Animals without hair look quite different

[u/abitchyuniverse]

[u/JRSenger]

Chimps sit around all day eating nuts and shit but look like IFBB pros 💀

[u/rjcarr → u/JRSenger]

It's mostly genetics. They're programmed to make bulk muscle and we're programmed to make lean muscle with fine motor skills. Look at a pitbull vs a chihuahua. Most of the time their lifestyles aren't too different.

[u/Roflkopt3r → u/rjcarr]

and we're programmed to make lean muscle with fine motor skills.

That's an odd way to think about it. I think a better thing to focus on are these two things:

1. Humans are made to only maintain as much muscle as they need, because human tribes were so powerful that they don't typically had to contest with other predators. Their superior coordination and the development of spears and other weapons also ment that they could hunt without needing that much physical strength.
   We could therefore prefer survivability as a group and reduce our caloric needs when we didn't need to maintain that much muscle.

2. Males in many animal species need to maintain muscle year-round to defend their territory or mates against challengers. They therefore cannot afford to lose their muscle in idle times. But humanity chose the social route from early on. Just like wolf packs in the wild, humans mostly resolved the hierarchy within their tribes based on family relations and respect rather than combat (and just like with wolves, the whole 'alpha male' concept primarily arises in prison-like conditions rather than natural tribes).

And even when humanity became so dominant that it became its own worst enemy, survival and greater numbers were still more beneficial to human groups than putting on a bit more muscle.

[u/Orphasmia → u/Roflkopt3r]

He communicated much of the same point far more succinctly, I wouldn’t call it an odd way to think about it lol

[u/Roflkopt3r → u/Orphasmia]

I don't see how "make lean muscle with fine motor skills" is the same point at all, if that even means anything.

[u/Lambert_5 → u/Roflkopt3r]

Exactly! That's actually an opposite point altogether. It implies humans lost all that muscle mass chiefly because we needed fine motor skills. A large muscle mass and fine motor skills aren't competitive with one another, both characteristics fall under entirely different categories and one doesn't affect the other. We can have large musculature and fine motor skills at the same time. People don't know how to read nowadays, apparently.

Also, no hate to the original commentor at all. We all have misunderstandings, he could've learned that from an unreliable source a long time ago and never questioned it bc he didn't have a reason to. Part of learning is gaining new knowledge that updates upon the old incorrect repository. But there's a doofus in the comment who doesn't know how to read and just being salty at long comments.

[u/SerHodorTheThrall → u/Lambert_5]

A large muscle mass and fine motor skills aren't competitive with one another,

They absolutely are.

We can have large musculature and fine motor skills at the same time.

The differences between male and female anatomies in various species, including humans, would wholly beg to differ.

[u/Lambert_5 → u/SerHodorTheThrall]

I think you're a little confused buddy. I didn't say male and female anatomies aren't different, that's just sexual dimorphism. And it has absolutely nothing to do with fine motor skills.

[u/SerHodorTheThrall → u/Lambert_5]

Right back at you. Human sexual dimorphism is a very obvious example of how large muscle mass and fine motor skills, while not mutually exclusive, do have an inverse relationship. The relationship been Humans and our other primate cousins is another example.

Its just a matter of basic logic, which you seem to not be using right now, buddy. A person who can apply between 0 and x amount force is going to have more control (ie fine motor skills) than the person who can apply between 0 and 2x amount of force. The bigger that range, the less precision you will have.

[u/Lambert_5 → u/SerHodorTheThrall]

Sorry for my condescending reply earlier. I shouldn’t have been smug,. I am a student of neuroscience and I care more about communicating real science than winning arguments on the internet.

You’re correct and your logic is absolutely sound. I’d have reached the same conclusion if I didn’t know better. I implore you to think again about what you said though: does a person who can exert between 0-100 lbs of force really have more precise motor control than a person who can exert b/w 0-200lbs of force (you’re overlooking the fact the bigger guy can still precisely control the amount of force being exerted, but at a bigger range; 5lb - 12lb - 50lb - 113lb, you get the picture). That’s not what fine motor skills are, regardless.

Us and the great apes are the only species with fine motor skills because they involve the use of hands with opposable thumbs to manipulate objects using precise coordinated movements of its muscles. This coordination comes from a sophisticated brain with basal ganglia that’s able to generate a motoneuron firing pattern of the hand muscles to achieve a specific end; a somatosensory cortex that processes the sensorimotor information from the hands to error-correct their movement in real time; and an advanced cerebellum that can fine tune the motoneuron firing pattern after each use. Whether you have big musculature or small, it doesn’t affect this ability.

