[ExI] It's the genes was it's the yoga!

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf
Of Keith Henson


>...We are also resistant to alcohol due to 5000+ years of selection.  Not
all of us, the selection has not run to completion, but the native state of
humans without that selection is around 95% alcoholics (if they can get it).
Our ancestors, or rather the ones in the former population who are *not* our
ancestors paid the price of our alcohol resistance by dying or failing to
reproduce.  This is not politically correct of course, but the difference
between us and chimpanzees is due to genes.  ...Keith

Hey cool, are chimps are prone to alcoholism?  How would we determine it,
without actually harming the beasts?

Horses and cats have something kinda analogous methinks: you can get a
catnip toy and notice even among a litter of several sibling cats, there
seems to be some which take an occasional sniff, some who don't mess with it
at all and one guy who just can't leave the stuff alone.  Horses can get
into the loco-weed.  Most will avoid that area of the pasture henceforth if
they figure out that's where it came from.  But once in a while you get a
horse which somehow figures out where the loco-weed is growing and
intentionally goes back to it at every opportunity.  Eventually that horse
becomes completely useless.  My grandfather had to shoot his favorite mare
because she found loco weed, then would always go looking for it.

spike