brick wall on his left. He can stagger forward or backward or to the right, but if he goes too far left, he hits the brick wall and dies or bounces back to the street or sidewalk. The ‘left wall’ in his analogy with evolution is the minimum characteristics that it takes to make something ‘alive’. Things can evolve in any direction, more complex, less complex, forward or backward, as long as they evolve in a way to survive.

So I think that it is possible theoretically that Bigfoot could have ‘devolved’ from tool making ancestors, as long as that continued it’s survival. I’m not suggesting that’s what happened, only that evolution can work both ways.

The other thing I wanted to point out is that in certain conditions, way out on the bell curve, evolution can happen much much faster than we normally assume. So at least there is a biological theory on how a creature such as Bigfoot could have evolved rapidly from either humans or apes, in a lot less time than we may imagine. (thousands vs. millions of years).

http://www.stevequayle.com/Giants/index2.html

Um...link on giants stuff....neat sight...

nope - thanks for the tip!





True, but hard for me to envision a scenario in which losing the ability to control fire, for example, would actually increase an individual Homo erectus' (Darwinian) fitness. For me (maybe you too), that's a tough sell, so I lean slightly more toward a Giganto - affiliate ancestry: if, in fact, these suckers exist at all.

A very likely reason for them to abandon technology is to avoid conflict with modern humans or more aggressive hominids in the past (more aggressive than them not us). It also explains the apparent nocturnal behavior.

I have spent a great deal of time researching Meganthropus. It is very frustrating trying to get just the known information. It seems that the only undisputed info is the very large teeth and skull fragments that Krantz used to make his skull. The size of the brain seems to be the characteristic that confirmed homo erectus relation. I cannot seem to find info on the actual sizes of the fossils. I am very skeptical of all the info like a 47 inch femur supposedly found in Turkey or the Meganthropus skeletons found in Australia. There also seems to be a femur associated with the original Meganthropus but it is disputed. Something about giants seems to really bring out the hoaxers and people with rather unscientific ideas.

One thing has become clear to me. Anthropologist that find a fossil hominoid, want to assign human characteristics such as tools or upright stance. Any tools found in the area will be said to prove the fossil an ancestor or ancient member of the human family. I think the value of the human quality greatly enhances the value of the fossil so I think a wise person would discount it to some degree. At any rate, if a new species split at the time of the first group making it all the way to Java, which might have been an ideal time to split, it would not have had fire or tools much beyond what sasquatch has been reported to have, rocks and clubs.

No problem, here's a link: Gould





BobZenor above gives a plausible scenario. As I mentioned earlier, we could be dealing with things way out on the bell curve that are rare but real. As Bob points out it could be competition with humans. Or it could simply be a small group of (insert your ape or hominid here) broke off in geographic isolation X thousands of years ago and were able to thrive by being very stealthy and being able to traverse rugged terrain. With inbreeding, a new species can branch off more quickly than we might assume. Gould gives a good example of this in his book "Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes" where he points out there are seven species of horses all with different numbers of chromosomes. People always puzzle about the chromosome number differences, but he points out that with the right breeding structure and mutations it can happen and that's probably why there are so many species of horses. Also these various horse species look dramatically different in size, color and other attributes.

And I have to throw this tidbit in the mix. In Bryson's book that I mentioned earlier in this thread, he gave the very interesting statistic that there is more genetic diversity in a social group of 55 chimpanzees than there is in the entire human global population! Something to ponder on