I have a question if anyone can answer.

If grass had never evolved, do you think that human kind would be here today?

As I see it, man could only evolve by becoming a meat eater.

Most animals eat grass.

What do you think?

I have another question for you all?

If there wasn't any sea sponge would the seas be deeper?

Originally posted by Jon
I have another question for you all?

If there wasn't any sea sponge would the seas be deeper?

Hey, hijacking my thread are you with your own questions? tut tut tut :)

I might have to start charging you rent. :D

I bet plenty of people are using grass 8)

Reminds me a story I read someplace that the FBI kept visiting a Nursery school web page that has many references to the word grass.

I have a feeling this site is now on their must see list.

We must welcome them :wave:

I think they be eating weeds instead.

mmm... weeds, grass, sound like animals get stoned.

Since this thread is called hi-jack Lickszz thread... here is my question:

Do sheep get stoned when eating magic mushrooms?

Can't see that eating meat has anything to do with human evolution, we were obviously created as something special, as different as chalk and cheese from the other animals on earth.

We have perception and can understand far above any animal, the brain, (animal or human) needs food to survive and grow, it does not matter whether the food is meat or grass as we can get the very same nutrients from either.

IMO Mankind is still evolving by not eating meat. There is no need to decimate our fellow travellers on this planet.

Originally posted by halevan
Can't see that eating meat has anything to do with human evolution, we were obviously created as something special, as different as chalk and cheese from the other animals on earth.

We have perception and can understand far above any animal, the brain, (animal or human) needs food to survive and grow, it does not matter whether the food is meat or grass as we can get the very same nutrients from either.

I don't really think that we awere created as something special. Darwins ideas from the mid nineteenth century put paid to this idea. Darwinism has been expanded and clarified over the last 150 years or so. It may be quite comforting to go through life thinking that you and other are special, but the reality is that we are just particularly clever animals. More and more research shows that conciousness is a continuum, and that we humans are just at an extreme endof it.

Your point that the brain needs food to survive and grow is very correct, as is the fact that we have perception (whatever that is) above any other animal. But you can't get the same nutrients from meat as you can from grass.

Meat and grass require totally different strategies. With grass, you have to eat nearly constantly (see cows and sheep), chew the cud, and have many stomachs. Digestion rewquires a HUGE amount of energy. Meat is a high protein, energy rich food. You don't need to spend all day eating, and you don't need a many chambered stomach to digest it. And compare the spare energy a fox has, over say a cow.


The expensive tissue hypothesis argues that when our early Australopithecine ancestors made the move towards eating more meat (through co-opeartive hunting, or scavenging, or something), their guts shrank and became more efficient. moving from a palnt diet to an energy rich one gave them spare enegrgy, which they put into brain expansion. More intelligence = better hunting strategy = more social behaviour. And hunting seems to have lead to all kinds of interesting things, like tool use. Non carnivores rarely have the available brainpower or need for developing tool use.

http://www.fandm.edu/departments/Mathematics/A.Crannell/sizepaper.htm

There were human species who specialised in eating grass and plant food. They weren't flexible enough to cope with climate change, and didn't last that long.

I seem to recall that in one of Fred Hoyle's SF novels, it was asserted that the emergence of human-level intelligent life on Earth was mainly due to the evolution of grass some 50-60 million years ago. Was the novel "The Black Cloud"? - I haven't got a copy to hand to check the exact reasoning behind the assertion.

But imagine, if all grasses were suddenly to disappear today, say as a result of a virus, is it posible that humans could be brought to the edge of extinction. Because of course, wheat, and oats, and barley, and rye, and in particular rice, are all forms of grass.

Originally posted by maxt
IMO Mankind is still evolving by not eating meat. There is no need to decimate our fellow travellers on this planet.
Sorrry maxt, I love my chicken and steak... could NEVER EVER give em up dude!

If grass had never evolved something pretty much identical would have evolved to fill that particular evolutionary niche anyway, like very small trees, or fungi or something.