ctrotter4{at}cox.net (Cleo Trotter) wrote in news:bmdauj$vf5$1
{at}darwin.ediacara.org:

> Owen Lovejoy suggested that the primary advantage of bipedal walking
> for early hominids was freeing the hands so males could bring food to
> females who were encumbered with young.
> 
> Could someone help me formulate a strong inference and make a
> prediction that will test this hypothesis.
> 

I always love students who use newsgroups to help them with their homework 
:-)

But this is an interesting question. I tend to agree with Tom that the 
Lovejoy explanation is somewhat male chauvinistic - I would argue instead 
that the primary advantage is allowing females to carry babies so that the 
infants can be even more altricial, in turn allowing for even more learned 
behavior. 

If I were to accept Lovejoy's hypothesis, I think it would follow that the 
females of early bipedal hominids would be eating foods from a much larger 
radius around a camp area than females of related quadripeds (i.e. chimps). 
Given perfect historical data I suppose you could actually test this, but I 
don't know if it is a practicable test in the real world.

Yours,

Bill Morse
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