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The book continues, in the previous article we talked about the innovations and improvements that primates have made with other mammals in terms of hardware, but historical experience tells us that the upgrade of hardware is always only temporary, and soon these upgrades will be buried by the animals that come after them, so what is the ultimate powerful killer that makes primates, today we will talk about the biggest difference between primates and other animals.
gorilla
The most difference between primates and other animals is the development of the brain, with the gradual stabilization of the earth's environment, and the gradual development of animals like squirrels, primates found that the tree is no longer their own unique basic disk, expanding other ecological niches has been an inevitable trend, but we said in the previous article that other animals have occupied the vast majority of ecological niches left by dinosaurs, including ferocious predators, the earth is no longer safe, so if you want to continue to live on this land, you must change. This time caught up with another wonderful event on earth, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (to put it simply, the temperature rises by about 5 to 8 ° C in most parts of the world, and even the Arctic is a lush forest) to promote a large number of forests, the fruits in the forest provide for the increasing size of primates, and the seeds of fruits take root and sprout with the movement of primates. Gradually, primates have migrated from Africa to the world with the continuous expansion of forests, becoming a veritable international species.
forest
But as primates continue to migrate, a group of predators also focus on these fat meat, primates have made so many innovations, but did not evolve effective means of attack and defense, but primates and other animals are different, why these means, a single individual is too weak, then as long as the other monkeys are united, so the vast majority of primates become social animals.
Chinese Akebono
In Liyang, Jiangsu Province, about 45 million years ago, a new primate was found, named the Chinese akebono Eosimas sinensis, although their body size is still not much larger than the rat, but their brain evolved a new cerebral cortex for understanding the behavior of the same kind, that is, mirror neuron Mirarror Neuron, which represents a new primate dedicated to enhancing intelligence on the historical stage, he is the great ape subordinate orderImiiformes, That is, apes and monkeys in our current sense.
The function of mirror neurons is to reflect the behavior of the same kind, learn to imitate from simple imitation to more complex imitation, and gradually develop more complex behavior, under such social conditions, force is not so important, and a new way of competition, strategy, began to develop, they will fight for their own position according to the conspiracy to obtain the right in the group, this right of course also includes the right to mate, that is, the most powerful and intelligent individual can give birth to offspring. It is equivalent to them sifting out more intelligent individuals from generation to generation, resulting in higher and higher intelligence of primates, and intelligence is the ultimate killer of primates in the future.
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