Walking with Monk

I’ve been doing a lot of walking lately with my friend, Monk. Sometimes the conversation is a little one-sided, but the other day he offered a novel idea for how the homo sapiens species may have developed skills which allowed them to escape the confines and clutches of that dangerous and hot, dry savannah into the freedom of the frigid and barren lands to the north.

Currently, evolutionary biologists are jousting over the advantage offered by the opposable or “prehensile” (if you like to obfuscate the discussion) thumb versus the enlarging brain and tool development.

But Monk suggested a slight modification of this theory, which suggests the opposable thumb may have developed concurrently with bipedalism (bikes with pedals on both sides).

Although the ability to walk and grasp weapons was a major advantage, it was not sufficient to break the bonds of the insect-dominated and allergy-fertile Savannah. As we discarded a pair of feet, we needed those two thumbs.

Monk pointed out that when the saber tooth tiger or vicious homo habilis was chasing young, virile and frightened homo sapiens, the ability to scratch without stopping is a huge evolutionary advantage. The itch that delays an escape may have cost us some valuable ancestors.

By the way, how valuable are opposable thumbs if our cousins the opossums (notice only one “p”) have opposable thumbs on their rear feet! You cannot run and scratch with the same limb, that’s kinda hoping you can hop fast.

Monk has recently demonstrated the benefits of non-stopping scratching or itch killing to me on several walks. When he gets an itch, he stops, plops and scratches.

No problem except he has no taillights and it requires my best athletic agility to avoid his ill-timed block. (Although I usually do and am ahead in the game, he stills has fun trying to tumble me.)

Dogs can’t move and scratch (don’t confuse the scoot and wipe with run and scratch), which is why they became our pets, to be PET-ected.