The De-Evolution of Man

October 2, 2006

Have you ever noticed that when your pet doesn’t know you’re looking he or she will look around the room, darting from one spot in the room to another? Maybe your dog will go from staring blankly into space to perked and looking at an empty space in the room… and start barking. Or how about the cat that wakes suddenly from sleep, arches its back, and hisses at a seemingly stationary piece of furniture?

It used to spook me when I’d see animals reacting to something I couldn’t see. Did I have a ghost? Was I about to be pulled under the bed and murdered or, better yet, eaten by a crazed tree outside the bedroom window? When Pavlov came backing out of my sister’s empty bedroom, teeth exposed and growling, I was scared. I was in the apartment by myself. And for the rest of the morning, I couldn’t get that dog back into her room. When The Kid’s eyes bugged and he took off down the hall after looking over my shoulder this morning, I was a little scared.

But I have to keep reminding myself that, while it’s true that animals sense things that humans don’t, those things which go unknown to us are usually not specters. A few weeks ago I was shown the whiskers that The Kid has on his legs. Yeah… it’s true. If you have a cat, go look now. I’ll wait. Did you see them… down there by the wrist? Wild, isn’t it? When I was little I was told about the snake’s tongue as a sniffer/taster of the air. Or how about those furry, hole-dwelling critters that pop out of their homes, look around, and know without ever seeing anything that it’s not safe for them to come out yet?

Leg whiskers… smelling tongues… and sixth senses. Why didn’t nature feel the urge to pass any of these genetic marvels on to homo sapiens? It seems like we got the shaft as far as the senses go. Or did we? Is it possible that humans have, or at least had, similar abilities at some point in our evolution… but have since lost them (or the ability to use them)?

In our struggle to crawl to the top of the food chain… in our frantic efforts to master nature… in our attempt to separate ourselves as much as possible from the rest of the animal kingdom… have we, in effect, caused ourselves to de-evolve?

Doesn’t it bug the hell out of you when the idiot being chased in a scary movie goes upstairs to ultimately get trapped? Common sense says that if you’re trying to escape, you shouldn’t go up unless you can take to flight. Every “up” eventually reaches a limit and the only place to go after that is back down… where your pursuer is. So until humans begin to sprout wings and join the birdies in the sky, going upstairs is the absolute worst place to flee from an assailant.

Yet they almost always seem to run up in the movies. But there is a reason behind what most of us in the audience see as a fatal mistake. Way back in the day… when humans still lived in the natural world… before we civilized and left the trees in favor of the concrete jungles… humans climbed to escape predators. Trees… rocks… mountains… whatever we could find. When a big scary animal came looking for a person-flavored snack, humans used their long arms and opposable thumbs to grip, grasp, and scurry up anything that’d get us out of harm’s way. Think about it. We’re not great diggers. We can’t fly. And we’re not very fast. But we’ve got thumbs. And short of gouging out a lion’s eye with a direct jab to the face, we’re not really going to be very successful at other means of escape.

When you’re sitting in a comfortable, air-conditioned, lion-free movie theater it’s easy to cast an outside perspective on the actions of a scripted actor. And that’s my point exactly. We are so far removed from nature that we don’t even recognize our own instincts anymore. Most of us would argue that we’ve got more common sense than to run upstairs to escape. But if you were being chased by something in the real world, you would most certainly find something to climb. It’s built into all of our nature to do so. And as I’ve said before, it’s hard to overcome instinct. It’s hard to deny nature.

Other animals can see well in the dark. Some can smell things a mile away. Dogs can hear certain frequencies so well that it hurts them… but they don’t even register to humans. Subtle changes in temperature or air pressure will register to some species. These senses and changes tell their receivers vital information about the environment. In many instances we’re talking life and death information. Ignoring a sound from something a mile away could mean certain death. Without the ability to sense the changes in pressure, some critters would end up a tasty lunch for some big predator (who’s movement toward said critter would cause those changes in the atmosphere).

Look at humans. We don’t see well in the dark. Some of us don’t see well, period. And even humans with “20/20″ vision don’t see anything in the grand scheme of nature. We don’t smell very well. We don’t hear very well. Our ability to feel is restricted to extremely close or direct contact only. We have to put things in our mouths to taste them, and by that point it is sometimes too late to determine if what we’re about to eat is poisonous or not. Comparatively, humans have really shoddy senses. How did we ever overcome the superior senses of our predators to arrive atop the food chain?

Part of that “victory” has to do with our brains. Yes… it’s true… humans have very developed brains, even though that fact is sometimes hard to argue. That was a joke. Haha. Our ability to reason… to figure things out… to use tools… has helped immensely. So far we’re the only species to craft firearms (and let’s hope it stays that way). We’ve learned to build structures that protect us from predators. And we’ve killed off so much nature that other animals, including predators, would rather not join us in civilization. In fact, it’s easy to spend a day in some human civilizations without seeing much more than a few sparse trees to remind you that concrete and glass are not the most abundant natural resources on the planet.

Who needs keen eyesight when I can just shoot anything that gets close enough to hurt me? I don’t need to see to hunt because I’ve got the grocery store. Never mind being able to hear. I don’t want to hear anything other than the TV right now anyway. The Weather Channel will let me know if the atmosphere is changing. And my car moves fast enough to suit me. I don’t need speed. And without many predators hunting me down at night, I don’t really need to stay alert to the world around me.

I think at one time humans did have more refined senses. I think we used to be able to sense things that elude us now. Some people have shown the ability to sense subtle atmospheric changes. Some seem to have an intuition, or sixth sense, about other things. This sixth sense that we always hear reference to could simply be a throw back to our earlier, more “sensy” days. I think we still have those abilities hidden somewhere deep in our genetic code. Every so often they surface and, since we’re not used to experiencing them, they seem odd… foreign… and sometimes a little scary. Since they’re not part of our usual repertoire, we throw an esoteric label like “sixth sense” on them and write them off as the talk of crazy people. But did you ever just know something… without actually seeing or hearing or smelling or tasting or touching it? You just knew it. Or maybe you “sensed” something that you couldn’t explain.

Complex brains and more developed senses combined could have helped propel humans to where we are today. But as we grow and evolve away from nature and into our own little worlds, we no longer need the abilities that nature endowed us with. And she’s nothing if not frugal, that nature gal. If you don’t use it, you lose it. Evolution will see to that. As we make more and more aspects of our lives dependent on outside sources of information we will surely de-evolve further and become even more oblivious to the rest of the world.

Listen to your instincts. Really experience your senses. And the next time you “just have a feeling”, indulge it. Stay alert to what is going on around you. You’d be shocked at how much more you notice when you really extend your senses and put them to use. Move outside your personal bubble with your senses and experience the full breadth of the information nature throws your way. It’s all there. We just have to retrain ourselves to use it.

Who knows… one day we may have to turn the television on in the morning to find out how we’re going to feel for the rest of the day.

Posted in Advice, Human Nature, Noteworthy, Questions, Society

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