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  • Bartosz MilewskiBartoszMilewski@mathstodon.xyz
    Oct 9, 2026, 7:40 PM

    I'm talking about evolutionary fitness: how well we fit our environment.

    Climactic change in Africa forced our ancestors to fend for themselves in the savannah, where they couldn't just climb a tree to escape a predator. They were pushed to the very edge of extinction until they compensated by increasing their brain size. It was a huge gamble. For a billion years no other species was successful in harnessing intelligence as a survival strategy. We just didn't have any other choice and we got extremely lucky to slip through a very narrow bottleneck.

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  • Bartosz MilewskiBartoszMilewski@mathstodon.xyz
    Oct 9, 2026, 9:33 PM

    @drScott Bird intelligence is interesting. They are dinosaurs that were thrown into a very demanding environment, so their evolutionary fitness is precarious. Much worse than that of flying insects. But because of weight limitations, they had to miniaturize their brains. I'd say they pack more intelligence per gram of brain tissue than land animals (not to mention aquatic animals).

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  • Randy Smithcuriouserrandy@hachyderm.io
    Oct 10, 2026, 12:51 AM

    @BartoszMilewski You're aware of the "endurance hunter" perspective on humans? I don't actually think it's fair to consider us pathetically unfit (though I'm no expert on human evolutionary fitness and adaptation).

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