Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Endangered orangutans offer a new evolutionary model for early humans

Orangutans in Borneo are at risk for extinction. Their dietary habits may be the reason for their decline and the way they cope with these hard times allow scientists to use this as a comparison to early human development. The orangutans live in an environment where the soil in not very fertile and only produced fruit during certain years. When fruit isn’t available they have to live off on things like tree bark and during the hardest times they have to eat very hard seeds and have adapted to this practice. These patterns over the past 400,000 years show that evolution favors adaptations used during critical periods, even if not used often.

No comments:

Post a Comment