Early mammals are thought to have lived mainly nocturnal lives

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01109-6

by sohkamyung • 7 years ago

57 18 7 years ago

nature.com

burtonator2011• 7 years ago

This make a ton of sense on the surface.

It explains why we're warm blooded (keep warm).

It explains why we have fur (keep warm).

Plus there were a lot of reptiles about during the day and the night would have given us an advantage.

"us" lol.. team mammal FTW!

rangibaby• 7 years ago

The semi-aquatic ape theory makes a lot of sense at first but is (apparently) bunk

jazzyjackson2• 7 years ago

Just because it is unpopular doesn't mean its bunk.

From my reading of the situation (having been converted), it seems that being a 'just so' explanation (not so evidence based, just conjecture), and one put forward by a woman in the 1970s, it was met with really over the top hostility for what I think is an interesting hypothesis.

You get into how our fingers prune up for better grip in the water, our diving reflex, and how at-home some spearfishers and free divers are in the ocean, not to mention the multitude of fishing villages that predate written history by who knows how long... it's a very convenient explanation -- which academics are right to be skeptical of -- but I don't think it deserves being cast as bunk.

Somewhat tangential, but here's my favorite video of humans being at home in the ocean, "Living off the Land in Hawaii", with badass laying on the ocean floor waiting for a meal @3:45 https://youtu.be/jJXEepvG6Hc?t=225

aklemm• 7 years ago

As a nocturnal mammal, I enjoy this connection to my genetic ancestors.

danieltillett5• 7 years ago

Bird vision is so much better than mammalian vision. Primate vision is a poorly hacked together attempt to get back to something similar to what birds have, but compared to the cephalopod eye they are both hacks [0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_eye

Mirioron• 7 years ago

Do telescopes count as mammalian vision?

apocalypstyx• 7 years ago

It depends on what you want to think about McLuhan.

zzo38computer• 7 years ago

I think that it does not; it counts as artificial, instead. However, it can be used together with mammalian vision.

danieltillett5• 7 years ago

LOL. Imagine an eagle with a telescope :)

ejstronge• 7 years ago

Bird vision is so much better than mammalian vision. Primate vision is a poorly hacked together attempt to get back to something similar to what birds have, but compared to the cephalopod eye they are both hacks [0].

What are the criteria you consider when you say bird vision is better than primate vision? Fundamentally, different evolutionary pressures will lead to distinct optimizations in different lineages - this, it is difficult to suggest that one extant lineage is better than another.

As an example, consider the cephalopod. The different organization of the cephalopod eye does indeed seem better. But it’s possible that 360-degree vision was important to evolving cephalopods, so the anatomical organization of the eye adapted to facilitate this (i.e., through avoiding the presence of blind spots)

danieltillett5• 7 years ago

It is actually explained in the OA the issues with the mammalian eye. One issue they didn't mentioned is the hacky way we (primates) got colour vision via gene duplication of the red light receptor to form the green receptor. This makes primates prone to colour blindness due to recombination between the red and green receptor genes. Any system that results in ~5% of males having colour vision problems is a pretty bad system.

The cephalopod eye is better in almost every respect to the vertebrate eye. Not only isn't it wired in backwards, it can regrow if damaged. If there is a designer God, his second attempt was certainly the cephalopod eye.

Early mammals are thought to have lived mainly nocturnal lives

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