The Darwin Awards 4: Intelligent Design
Page 6
Reference: Personal Account
CHAPTER 2
Water
Water covers 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, so it’s little wonder that this is the medium in which many Darwin demises occur. We herein encounter the dangers of “snowmoboating,” the tide, frozen rivers, raging rivers, two waterfalls, one bungee cord, and even the kitchen sink! But first, an essay on the Aquatic Ape hypothesis.
DISCUSSION: AQUATIC APES ARE PEOPLE, TOO!
Stephen Darksyde, Science Writer
Not everyone is comfortable with the idea that humans are animals, or that we’re apes. But the fact is, the cells that make up our bodies have nuclei and organelles such as mitochondria, we’re capable of locomotion, and unlike plants we consume other organisms to survive. That’s all it takes for an organism to be classified as an animal. And we’re mammals, primates to be exact, with large brains and no external tails. That puts us in the class of hominids along with our closest cousins: the gorilla, chimpanzee, orangutan, and gibbon.
But humans do possess a number of unique attributes in our form and structure, the most obvious being that we are obligatory bipeds: We walk on two legs, and we don’t have much choice about it. We’re not the only large vertebrates to walk on two legs—dinosaurs, birds, and kangaroos are bipedal, but they’re like teeter-totters, with their upper and lower bodies balanced over the fulcrum of their hips. Humans are like pogo sticks, with our heads balanced precariously atop a double-curved spine. This anatomy is unique in all the animal kingdom.
Our form of bipedalism comes with many drawbacks that four-legged animals don’t suffer from. Fallen arches, shin splints, hernias, and back problems are all caused by walking upright. Given the high price we pay for walking on two legs, it’s tough to imagine what original, critical advantage was gained by our proto-bipedal ancestors, whose bodies were even less adapted to the rigors of bipedal locomotion.
Why we became bipedal is mystery enough, yet other oddities are even harder to explain!
Our unique human qualities also include being bald and chubby. We are nearly hairless, and to the detriment of our self-esteem, we carry a high body-fat content compared to most mammals. Much of the fat is stored just under our skin. Also unusual is that humans can control breathing beyond the capabilities of most mammals.
Enter Elaine Morgan, a feisty Welsh feminist and writer. In the early 1970s, Morgan began to develop and promote a controversial hypothesis seeking to unite a number of human oddities within a single explanatory framework. Her hypothesis is that human ancestors lived in close proximity to water for extended periods, and spent so much time beach-combing, wading, and diving for foodstuffs that they evolved to suit their environment. We’re not merely apes, we’re Aquatic Apes!
The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis is astonishing, but Morgan makes some good points. For starters, take bipedalism: If a chimp tried to maintain an erect posture, the physiological consequences would not bode well for the animal. Over time it would incur problems keeping its blood pressure up, and suffer skeletal damage as it repeatedly moved from an upright to a reclined position. But if a chimp or a gorilla were wading on two legs and supported by water, those problems would be greatly reduced or eliminated. And there is an immediate survival benefit for a bipedal ape wading in three or four feet of water: The animal would have its head above the surface and be able to breathe! Given an immediate benefit, a new food supply to exploit, and the advantages of walking on two legs in water, natural selection would have a platform from which to work—and perhaps eventually craft apes that were obligatory bipeds.
The Aquatic Ape hypothesis explains our high body-fat content as more than energy storage: It represents critical insulation. Body hair prevents heat loss only when an animal is dry; however, a wet, furry mammal loses heat almost as fast as one with no hair. Among aquatic mammals—whales, walruses, and seals—hair is sparse, just as it is on our bodies. Most large mammals store subcutaneous fat for one of two purposes: seasonally for hibernation, or year-round because they’re partially or fully aquatic.
Is the Aquatic Ape hypothesis valid? Any useful scientific hypothesis must make predictions that can be tested. If these predictions are validated through observation and experiment, then the hypothesis gradually becomes a scientific theory. The more data the theory unifies under a single coherent explanation, and the more successful its predictions, the stronger it becomes. If the evidence comes from independent sources that all interlock with the theory in a consistent manner, and this consistency keeps up as more and more information is discovered, then that theory will become part of the scientific consensus and you really have a winner.
Charles Darwin’s original idea is an example of a hypothesis that became a theory. The evidence for common descent, one of the key predictions of the theory of natural selection, includes mountains of empirical data from the fossil record, molecular biology, and physiology. Common descent is so solidly supported by so many independent lines of evidence that it’s considered an inferred fact by almost all scientists today.
To explain a few existing anatomical structures and physiological processes, the Aquatic Ape Theory is satisfactory. But we have little other evidence to support it.
In particular, the fossil record does not advance the Aquatic Ape conjecture. We have only a few fossil scraps of human ancestors from the time before bipedalism was well developed three million years ago, represented by the archetype A. afarensis, a.k.a. Lucy. And that’s the critical period when an aquatic ancestral phase would have had to exist for it to explain the origin of bipedal locomotion. Even if we had a complete skeleton from the exact time and place required, how would we distinguish a partly aquatic hominid from a close relative that was not aquatic at all? It would be tough to peg a sea otter, a beaver, or a polar bear as partially aquatic from fossils, if we’d never seen such an animal in the flesh.
