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Bears instead of early man...; Bears and Primates swich
Topic Started: Apr 15 2010, 08:30 PM (895 Views)
sam999
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I was thinking, and came to the idea that there are quite a few simelaratys between bears and early homenoids in lifestyle. Therefore, the idea of this is simple, bears and early man swich. It's the homonids that end up in bearish nichs as large bigfootish forest creatures and the bears in the niches of the primates with tree-swinging to large, ground-atapted and gorrilaisq types. Wonder what ulisa sapian will look like....
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

Bears would have to lose considerable weight if they even hope to swing. Really, the best point of divergence would be when carnivorans themselves were just starting to evolve. They were less specialized then.
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sam999
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So no tree-liveing forms. Still, a bear in the niche of home erectus or a gorrila would be something...
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

Gorilla might be possible. But the swap would have to take place relatively early for the swap to be effective.
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Margaret Pye
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Bears can climb pretty well. A miniature bear could easily evolve longer limbs and more agile paws and go leaping about the trees, like a lot of their relatives over in Procyonidae... although those niches are already full of procyonids, or monkeys.

If we're looking at procyonids rather than ursids, though, there's quite a lot of overlap between procyonids and primates in terms of ecological niche and general design. The procyonids don't have the same hand dexterity (but I dare say they could evolve it). They have better senses of smell and worse vision, which might lead to slightly different niche occupation. I don't know if procyonids could ever produce a brachiating form - I think their shoulder structure would be too hard to adapt - but a lot of them are very lemur-like as it is.

Similarly, turning a ring-tailed lemur into a grizzly bear seems to me to go like this:
1) Make it a lot bigger
2) Make it a bit more carnivorous
3) Make it solitary? Is bears' solitary nature a reflection of their ecology, or just a taxonomical thing?

A panda is kind of like a gorilla anyway. More specialised diet, and solitary, but the niche is similar.

Now, about evolving a sophont from a bear, the two big hurdles are that bears are solitary - apparently politics was one of the main driving forces in the development of human intelligence - and a lack of manual dexterity. Both of which could be fixed.
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

I'd say the best primate to turn ursid-like would be the baboons. Quite carnivorous and there's a lot of potential for large carnivorous forms. I considered this for my "Life Support" phase of "The Future of the Kinds". That's where I got the tetranychus (though, admittedly, the tetranychus is a macaque descendent and is more feline-like). But it's equally possible for baboons to become ursid-like.

As for bears, carnivorans have a highly specialized shoulder structure making it next to impossible for them to become brachiators, which is what I presume sam wants. This is why the striger from "After Man" is so improbable. Now, ape-like forms are entirely possible. But brachiators? Leave that to the primates. Or perhaps hyraxes.
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sam999
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Margaret Pye
Apr 15 2010, 09:35 PM
Now, about evolving a sophont from a bear
That's more-or-less the goel... ::)
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Pando
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It would be a problem because of their lack of thumbs. But if they were to evolve more dexterous hands we could have carnivorous intelligent gigantopithecus-like bears.
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Empyreon
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Are you plausible?

This might show my ignorance of specific earth evolution, but aren't raccoons pretty closely related to bears? They have pretty dexterous hands, and there might be something to look at there when evolving manipulators for bears...
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food for thought
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Pando
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Raccoon sapients? Better than bears. Hadn't thought of them.
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Ook
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alternative,not future evolution ;)
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Scrublord
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Bears in gorilla niche? Already got 'em. Called pandas.
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Pando
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What I meant that the bear sapients might look like gigantopithecus.
Edited by Pando, Apr 21 2010, 02:01 PM.
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Empyreon
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Are you plausible?

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alternative,not future evolution ;)


Alright, then go back to the raccoon's and bear's common ancestor and build from there...
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food for thought
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