Herbivore/Carnivore/Omnivore Comparisons

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DeafCaroline

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Just thought this may provide food for thought...pun intended :)

The American Dietetic Association notes that "most of mankind for most of human history has lived on vegetarian or near-vegetarian diets."

Also note-worthy to point out vegetarians/vegans have far less health problems (cancer, cholesterol, heart disease, high blood pressure, lactose-intolerance to name a few)

Comparisons between herbivorous and carnivorous animals and humans.

Meat-eaters: have claws

Herbivores: no claws

Humans: no claws



Meat-eaters: have no skin pores and perspire through the tongue

Herbivores: perspire through skin pores

Humans: perspire through skin pores



Meat-eaters: have sharp front teeth for tearing, with no flat molar teeth for grinding

Herbivores: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding

Humans: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding



Meat-eaters: have intestinal tract that is only 3 times their body length so that rapidly decaying meat can pass through quickly

Herbivores: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.

Humans: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.



Meat-eaters: have strong hydrochloric acid in stomach to digest meat

Herbivores: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater

Humans: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater



Meat-eaters: salivary glands in mouth not needed to pre-digest grains and fruits.

Herbivores: well-developed salivary glands which are necessary to pre-digest grains and fruits

Humans: well-developed salivary glands, which are necessary to pre-digest, grains and fruits



Meat-eaters: have acid saliva with no enzyme ptyalin to pre-digest grains

Herbivores: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains

Humans: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains
 
This is open for a discussion, right?

I'd say we lost our use for claws and predator-like anatomy sometime way back early in the Homo genus when we began to rely on weapons to do the killing. Spears, sharp stones, and so on. Since our ancestors continually constructed those sort of weapons, it decreased the need for bodily defenses/offenses. Some sort of natural selection that went on over the years is my guess.
 
Sure! absolutely open for discussion.

your theory though - , if we came from apes, we never had claws.
 
DeafCaroline said:
Sure! absolutely open for discussion.

your theory though - , if we came from apes, we never had claws.
Click to expand...

If we came from apes? We are apes. And the other great apes eat meat whenever they can get it.
 
I don't think most of humankind have lived on vegan diets in the past to be honest. Humans are omnivores and eating a near vegetarian diet is consistent with being an omnivore. However, in the past the meat that we ate was quite lean as a rule. While I don't think that's the sole cause of the obesity, it is a factor. Nowadays, this is no longer true given our animal husbandry practices.
 
I'm a little different on the evolution theory, I don't feel we came directly from apes, more a form of convergent evolution that grew polyphyletically and branched into different lineages by the ecologies that our ancestors lived in. Kinda like, we have a kid growing up in africa, one in china, one in the USA, we're all going to be adapted to different things.

For example, one theory shows the apes continued to retain the use for bodily hair, while we lost and shed ours but we still share similar vestigiality. Like apes/monkeys do, we all can encounter goose bumps, our hair rises straight up too.
 
Bottesini said:
If we came from apes? We are apes. And the other great apes eat meat whenever they can get it.
Click to expand...

Yep, immediate examples being that chimps will feast on meat regardless of the occasion. They are prime meat eaters.
Weird thing is although chimps will eat the meat of their victims (children, females, community losers) bonobos share 99% genetic similarities with them and yet they are totally docile, eat less or no meat at all.
 
Bottesini said:
If we came from apes? We are apes. And the other great apes eat meat whenever they can get it.
Click to expand...

Well, apparently, this is not 100% proven because no one has been able to trace from which apes we descended from which leads to the theory that apes and humans had always been two separate species and evolved independently of each other.

Evolutionists generally don't believe humans descended from apes. They believe that both apes and humans share a common ancestor, not that humans descended from apes.

One would say look at neanderthals, they obviously descended from apes and even so, no one has been able to find that actual evolutionary link between neanderthals and apes - that proof of line of evolution.

They cannot find any features in ape fossils that show definitive human features just like they cannot find in human fossils any definite ape features.

In fact, most evolutionists and many experts have completely debunked the humans descending from apes belief, especially now with our ability to trace evolutionary paths through DNA. The general belief these days is that apes and humans have a common ancestor.

Yes, apes are classified as omnivorous.
 
deafskeptic said:
I don't think most of humankind have lived on vegan diets in the past to be honest. Humans are omnivores and eating a near vegetarian diet is consistent with being an omnivore. However, in the past the meat that we ate was quite lean as a rule. While I don't think that's the sole cause of the obesity, it is a factor. Nowadays, this is no longer true given our animal husbandry practices.
Click to expand...

Ah! you brought up a good point - omnivorous diets.

Are we anatomically and physiologically omnivorous or we have adopted an omnivorous lifestyle?

Dr. Milton Mills did a study on comparative anatomy of eating - if you scroll down to the bottom of the page - you would see the anatomical differences between herbivores, carnivores and humans - it's a more extended version of the list above.

The Comparative Anatomy of Eating
 
naisho said:
This is open for a discussion, right?

