Thread: I'm closing down human bipedalism. Redevelopment vacancies?

There's an interesting question in the back of the current 'New Scientist' magazine: "Why are there no 3 legged creatures?"


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Three legs would be impractical.

Impractical? Is that an evolutionary concept?

Originally Posted by Rhoops

Impractical? Is that an evolutionary concept? Unsymmetrical would be a more significant question. How many species have unsymmetrial limbs? Virtually none.
Why is that?
It's not a matter of an anthropocentric notion like 'practicality' but because the mathematical progression from the simplest unit ie 'one' has not yet occurred in life's basic structure on Earth yet. In effect locomotion has not developed past 'Uninomial Locomotion Theorum'.
In Bionomial Theorum, we have 'on' and 'off', ie two states, written as:

1 0001 00111 011 etc.


In analysing the variety of limbs through evolutionary progress on life forms we have only:

1, (unit concept)
11 (a symmetrical tail)
1+1 (fins)
1+1, 1+1, 1+1, 1+1 etc Multiplied (6, 8 etc legged: scorpions, centipedes etc)
1+1 Doubled ( four legged vertebrates)
1+1 Doubled and halved (humans + birds)

In effect there is no hint of 'bi' forms in the basic '1+1' structure. Bipedalism is therefore a misnomer to date, and the appearance of Tripedalism even further away as a future possibility. The 'Doubled' unit is however a significant progression to this, especially because it represents a more sophisticated evolutionary choice than merely Multiplying the basic 1+1 numerous times. 1+1 Doubled represents a distinct choice for x2 out of the range of possibilities for x3 to x50 for instance when structure is looking to Multiply itself beyond 1+1. Which is why 6 legged and 8 and 50 legged creatures evolved before 4 became the standard of the more recent animals- it's a more sophisticated mathematical and therefore Evolutionary choice. In humans we are possibly seeing Uninomial structure beginning to evolve into a Binomial. Not unsurprisingly, because a stated above we have evolved Dichotometric Thought and that distinct characteristic- 'grey'. However as yet we see no distinct evidence of 'True Bipedalism', which should be a bizarre form of locomotion, a third factor produced by 2 non paired independently operating limbs.

And note that this Uninomial Structural Effect is the same in faces or our sensory organs:

1 (mouth, tongue)
11 (nose)
1+1 (eyes, ears, touch)

Notice too how the Uninomial Structure gets relatively more complex again as the sense relates to greater distance ie increased complexity needed for dealing with intangibles.

Oh, and unless somebody else has thought of this; this is 'Professor' Rhoops's 'Terrestrial Uninomial Locomotion Theory' now!

I failed to decipher this, so I dare to say it's garbage.

"I failed to decipher this, so I dare to say it's garbage."

Hmmm... perhaps all knowledge we don't understand is garbage, eh? Thanks for that great example of a 'Creationist intellect'.

There is no progression of locomotion; evolution is not a ladder leading to perfection. The presented progression does not map on to the tree of life nor does it take in to account the many other means of locomotion that organisms use to get from A to B.


It's just a joke thread -I hope.

I think it's easy enough just to say "Survival of the fittest". I'm sure there have been three legged creatures. However a creature with three legs would probably lack stability, and it would perish. Due to the lack of stability their lifespan may be short, consequently they won't mate.

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Tripod Fish ?

Originally Posted by Rhoops

Hmmm... perhaps all knowledge we don't understand is garbage, eh?

Of course not, if it makes sense. This doesn't make any.

Originally Posted by Rhoops

Thanks for that great example of a 'Creationist intellect'.

And this one too.

How do you fit these things in to your scheme?









I'd refute your clear evolutionary sequence by pointing out to you that it is not an evolutionary sequence.

Tripod fish...?
No it isn't.
It has an enlarged single caudal fin (tail), unrelated enlarged pairs of pelvic (lower here) and pectoral (upper) fins and standard singular dorsal and anal fins.
That's the ordinary uni/'double uni' fin fish form existing since the Late Silurian and includes no triple based units. A big caudal and pair of pelvic fins do not a tripod make!

Explain what is this supposed to mean:

Originally Posted by Rhoops

or the mathematical one:

1 limb
1+1+1+1+1+1 limb (starfish)
1.1 limb
1+1 limb
1+1, 1+1, 1+1, 1+1, 1+1 etc limb
1+1, 1+1 limb

best?

