I suddenly feel very small, but also the load off my shoulders lifted.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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OK, now I'm imagining dinosaur archaeologists (monocles and brushes, not bullwhips and quips).
Birds are considered to be dinosaurs. Birds exist now. We are finding dinosaur fossils now.
That's what the XKCD that was posted says. Mostly.
The popup text on that one is quite funny.
Any idea how to access the pop-up text on a phone?
It says:
Sure, T. rex is closer in height to Stegosaurus than a sparrow. But that doesn't tell you much; 'Dinosaur Comics' author Ryan North is closer in height to certain dinosaurs than to the average human.
😂
As a tall person I feel cooler now
On my android, I just long press on the image, and it appears at the top of the popup menu
Same on iOS
There's always a relevant xkcd
Which makes me ask, why were mammals able to evolve to produce an apex predator that relies on it's inventiveness (Humans) in quite a short time, but no similar "dinosaur" got to that point in a much longer period?
We're searching planets for signs of life as a pre-cursor to intelligent life, but there's no guarantee that life will evolve in the same direction as ours.
Evolution isn't aimed. A T-Rex needs to be good enough to hunt enough food.
Our ancient ancestors smashed the skulls of animals killed by African predators to eat the brains, smashed bones to eat the marrow.
Later as our ancestors became bigger and stronger they hunted and needed to communicate with each other to effectively track and take down an animal. Maybe they needed twenty words. Chickens have three words (or cluck patterns)
At the same time women collected stuff and needed to share how to identify this from that with younger women. They might have needed a hundred words.
Then those who could talk better were more attractive to the other sex than those who couldn't (even now being well spoken is attractive) then a few millions of years later we're making stone knives, hammers, axes; then ten minutes later aeroplanes and machine guns
In short: we had it hard enough we needed to share information. We later found communication sexy. T-Rex had no such trouble. We seem to be the only animal that solved "scavenging is dangerous" and "hunting is hard" with talking to each other rather than by getting bigger and getting claws or vicious teeth
I understand we selected for tall by fighting humans
Weird to leave at animals like crows with that last one.
The difference is that they decided not to be parasitic narcissistic global suicide "apex" who gave no fucks, literally, about our will-no-longer-exist "children."
You're so narcissistic you will refuse to admit that they weren't stupid. The very way you will chose to be exactly that by denying the obvious as I lay it out so blatantly that your ego cries and denies ad infinitum.
Edit: Yeah and it's okay. Those downvotes will save anyone's life on this planet. Adiós!
Now you get it. :)
Corvids and psittacines display human child level intelligence. They use tools. They recognize other people. Hell the psittacines can mimic speech.
I personally suspect it's a matter of energy density. Birds have to use almost all of their available calories on flying. Doesn't leave a lot of energy left over for a massively hungry brain. No clue what's holding back penguins, emus, and cassowaries.
Most birds are extremely light and efficient. Their bones have evolved to be light weight to help with this. Some species even fly in a V formation to conserve energy.
Evolution doesn't mean get better or smarter. It just means the species can survive and keep reproducing. Emperor Penguins in Antarctica for example, where they nest in a place where there are no predators. It seems insane the hardship and their silly walk which takes forever. But it works.
Birds have to use almost all of their available calories on flying.
But flying is quite energy efficient as a method of getting from point A to point B. That's why flying insects and birds have had such evolutionary success with that strategy.
Is it though? They have to eat an absolute ton relative to their own mass. At least all the birds I've ever interacted with were constantly eating, even when they mostly didn't bother flying. Chicken soccer is what I called feeding the chickens. No patience whatsoever.
My mother used to say that her sons eat like birds, a peck at a time, and twice our own body weight daily.
While we humans eat a lot, something like 50% of our calories are going to our brains. I'm not sure most birds could actually increase their caloric intake enough to be able to evolve bigger brains than they already have. Maybe if we designed them some super foods, but that seems to be cheating, to me.
My mother used to say that her sons eat like birds, a peck at a time, and twice our own body weight daily.
Aw that's cute lol
While we humans eat a lot, something like 50% of our calories are going to our brains.
I don't think that's right.
This article says that about 20% of an adult human male's resting energy expenditure goes towards supporting the brain's metabolism. Obviously for more active people, the higher denominator of total energy expenditure will mean an even lower percentage of energy being used for the human brain.
Flying is energetically expensive to start doing, but pays off in efficiency once an animal moves a far enough distance. How many calories does a goose need to consume to fly 4000 km, and how does that compare to terrestrial species like deer or wolves?
...something like 50% of our calories are going to our brains.
Dang, I'll have to remember this next time my ADHD pushes me to hyperfocus and I risk skipping meals again. O.O
Also, water you are drinking has probably been peed by dinosaure. Several time. But probably not peed by a human.
guzzles water
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