More broadly, we developed more slow twitch muscles that granted us greater fine motor skills, and subsequently the ability to create and use tools. Other apes retained their fast twitch muscles, so their ability to use tools is limited, but pound-for-pound they're FAR stronger than humans.

I agree. I don’t know that I’d rank it quite as high as some other factors if we’re trying to find some function for “causal elements for human ecological success” or something like that, but there’s no doubt it was selected for and the degree to which we are good at it is a good indicator of its importance. Good call.

And then people say competition is what makes society go around.

Nah, cooperation is the core of everything we do, and we should embrace it as much as possible.

That’s a fascinating question. I am not sure about animal research on dreaming, but Thomas Metzinger is an experimental philosopher (for want of a better term) who studies the basis of the concept of the self as a coherent entity, and his work includes extensive research on phenomena like lucid dreaming, phantom limbs, and out of body experiences. I’m not talking about anything paranormal - there’s conditions under which people’s experience of perception and self become separated from our ordinary experience of “my self is sitting behind my eyeballs.” He collaborates closely with experimental psychologists and neuroscientists, so between his work and references you might be able to see if there’s a correlation.

I would say that, like chatgpt, agent smith managed to be not entirely wrong but also not right.

Yes, human beings are absolutely massacring life on the planet - the only planet that we know has life on it. I have a whole hours long spiel on the potentials for extraterrestrial life which I’ll spare you, but it’s truthful to say that, as far as we know, we’re all there is. Does that matter? That’s something that people (who are the only beings we know of who ask questions like that) will have to answer. As of now the answer is between undecided and no.

Anyway, unlike what Agent Smith says, literally everything is trying to do the same thing. If anything, the problem is that we’re exactly like all of those other organisms that are spamming the environment with copies of themselves. All of that fun alcohol we use to manage our perception of our existential crises come from the same dynamic - yeasts reproducing on sugars until they poison themselves with their own waste products, for which we as humans found a useful application.

The key is that when the species co-evolve as part of the same ecosystem, they mutually adapt. When one species invades another ecosystem, the other species there haven’t have had a chance to adapt in evolutionary time and so it sends shockwaves and possibly extinctions throughout the system. Some people believe (with a fairly strong argument) that the disappearance of megafauna - big land animals - followed human radiation over the land masses, and didn’t happen in Africa because all of the big animals co-evolved.

So we started out as an invasive species that just went pretty much everyplace. Were finishing up as a species that has the same kind of tight reproductive loop as those yeast friends, but in doing so we are going to take down a lot of our fellow beings.

It isn't polite to brag, sweetie.

And throwing shit very well

Snail takes a 1.3 days to crawl a mile, 280 miles a year. With a huge amount of wealth you can just move to the otherside of the country or ocean every 6 or 7 years.

They recently discovered evidence that the atlatl was used 30,000 years ago.

Heck, slings were around even before bow and arrows and can definitely be considered long range

I believe certain breeds of dogs and horses can keep up with us, but only because we bred them to.

To follow an animal often required tracking it when it ran out of sight. Our sense of smell stinks, so we looked for clues on where it went. That's smart

That, plus we are good at throwing things and we sweat. Which means we have range and we can cool off while still being active.

Also, teamwork. Chasing animals in circles and handing off.