And this:

Originally Posted by Rhoops

1 (cephalapod style water jet)
1.1 (a symmetrical tail)
1+1 (fins)
1+1, 1+1, 1+1, 1+1 etc Multiplied (6, 30 etc legged: scorpions, centipedes etc)
1+1 Doubled ( four legged vertebrates)
1+1 Doubled and halved (humans + birds)

Originally Posted by Rhoops

1, (cephalapod water jet)
1.1 (a symmetrical tail)
1+1 (fins)
1+1, 1+1, 1+1, 1+1 etc Multiplied (6, 8 etc legged: scorpions, centipedes etc)
1+1 Doubled ( four legged vertebrates)
1+1 Doubled and halved (humans + birds)

Originally Posted by Rhoops

1 (mouth, tongue)
1.1 (nose)
1+1 (eyes, ears, touch)

You are still missing the point. Three legs are impractical. That is the only reason.

Problem with the echinoderms is that the actual feet are not what you are counting in you numbers game. you would need to count the Tube feet coating the undersides of the starfish and brittle stars and all sides of the sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea cucumbers.

Also how do these fit the model:

Cetaceans: one fluke and two flippers - 3 limbs for locomotion
Possums: Four feet and a prehensile tail - 5 limbs
New world monkeys: four feet and a prehensile tail - 5
Pangolins: four feet and a prehensile tail - 5 limbs for locomotion
Psittaciform birds: two feet and a beak- 3 limbs for locomotion
Mantees: one tail and two arms - 3 limbs
Ichthyosaurs: 4 flippers and a tail - 5 limbs

Echinoderms: How many feet by your definition are there?

And to Twit of Wit's comment!

"You are still missing the point. Three legs are impractical. That is the only reason."

Well, can see the lovely starfish pictures by Zwirko? What do you see?

5 legs,11 legs, 17 legs.


So with Cephalapods we have: 1 'limb'
With jawless fish we have 1.1 limbs (like a nose its a vertically symmetrical duality)
with starfish we have 5, 7, 11 etc limbs
with Agnathan osteostracans we have 4 limbs
with scorpions 8 limbs.

What precisely then is your 'reason' to suggest that 3 legs are the sole impractical variant when just about every other number has been used. and is still used 500, 000,000 years later?
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Psittaciform birds: the use of the mouth when climbing is common across the order.

Echinoderms: you are counting arms not feet. the feet are all the little tiny hair like things on the undersides of the arms. And if you insist on counting the arms explain sea urchins sea biscuits, sea cucumbers, and sand dollars, all do which have no arms at all but are fully ambulatory. by the way the early fossils (Cambrian in age) are most similar to sea urchins and crinoids in shape and most likely already had a water vascular system in place.

Who said anything about the forms having to be "original evolutionary forms". you said that tripeds do not exist. I gave examples of tripeds, petapeds, and higher foot forms and you changed the requirements

Cephalopds have up to 9 if you take octopuses into account. they use mainly there eight limbs but will also jet water to make a quick escape.

How does the unitary Structural Effect account for Hymenopterans. most of which have 5 eyes?

The effect fails when you try to expand beyond bilateral symmetry (echinoders are radial in symmetry) and even when you look close at bilaterans. Cetacean etc are tripodal, they will not survive if you remove one of the limbs.

I'm still trying to grasp the purpose of insisting that biped does not mean two legs. I look down at my body and count one left leg and one right leg, totaling two leg which I use to move from point a to point b thus fulfilling the definition of bipedal locomotion.

Originally Posted by Rhoops

With jawless fish we have 1.1 limbs (like a nose its a vertically symmetrical duality)

If I'm not mistaken, I have exactly one nose. Not even a little bit more.

Originally Posted by Rhoops

What precisely then is your 'reason' to suggest that 3 legs are the sole impractical variant ?

What is your reason to suggest they are, when it's obvious they aren't. Can you describe how would three leg work at least as well as two or four legs?

Originally Posted by Rhoops

Think of it like prime numbers, if you build a sequence of prime numbers, 4 is not included. Therefore any structure based on prime numbers will not include 4's or multiples of 4. Because limbs appear to be based on the unit of 1, the only version you can't get is 3, because it is pre empted by 1.1 + (1+1) ie a tail and two fins. Nothing has 3 tails as its sole form of locomotion. Its not because it's impractical it's simply mathematically redundant in a unitary based sequence.

Nonsense.

Originally Posted by Rhoops

Any suggestions?

Quit while you are behind. Things will only get worse.

