Man has testicles mauled off

[Mr. Harley]

All of the great apes are substantially stronger than humans. It turns out that a mutation akin to muscular dystrophy, if memory serves me correctly, substantially weakened our ancestors - it's a case of either too many or not enough, I believe too many, of a gene involving muscle strength.

Way too many copies, muscular dystrophy. A few too many copies, and you are less strong, and your jaw muscles are weaker. It turns out that the attachment point for extremely strong jaw muscles up on the skull leads to less cranial capacity. So yes the chimpanzee or any great ape is substantially stronger pound for pound. Also chimpanzees engage in warfare against adjacent groups of chimpanzees, and will exterminate the opposing groups over time. Sounds premeditated to me.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
All of the great apes are substantially stronger than humans. It turns out that a mutation akin to muscular dystrophy, if memory serves me correctly, substantially weakened our ancestors - it's a case of either too many or not enough, I believe too many, of a gene involving muscle strength

Untrue.

The muscular dystrophy-like mutation common to all humans is present in a gene which is only activated in the cranial muscles of primates. This is indeed what leads to much less robust jaw musculature of humans compared to non-human primates.

This is not what leads to the fact that chimpanzees have much higher grip strengths than human beings. Human muscles are just as strong per pound as are the muscles of any other primate, and a reasonably fit man will have the same muscle to mass ratio as will a chimpanzee. Human hands are jointed for precise gripping motions and sacrifice leverage to gain this end. Chimpanzee and other primate hands are jointed to grab and hold with the maximum possible force.

A human being can kick or punch a hell of a lot harder than a chimpanzee can, and can run a lot faster. A chimpanzee can grip with a much higher strength than a human being can.

Human musculature is simply adapted to different tasks than is that of our nearest relatives.

[Dinner]

I hate the Nazi-Animal loving PETA since they're just bizararly stupid but the parody People Eating Tasty Animals (PETA) is great.

http://mtd.com/tasty/

[KrazyHorse]

I don't think I'd eat a primate unless I was starving. They're just a little bit too close to being members of the tribe.

[Dis]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
I don't think I'd eat a primate unless I was starving. They're just a little bit too close to being members of the tribe.

yeah, isn't that how AIDS was spread? Bushmeat?

[Dinner]

I ate a BBQ'd monkey arm when I was in Thailand. The meat was kind of dull grey and grezy with a texture similiar to pork. It wasn't good and I won't try it again. I just have a thing with trying exotic foods so I also ate fried grasshoppers, fried beatles, and fried scorpian. The grasshopper was "gushy", the scorpian was just burned tasting and was like chewing on leather, while the beatles were like popcorn.

My favorite of the bush food was without a doubt the rat. Rat actually tastes good and I'd eat it again.

[Mr. Harley]

Krazyhorse - I only read a precis of the research, which did not indicate it was isolated to the jaw muscles. However, I am slightly puzzled. Aren't most voluntary muscles going to use the same genes for function/metabolism? Location is going to be determined by embryology and terminator genes - but the base tissue will be the same. How can a gene affect just the jaw muscles and not the other skeletal muscles if it is affecting the base muscular structure/enzymes itself?

[KrazyHorse]

http://www.upenn.edu/researchatpenn/article.php?794&sci

To find out in which tissue the MYH16 gene is normally activated, the investigators examined a wide range of muscle types in the readily available macaque monkey and humans. In macaques, they found the MYH16 protein was only made in a group of related muscles in the head, those involved principally with chewing and biting. In humans, they found that messenger RNA, which translates the genetic code into workaday proteins, was still active in these muscles, but no protein was being made by virtue of the mutation.

My understanding is that different proteins are used as promoters of growth of otherwise identical tissue in different parts of the body. This is how we can grow different amounts of muscle tissue in different spots. I'm not even close to a biochemist though, so I could be talking out of my ass, but this seems to be what the summary I linked states.

[KrazyHorse]

So human beings continue to create the messenger RNA to make MYH16 protein (which promotes muscle development) in the jaw muscles, but due to a mutation MYH16 is no longer created in response to the RNA

[KrazyHorse]

posts edited slightly to avoid confusion of terms

http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/002650.html

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania reported their studies on a human gene that has mutated into uselessness. Such broken genes are nothing new; scientists have identified several hundred broken genes in the human genome dedicated to smell alone. What's striking about this particular gene, known as MYH16, is how important it is in its functional form to our primate cousins. MYH16 is a muscle-building gene that only becomes active in the developing muscles of the jaw.

[Mr. Harley]

And that is why my Genetics classes from 20 years ago are no longer acceptable for transfer credits.

[Darsnan]

Kinda ironic....

The cover of last weeks Science News featured a picture of an ape in the forest with the caption that commented about how primates are being hunted for food by humans. Maybe the chimps that mauled that man read the article and took offense.....



D

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
It's been seen to happen in the wild on a few rare occasions, GePap.

A group of male chimps will occasionally stalk, kill and eat an infant member of their own troop.

There's still an underlying biological logic to that kind of killing though. The provocation in this case being the infant's existance. It would be interesting to see how much the stimulus to kill is hormone-controlled, and how much is reasoned out in the true sense of premeditated. I think it is unlikely that a chimp would plot a murder scheme based on some indirect perceived insult or threat.

[Kuciwalker]

I don't.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by GePap
You, the one who stated animals have no sentience, think chimps can premeditate killing?