Some scientists think that the case Morgan makes has been overstated. Maybe there is a bit of elitism going on with a few of her critics; Elaine Morgan is not a paleontologist or an anthropologist by training. But some of the critics also put forth alternative explanations for the anatomical congruencies between humans and aquatic mammals. For example, people do store more fat than most of our land-dwelling mammalian relatives, but maybe that’s because it’s an effective reservoir of fluids, energy, and critical trace nutrients, all of which would be useful for a creature that moved from the steamy jungle to the arid plains.
For now, the Aquatic Ape scenario remains an intriguing hypothesis and not much else. But science moves in mysterious ways. One can never predict what will be found next.
Now that we’ve investigated the possibility that humans evolved to live in a liquid habitat, let’s dive into stories featuring water, where one soon sees that our evolutionary adaptations are not yet complete.
DARWIN AWARD: SNOWMOBOATER
Confirmed by Darwin
8 JULY 2001, MONTANA
From the time we climbed down from the trees to light a fire, we have been developing new and creative ways to make our lives easier. Centuries ago, the hardy Arctic people found that sliding on boards in deep snow was easier than walking, and when motors came along, an obvious improvement was to hook the two ideas together, making the snowmobile.
Even today, intrepid experimenters are finding new uses for the snowmobile. Although five-hundred-pound snowmobiles are not designed to float, and in fact do not float, people have discovered that they can hydroplane across the surface of the water. It’s called “water skipping” or “snowmoboating.”
Gary, forty-nine, did not know how to swim. Yet because he lived in Montana, where a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, he found a way to enjoy water sports. Yes, water skipping had a new convert.
Demonstrating his manliness by not wearing no stinkin’ life jacket, Gary climbed onto his snowmobile, gunned the motor, and skittered across the surface of the reservoir like a waterbug on speed. He zoomed onto the far bank, two hundred ya
rds away. Great delight was expressed by all.
He turned the snowmobile around, gunned the motor like that other great Montana daredevil, Evel Knievel, and roared onto the water for the return trip. He had barely made it fifty feet when the snowmobile lost momentum. His buddies watched in horror as the snowmobile plunged to the bottom of the reservoir, carrying a white-knuckled Gary down with it.
Montana had seen its first drowning victim from water skipping.
Reference: Peninsula Clarion
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Snowmoboating falls into a legal gray area. Unlike water-skiers and Jet Ski pilots, snowmobilers are not required to wear life jackets. And laws prohibiting driving motor vehicles into bodies of water don’t apply to snowmobiles. After all, who would? Apparently enough people that a world championship water-skipping event is held every summer in Grantsburg, Wisconsin. The only state to ban the activity, after discovering the sport’s potential for creating new Darwin Award candidates, is Nebraska.
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DARWIN AWARD: SECOND TIME’S THE CHARM
Unconfirmed by Darwin
16 MARCH 2003, MICHIGAN
Ignoring Coast Guard warnings, David ventured onto the icy surface of Saginaw Bay with his pickup truck one chilly morning. Predictably, the vehicle broke through the ice, but the forty-one-year-old managed to avert tragedy and escape from the sinking truck. He reached the shore wet and cold, but alive.
Despite his traumatic experience, and despite a day of sunshine and warm temperatures in the sixties, David returned to Saginaw Bay late the following night. This time he was driving an all-terrain vehicle, and accompanied by a friend. Surprise! The ATV also plunged through the ice.
His companion survived, but David had used up his luck. His body was recovered by the Coast Guard southwest of the Channel Islands. An autopsy was scheduled to determine whether anything besides a desire to win a Darwin Award was a factor in his demise.
Reference: Flint Journal
DARWIN AWARD:
MAN DROWNS IN KITCHEN SINK
Confirmed by Darwin
26 MAY 2004, AUSTRIA
The manager of an apartment house was surprised to find the legs of a corpse sticking out of a tenant’s window. Police entered the apartment and found the deceased man’s head soaking in a sink full of hot water.
Apparently, the out-of-work Austrian had returned home after a night of drinking and drugs. He decided to slip in through the kitchen window. The window was fixed at the base and tilted out, giving him just enough room to squeeze his head through as far as the sink before he got stuck. While flailing around trying to escape, he turned on the hot water tap.
Police were not sure why he had not turned off the water, pulled the plug, or—perhaps most important—entered through the front door, since they found the keys in his pants pocket.
Reference: Kurier (Austria)
DARWIN AWARD: TIDE WAITS FOR NO MAN
Confirmed by Darwin
23 MAY 2005, CRYSTAL BEACH, TEXAS
After surf-fishing on Crystal Beach, John was fatigued but unwilling to call it a night. The full moon threatened to disturb his nap, so John curled up for forty winks in the darkest place available: underneath his truck, which was parked on the beach.
