Siberian seagulls have returned. Here's a historic picture of their first arrival in Kunming:

i.imgur.com/407pqOo.jpg

I'm grateful to have learned a thing or two this morning from @red, thanks!

The long-distance bipedal locomotion of modern humans is quite impressive, rivaling some of the most prolific distance runners in the animal kingdom. It makes sense to gradually abandon hairy insulation to make way for more sweat glands, which outnumber those of animals. Sweating is an effective natural body cooling system. Particularly useful when chasing food or being chased by rival clans. Otherwise crashing mid-chase like an overheated CPU may be detrimental... not only for the runners, but for the women & children relying on them for food or protection.

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@lemon "An explanation might be that the wearing of clothing stops the hair from growing."

So either you're bald like a lemon in the nether regions, or you waddle about Spring City without underpants like Donald Duck. Both scenarios are quite disturbing. lol

How could you @alien? Look at how adorable they are!

I'm in no mood for Kevin Bacon jokes.

The recent halt of soy bean imports from the U.S. may inadvertently result in protein deficiencies for these piggies. Weakening them and their immunology. As a result, more antibiotic-resistant super bugs may spawn. Potentially crossing over to virally infect humans.

Furthermore, what alternative feeds will be given to these livestock? What are the cocktail of chemical fertilizers infused in the production of these substitute feeds? Surely, these unclassified chemical compounds will imbue their cellular tissues. Making their way on to your dinner table. And eventually interacting with your gut flora in a cascade of chain reactions.

Animal fat by themselves have already been shown to have adverse health effects, let alone the addition of industrial substances.

@dolphin: "how come people who are descendants of people living in Siberia for centuries don't have furs on their skin?"

Fossil records show our earliest ancestors started out in either Africa or China. It may have took them many generations to migrate outward to Siberia... diversifying across Europe and Asia.

In my above mate-selection analogy in dolphins, perhaps a hairy face & neck weren't attractive traits as they resembled those of our simian cousins or Neanderthals, and were telltale signs of cognitive inferiority.

Those sporting animal furs symbolized power and intellectual prowess needed to survive and thrive in prehistoric harsh environments. Women sought after those men in lieu. Men picked women with less less bodily hair. This merry-go-round stigma ensued. Over generations, full body hair dissipated prior to their arrival in freezing cold Siberia.

If you think stereotyping & racism permeate our societies now, they were pretty nasty hundreds of millennia ago. Heck, humans wiped out the hairy Neanderthals. Just decades ago Hitler nearly succeeded in wiping out the Jews.

@alien: "Well, I guess they could have been dragon bones..."

Fire or ice breathing variety? lol

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@redjon

Well said, and to speak nothing of vestigiality of land or marine mammals...

one convenient example would the vestigial pelvic bone or the extra set of fins endowed by dolphins. which perhaps may be remnants of hind limbs.

50 million years earlier, dolphins shared a common ancestor as hippos and deer that roamed the lands on all fours. Like whales, their distant ancestors fared better near water, and eventually beneath it. Granted both dolphins and whales still need to come up to the surface to breathe air with their lungs. They don't have gills like fish.

I'd presume in their gradual transition from land to ocean, their female counterparts would seek out the most impressive males. The most prolific in hunting in shallow or deep waters. Being good swimmers or have longer jaws to scavenge near surface would definitely help. Offspring would endow these traits, incrementally becoming more pronounced over generations. Btw, dolphins still retain a single lower jaw bone common to mammals.

If wolves can evolve into miniature, toy dog breeds in a mere 30,000 years, granted with help of selective breeding. Imagine 50,000,000 years of evolution by natural selection.

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Based on @dolphin's posts in the past, I don't believe he is completely trolling in regards to the rejection of evolution. If a totally random site like GoK is imparting contradictory knowledge of preconceived world views, you'd think one would start questioning it... which he is. That's a good sign. Science is always such a fascinating topic worth diving into.