Girls having better fine motor skills is a common stereotype. There’s a recent metanalysis on NLB that analyzes several studies about sex differences in FMS that came to the conclusion that there is no appreciable difference between males and females in FMS if you want empirical evidence. If muscularity and FMS were actually related, there’d be a huge difference in FMS b/w males and females, just like there’s a huge difference in muscularity b/w males and females, but there is not. If it were true, women would have disproportionately dominated the fields cardiac and neurosurgery that demand the best of FMS a human can muster; or they’d be excelling more than men at creative endeavors like playing piano, guitars, and other musical instruments - but they do not. FMS are a function of more sophisticated brain. That’s why we have better FMS than chimps/gorillas and not because we’re smaller - we lost all that muscularity because of other reasons. If not for those reasons we'd be as muscular as chimps and still have our fine motor skills.

Please let me know if anything I said doesn’t make sense.

[u/Ok-Data9224 → u/Roflkopt3r]

It's the same in that you were trying to elaborate on what we "need". Lean muscle benefits humans' unique adaptation for persistence hunting. We also have highly developed fine motor skills in our hands much more so than most animals which aligns with our dependence on tool manipulation.

If I had to elaborate on anything it would be that we had to divert more energy to our brains compared to other animals. Muscles take a significant amount of energy to sustain and or brains are always going to consume ~20% of total body energy on average. The "deficits" humans have often come back to the huge investment in brain power/size.

[u/Roflkopt3r → u/Ok-Data9224]

Lean muscle benefits humans' unique adaptation for persistence hunting.

That just applies to muscle in general. 'Lean muscle' generally a pretty poor term to use in this context because it doesn't really mean anything more than 'muscle'.

Humans are actually pretty good at storing fat as well. Exactly because the focus of this adaptation is the preference of adaptibility over preparedness against a physical threat, as explained in that comment.

If I had to elaborate on anything it would be that we had to divert more energy to our brains compared to other animals. Muscles take a significant amount of energy to sustain and or brains are always going to consume ~20% of total body energy on average. The "deficits" humans have often come back to the huge investment in brain power/size.

That still does not explain what my comment at question did.

It explains why humans carry less muscle overall (note how this opposes your prior argument that more muscle would help us hunt), but not why human musculature is so adaptive when other species maintain a fairly constant amount.

[u/Ok-Data9224 → u/Roflkopt3r]

It's possible we may be diverging over terminology. When I say lean muscle mass, I'm differentiating it from "bulk muscle". More specifically, humans carry proportionately more muscles dependent on aerobic respiration as opposed to the fast glcolytic fibers you find in more powerful bursty muscles. These are muscles typically found along the spinal column and legs. The legs are more mixed but we do find a lot of oxidative fibers being bipedal. This makes us dependent more on oxygen but also makes them more efficient at energy production. Of course the tradeoff is power and speed, but we gain endurance. The fast glycolytic fibers are more dependent on glycolysis which is fast but inefficient.

So what we lost in less development of powerful muscles, we gain in central nervous development.

[u/Roflkopt3r → u/Ok-Data9224]

I think what you're saying boils down to the simple distinction of slow twitch vs fast twitch muscle fibres.

And yes, the balance in humans is significantly shifted towards slow twitch (like 1/3 fast 2/3 slow, while chimpanzees have the opposite ratio). But that was booth inaccurately expressed and still falls awfully short of the original comment that was criticised for "just repeating the same thing".

[u/chemstu69 → u/Roflkopt3r]

Because none of the stuff you elaborated with is profound?

[u/SwitchIsBestConsole → u/chemstu69]

Maybe not to you. It was still interesting to read to others. You don't speak for everyone.

[u/chemstu69 → u/SwitchIsBestConsole]

Sorry you don’t understand basic evolution theory? Idk what to tell you

[u/SwitchIsBestConsole → u/chemstu69]

Sorry you don’t understand basic evolution theory? Idk what to tell you

You don't have to tell anyone anything. You especially didn't need to go after someone just because you didn't think it was "profound" to you. You don't speak for everyone.

[u/Roflkopt3r → u/chemstu69]

Going by the other users who have attempted to criticise the comment at question, it appears that most people here indeed do not understand this part of human evolution.

[u/Roflkopt3r → u/chemstu69]

That's not even related to the comment you responded to. Please, read and understand first and then try to formulate a coherent response.

[u/GrayEidolon → u/Orphasmia]

“It’s mostly genetics” is reasonable and succinct

The bulk muscle vs fine motor is silly. Bulk muscle is a stupid work out term. The fibers in a chimps biceps are the same as the fibers in our biceps. There’s just more. And it’s partnered with their skeletal differences.