The next morning, a pickup truck was reported abandoned in the surf off Crystal Beach. A tow truck driver was called in, and had barely moved the pickup a foot, when he found the body of a thirty-seven-year-old man embedded in the sand beneath it.
It turned out that the truck was not abandoned, after all. As John slept, time passed and the tide rolled back in. The wet sand shifted beneath the truck’s weight, and John was trapped beneath it, unable to escape. The beach became his final resting place.
Reference: Houston Chronicle, KLTV, KBTV
DARWIN AWARD: COLD CALL
Confirmed by Darwin
20 JANUARY 2004, VENTNOR, NEW JERSEY
“Proof that using a cell phone causes brain damage?”
A high school student accidentally dropped his cell phone from the Dorset Avenue Bridge. Fortunately, the river had frozen over, so the phone landed on the ice, apparently intact. To a dedicated user, losing one’s phone is like losing an appendage. And what loyal friend would not try to retrieve your arm or leg if it had somehow fallen off a bridge and landed on thin ice? The survival of our species depends on mutual support.
Two days later, Bruce, seventeen, volunteered to fetch the phone. He figured that the ice, just an inch thick in places, was strong enough to hold him for the rescue mission. Another friend urged Bruce to give up and go back to shore. “I can do it,” Bruce insisted.
A bridge attendant also warned him to stay off the ice, but as his mother explained, “It’s just something Bruce would have done.” The attendant rushed to his post to call the police. He was on the phone when a bystander told him that someone had fallen in. An officer arrived at the scene moments later to find Bruce partially submerged in the thirty-five-degree water. The officer dashed to his car for a rescue buoy, but when he returned, Bruce had already gone under. His body was recovered the next morning.
Bruce did not die in vain. The cell phone was recovered, as well.
10 FEBRUARY 2004, NEW YORK
Exactly three weeks later, eighteen-year-old Lina, of Queens, jumped onto the subway tracks to retrieve her new cell phone just as the V train was rounding the corner into the Grand Avenue station. She apparently expected to hop right back up onto the platform, five feet above the tracks, but after two attempts, she was still stuck. As the lights of the oncoming train shone in the tunnel, two men tried to pull her up, but she was knocked out of their hands as the train rushed into the station, emergency brakes squealing. She died along with her cell phone.
Reference: Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Post, New York Daily News
DARWIN AWARD: BOTTOM OF THE BARREL
Confirmed by Darwin
11 JULY 1920, NIAGARA FALLS, BETWEEN ONTARIO AND NEW YORK
To support his wife and eleven children, Charles Stephens, the fifty-eight-year-old “Demon Barber of Bristol,” needed more money than he could make giving shaves and haircuts. Even his sideline as a daredevil, performing high dives and parachute jumps in England, barely helped cover the bills. He needed something big, something to make his reputation. There was nothing bigger and more daredevilish than going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Only two people had ever done it and lived.
It didn’t matter that one, Annie Taylor, was living in abject poverty or that the other, Bobby Leach, was trying to talk him out of using his heavy Russian oak barrel without first sending it on a test run. Leach’s friend, William “Red” Hill, a daredevil whose sideline was rescuing people from Niagara’s treacherous waters, also tried to dissuade Charles.
But Charles believed that if he strapped his arms to the side of the barrel and his feet to a large anvil as ballast, he would pop up out of the foam at the bottom of the cataract, safe and right-side up. He knew what he was doing, by gum, and he was going to do it.
He launched his ungainly craft early one morning, and floated through the rapids toward Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side. Forty-five minutes after launch, the heavy barrel flew over the edge of the falls. So far, so good…but when Charles hit the water below, the anvil plunged through the bottom of the barrel, carrying most of Charles to the bottom with it. The barrel became stuck behind the falls. It wasn’t until much later that the barrel’s battered remains floated out into the mist. Attached was Charles’ right arm, still strapped down, with his tattoo visible: “Don’t Forget Me Annie.”
Reference: infoniagara.com
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The Daredevils of Niagara Falls: www.DarwinAwards.com/book/niagara.html
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DARWIN AWARD: HURRICANE BLUMPKIN
Confirmed by Darwin
19 SEPTEMBER 2003, VIRGINIA
Hurricane Isabel whipped shallow creeks into raging rivers, before calming down to a violent tropical storm. What better time
for a canoe trip? Especially at two-thirty in the morning, on a moonless night? Enter “Blumpkin,” twenty-one, captain of the James Madison University rugby team, described as “insane, just indestructible.”
He left his own party with friends who “thought it would be all ha, ha and funny” to take the canoe straight down Blacks Run Stream to Blumpkin’s old house.
Winds were gusting to fifty miles per hour, as nearly a foot of rain fell on the Shenandoah Valley. The Boy Scout canoe merit badge says, “If in doubt…survey the water from shore. Do not run any but the mildest rapids unless you have a guide who knows the river. Wear life jackets in all rough water.” Surely Blumpkin noticed that the knee-deep water of Blacks Run was now a flood churning higher than his head. Nevertheless, he launched—and just as quickly capsized. The boat occupants were tossed into the swift, storm-fed stream.