[ExI] IQ and beauty

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 10:57 AM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 20 October 2015 at 18:35, rex  wrote:
> > If we want some hope of being productive we need to ask questions that
> > science may help with, e.g., is there any evidence the IE horns played
> > a significant role in the extinction of the IE? I cannot find any in
> > the primary literature -- Lots of amateur arm-waving speculation, but
> > no solid evidence.
> >
> > There IS solid evidence that suggests the horns played no significant
> > role, e.g., a plot of body weight vs horn size for various deer shows
> > the IE right on the best least-squares fit. The 'huge' horns turn out
> > to be an artifact of the way the human mind sees the world.
> >
> > Also, the antlers were large for a very long time without driving the
> > IE (and other species with relatively large horns) to extinction. Why
> > would they 'suddenly' do so?
> >
>
>
> When species go extinct, that doesn't mean that there is something
> 'wrong' with them. Before the Holocene (the end of the last Ice Age)
> most extinctions were due to natural disasters or climate changing too
> quickly for species to adapt. The dinosaurs were magnificently adapted
> by natural selection, but went extinct.
>
> After the last Ice Age humans became the main cause of species
> extinction. Humans were much better at killing.

Well, to be sure, it's hard to tell exactly why any species goes extinct.
There are rare cases -- the Dodo -- where it seems clear what happened
(loss of food source due to introduction of pigs, IIRC) -- but with most
it's a guess, though the guess can be narrowed and supported by some
evidence in a few cases.

I do agree that luck sort of has something to do with it. It might be that
the Irish Elk would've gone away simply because it's habitat disappeared
despite humans likely hunting it. My guess is it was a one two combo --
habitat loss plus human predation. The jury's still out, of course.

And my guess is too that many species go extinct more from cladogenesis
than from their line totally dying out.

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my Kindle books via:
http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Ust/e/B00J6HPX8M/
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