Ancestors of Homo Sapiens Hunted by Birds

CFTM writes "The associate press writer, Alexandra Zavis, reports that 'A South African anthropologist said Thursday his research into the death nearly 2 million years ago of an ape-man shows human ancestors were hunted by birds.' The article raises some really fascinating questions, particularly when one begins to think about the evolutionary impact that this may have had on humans." From the article: "The Ohio State study determined that eagles would swoop down, pierce monkey skulls with their thumb-like back talons, then hover while their prey died before returning to tear at the skull. Examination of thousands of monkey remains produced a pattern of damage done by birds, including holes and ragged cuts in the shallow bones behind the eye sockets. Berger went back to the Taung skull, and found traces of the ragged cuts behind the eye sockets. He said none of the researchers who had for decades been debating how the child died had noticed the eye socket damage before."

Old news, some doubt

[John Hawks]

This story is mostly old news; the same researchers proposed it about ten years ago. The original idea was that the site where the skull was found (Taung) had a lot of young monkeys, which not only suggests predation, but also a relatively lightweight predator. Most of the other South African caves preserve larger adult specimens as well, which might have gotten in themselves or been carried (or dropped) by larger predators like leopards. It is a very tricky case to say that the accumulating agent at Taung must have been eagles, though, since it is much more likely that different predators and non-predation factors operated at different times for any given site.

What they found that justified a new paper was damage inside the eye orbits of the specimen, which is one area where eagle talons damage their prey. It could be true, but on the other hand there is a lot of doubt. After all, eagles aren't the only predators that damage the eyes, and there are other ways that the bones may have accumulated, chiefly water transport, that might not require predation at all. As one of my colleagues put it, so many young primates die of disease or inadequate nutrition; the chances of this story is greater than zero, but how much?

--John (my anthropology weblog is at http://johnhawks.net/weblog/ [johnhawks.net])

Harpy Eagles hunt monkeys today

[aapold]

This has been known a long time, their primary diet consists of monkeys and sloths which they pluck from trees. Not many of them left though.

Wikipedia entry for Harpy Eagle [wikipedia.org].

Re:Birds of Prey or Carrion Birds?

[miranatu]

I think you should read the article a little more closely. This is building on data not only from the Taung child, but also from an Ohio State study on the predatory habits of certain birds. The study shows that birds did indeed hunt the way Berger suggests, from the evidence on thousands of monkey skulls. Similar damage is found on the Taung child, which would suggest that it was killed in the same way.

Re:Birds of Prey or Carrion Birds?

[lawpoop]

"A behavior as simple as protecting your tribe's corpses from opportunistic predators quickly ensures you generally don't get attacked by eagles."

That is an extremely complex behavior. Very few animals do it, and those that do are very intelligent social animals. The only animals who do it that I can think of offhand are elephants and humans.

Re:Happened Then...Happens Now

[commodoresloat]

Have you ever seen a wolf? You would get your ass kicked, trust me, one on one. And as others pointed out, it would never go down that way; you would be standing in a clearing thinking you were all alone in the world and you would look up surprised and see four or five beautiful silver wolves foaming at the mouth ready to pounce... you wouldn't really have time to think about much after that. One on one it would go down a little bit slower but trust me you are toast.

Re:Happened Then...Happens Now

[Inthewire]

Deer can be, have been, and are walked down by humans. As a species we have superior endurance (on land) relative to most creatures. If a deer can be kept in sight, it can be caught. Deer are also small, and not particularly hard to kill