Paleoichneum: to answer your points in order:


Psittaciform birds, are they an ancient species exhibiting a characteristic that has the evolutionary gravitas of say paired fins, tails four legs? If not then it may well be a new locomotive form, which since the only example I have post 300 million years ago is human bipedalism. would be a welcome addition. Since humans and to a lesser degree birds have the only bipedal like locomotion forms unreliant upon a tail, one might expect new developments from birds too. Personally I'd expect a four legged version of a spider since the latter part of the evolutionary sequence described here mathematically is progressing to reductive forms.

Echinoderms: Arms, feet are not a relevant mathematical distinction here. The basic unit is the 'limb' which by my definition includes water jetters with a limb unit of 1.


This follows into your next point: "
Cephalopods have up to 9 if you take octopuses into account. they use mainly there eight limbs but will also jet water to make a quick escape."



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Using the earliest exemplars of the jet/8 tentacled arrangement (presumably the earliest octopus), is that accurate?

5 eyed Hymenopterans.... I'm doing limbs!



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Pure gibberish. You're just making a fool of yourself.

My thanks to the contributors for their input here, and my apologies in trying to explain a Theory that was 4 days ago- non existent and originally on this site incomplete (which hasn't helped explain it!).
Unfortunately what has been seen on this site has been a additionally incomplete because it was working itself out as I was going along and I have kept the principle conclusions to myself. Sorry- but if I'd encountered any cooperative reasoning here, I might have had no excuse not to reveal them, fortunately as far as I'm concerned the critiques were entirely negative so I haven't.

Originally Posted by Rhoops

Unfortunately what has been seen on this site has been a additionally incomplete because it was working itself out as I was going along and I have kept the principle conclusions to myself. Sorry- but if I'd encountered any cooperative reasoning here, I might have had no excuse not to reveal them, fortunately as far as I'm concerned the critiques were entirely negative so I haven't.

Rhoops, I am sorry but that is pathetic. In science if you cannot take the heat you should get out of the laboratory. What you presented was incoherent and had all the appearance of junk. You made no effort to present your thinking in a clearer manner. You adopted an arrogant stance almost from the outset. Nothing about your presentation in terms of format, content or attitude encouraged positive responses.

From where I sit, what you have presented, as far as I can disentangle it, is simply wrong. You appear to have deluded yourself into thinking you have achieved some masterful insight. You say you will post the fully worked out details in a few months. My guess is we shall not hear from you again. My guess is that you finally sobered up and decided to make a run for it, leaving this pathetic attempt at an excuse.

If I am wrong about that then stick around and I'll objectively pick to pieces what you have offered so far, and what you will offer in the future. Are you game for that, or are you going to run away?

Originally Posted by Rhoops

Impractical? Is that an evolutionary concept?

No one picked you up on this. Impractical lies at the centre of evolutionary thinking. It is just another way of talking of fitness. So an impractical evolutionary development will have low survival value. It will lack fitness. It is unlikely to be perpetuated for any significant length of time.

Originally Posted by Rhoops

Unsymmetrical would be a more significant question.

Your meaning is obscure. Unsymmetrical is not a question. (It is barely a word: asymmetric would be preferred.) So what did you mean? It is difficult to tell.

Originally Posted by Rhoops

How many species have unsymmetrial limbs? Virtually none.
Why is that?
It's not a matter of an anthropocentric notion like 'practicality' but because the mathematical progression from the simplest unit ie 'one' has not yet occurred in life's basic structure on Earth yet. In effect locomotion has not developed past 'Unitary Locomotion Theory'.

Simply wrong. Three legs are impractical. This is not an anthropocentric notion as you claim, but a way of saying their fitness in an enormous range of environments is low.
It might just be that no mutation has occured that would give a trilateral symmetry. This seems unlikely since various forms of radial symmetry are extant.

Originally Posted by Rhoops

In effect there is no hint of 'bi' forms in the basic '1+1' structure. Bipedalism is therefore a misnomer to date, and the appearance of Tripedalism even further away as a future possibility.

Simplistic nonsense. You have redefined bipedalism then attacked the resultant strawman. It is poor debating technique and abominable science.

Pressing work issues, coupled with a sense of boredom lead to me ending here, for the moment.

Originally Posted by Rhoops

When you hear about 'Finite Evolution' in the future, you were there!

This is what annoys me about these sorts of ideas that float about the internet. You boldly declare your numbers game to be a future breakthrough after hours or days of development. Serious biological insights generally require a bit more research. Darwin's exhaustive eight year study of the Cirripedia - a species of barnacle, comes to mind.

Originally Posted by Kukhri

Serious biological insights generally require a bit more research. Darwin's exhaustive eight year study of the Cirripedia - a species of barnacle, comes to mind.

You've overlooked the fact that Rhoops is almost infinitely smarter than Darwin.