[ExI] IQ and beauty

[BillK]

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.


BillK