I'd say we lost our use for claws and predator-like anatomy sometime way back early in the Homo genus when we began to rely on weapons to do the killing. Spears, sharp stones, and so on. Since our ancestors continually constructed those sort of weapons, it decreased the need for bodily defenses/offenses. Some sort of natural selection that went on over the years is my guess.
Click to expand...

Hell, learning how to use fire and cook food dramatically changed how we digest food.
 
souggy said:
Hell, learning how to use fire and cook food dramatically changed how we digest food.
Click to expand...

I agree that fire and cooking food enabled us to eat meat without getting sick or poisoned. Otherwise we'd have no problems eating raw meat. Not sure if it dramatically changed how we digest it though.

One more thing: unlike other carnivores, we usually add spices or sauce to make meat taste good. Ever eat meat without even the most basic of spices like salt? It's kinda blech. Also, carnivores salivate at the sight of meat, no matter what form it takes on. We don't. We get repulsed by the sight of a dead animal like the sight of a cat run over by a car. Carnivores, by contrast, would be rushing over to smell it and nibble on it if it's fresh enough to eat.
 
DeafCaroline said:
I agree that fire and cooking food enabled us to eat meat without getting sick or poisoned. Otherwise we'd have no problems eating raw meat. Not sure if it dramatically changed how we digest it though.
Click to expand...

Well, considering it wasn't Homo saipens who discovered fire, but by one of the older members of hominid family, there's ample of time for a shift away from consumption of raw meat to cooking them.

The problem with the comparative analysis of carnivorous and herbivorous systems it doesn't account for every variable. For starter, scavengers and kletoparatistic meat-eaters have very weak jaws. Their intestines are much more complex than predators'. And so on.

Chewing raw meat requires a lot of jaw muscle. Cooked meat don't so much. To be honest, 125,000 to 400,000 years is long enough to change how people eat. The tolerance for lactose evolved only a few thousand years ago.
 
DeafCaroline said:
Well, apparently, this is not 100% proven because no one has been able to trace from which apes we descended from which leads to the theory that apes and humans had always been two separate species and evolved independently of each other.

Evolutionists generally don't believe humans descended from apes. They believe that both apes and humans share a common ancestor, not that humans descended from apes.

One would say look at neanderthals, they obviously descended from apes and even so, no one has been able to find that actual evolutionary link between neanderthals and apes - that proof of line of evolution.

They cannot find any features in ape fossils that show definitive human features just like they cannot find in human fossils any definite ape features.

In fact, most evolutionists and many experts have completely debunked the humans descending from apes belief, especially now with our ability to trace evolutionary paths through DNA. The general belief these days is that apes and humans have a common ancestor.

Yes, apes are classified as omnivorous.
Click to expand...

Actually, it would be more accurate to call the hominan family: the fifth ape. It's more accurate to think of modern apes as our cousins, rather than as our ancestors.

By the way, Neanderthals are not descended from apes. They are STILL part of the hominan clade. In fact, 5% of the human genome are attributed to the Neanderthals instead of Cro-Magnon.
 
naisho said:
Yep, immediate examples being that chimps will feast on meat regardless of the occasion. They are prime meat eaters.
Weird thing is although chimps will eat the meat of their victims (children, females, community losers) bonobos share 99% genetic similarities with them and yet they are totally docile, eat less or no meat at all.
Click to expand...

Aren't gorillas herbivores?
 
souggy said:
The problem with the comparative analysis of carnivorous and herbivorous systems it doesn't account for every variable. For starter, scavengers and kletoparatistic meat-eaters have very weak jaws. Their intestines are much more complex than predators'. And so on.
Click to expand...

That's true however they eat very specific kinds of meat that doesn't require the strongest jaws. like eggs, bugs, insects, bird or already caught prey. They are the kind of mammals that lie in wait for another predator to catch prey then dive in to steal. Like vultures for example. A lion, for example, would need a strong jaw to latch onto the neck of a zebra and bring it down. Vultures don't hunt that way (they fly, not run like lions) so they don't need as powerful jaws in order to be able to run after a larger animal and force it down to the ground then tear its neck open. That's not how they hunt.
 
Banjo said:
Aren't gorillas herbivores?
Click to expand...

Yep.

I see the whole thing phylogenetically between our differences of us all being primates. It makes things seen better in perspective, as an evolutionary standpoint. The stuff that goes on in animal physiology and anatomy bio courses.

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In regards to microbe induced sickness, back then, there likely wasn't as many pathogenic microbes as there is today, since it took time for them to evolve as well. Some of the nasty stuff we have today didn't exist way back then.
True that, fire likely eliminated a lot of them. But at the same time, it also infers back then, our immune systems might not have been as 'strong' as they are today. Also, our lifetimes were a ton shorter. Think the average human used to die around 30-40 years old, sketchy since I forgot some of those figures.

Good point in regards to omnivores.

There is evidence and theory that argues many plants produced fruits with seeds primarily for consumption by fruit/herb/omnivores. The seeds pass the intestine and get excreted as waste unpenetrated, providing a nutrient home for the seed to grow once their phytochromes detect light sources.

Fruit consumption has likely gone way back a long time, daresay as far back as hunter gatherer times in the past. So it is possible humans haven't been completely carnivorous as these fruits had always been readily available if they were meant to be eaten.
 
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