I was reading about the homo floresiensis species of humanoid, and it said that many species miniaturize on islands because of the shortage of food, and less large predators and other large animals to compete with for food. Isn't that the situation that most of the western world is facing today? Food is dieing off with the wilderness, and so are the large animals that we have to compete with. So our survival would be more likely if we were smaller. Could the human species be evolving into midgets?

Those animals didn't farm.

Asians tend to be smaller, probably to due past famines.

It's in the milk. Much of American diet is centered around beef--consume a cow you become a cow. It must be dietary.

Those animals didn't farm.
What effect would you predict farming to have on our development?

What effect would you predict farming to have on our development?
Less likely to run out of food (in developed countries) unless we allow populations to increase too far.

I was reading about the homo floresiensis species of humanoid, and it said that many species miniaturize on islands because of the shortage of food, and less large predators and other large animals to compete with for food. Isn't that the situation that most of the western world is facing today? Food is dieing off with the wilderness, and so are the large animals that we have to compete with. So our survival would be more likely if we were smaller. Could the human species be evolving into midgets?
Maybe that's why aliens are always little green men. :D

unless you are talking about close encouters types, then they are huge =]

It's not just food, it's environment too. At least thats what defines race through evolution and I'm sure it has consequence upon build too.

A simple example of this is Fish in a pond:

you can take two fish, the same genetics, the same size and apply them to two different sized ponds. You could feed them the same amount at the same time each day, however the one in the larger pond is likely to grow greater in size (and need more feeding consequently).

You can suggest that if the ponds had been filled with more fish, their sizes would have again been inhibited.

An example of a Cuckoo that has infiltrated another birds nest, has the cuckoo being larger because of it's different genetic makeup. While being larger it can grab the food from the seregate parents before the smaller offsping can. This increases the size and strength of the cuckoo in comparison to the offspring, which in turn become weak and are pushed from the nest until the cuckoo gets all the food.

In both of those examples the explaination is that the small the area of land, the less resources can be gathered or grown, the less people can survive there (unless they are small in size).

I think that eventually woman must be made into sex slaves again. They've been goofing around with free rights for a very long time, it's time men had the ability to rape an have sexual acts with their wifes sister... oh wait no wrong thread, haha.

So as for the midget thing, well you can always think of it this way, altering the genes that make us taller isn't that hard, it should be fairly easy. I think mostly in the future we'll design our own geneoms so that we are perfect (at least in our eyes).

What would a perfect humanoid be like? Well they'd all have the same hair color, they'd have the same eye color, they'd have the same body type, they'd have pretty much the same thing going. That way you could bang any of them an know every inch of their naked bodies, oh wait ok I'm sleepy haha.

Sameness sounded boring didn't it? LOL

umm, first of all, don't you think the term 'midgets' is a bit.. rash? oh well, nvm.

hmmm, i don't think the 'western world' will run out of food ANYTIME soon. i mean, they /do/ have a lot of people who eat a lot, and the food supply is more than enough to accomodate the current population and even a larger population. if you want to talk poverty, talk asia or africa. they KNOW how it's like to be hungry, or to eat a spoon of rice a day (not exaggerating). perhaps nothing at all.

about the height thing and asians being small. i dunno, it could be a racial evolutionary adaptation. caucasians are tall with very fair skin because they live in the areas of the globe where little sunlight reaches them. so, in turn, they produce very little melanin and increase their skin's surface area by getting taller. they also probably develop a slower metabolism due to the cold winters they experience. asians, on the other hand, have a relatively short build and relatively tan skin because most asians live in the tropics (populations...) and have a more active lifestyle. it would be difficult to run around and hunt tropical rainforests when you're tall and lanky. asians are proabably also less likely to be obese because they probably have faster metabolisms so fat doesn't build up in thier bodies and get them too hot. the tan is obviously because the countries are near the equator so they recieve a lot of exposure from the sun, thus the skin copes by genetically embedding a code for the appropriate amount of melanin to be produced by the skin.

i'm asian, by the way. not telling more. :)

we are continually evolving, so it's really a bit hard to predict what we'd look like in the future(unless of course, if we manipulate our genes so we all look like supermodels or something). we could go shorter, or we could get taller and lankier because of some bizarre natural accident or something.

hn, i wasn't much help, wasn't i? sorry about that.. :(

MEN... over 50... who father children at 50 or more....

have a much higher chance of having midget kids.....

something about degredation of the genes....

-MT

riffyraine:
What I meant with the western world was that we don't need size to compete for food anymore.
Mosheh:
I've also heard that in flies(not sure about humans), the later in their lifetime they have offspring, the longer the offspring are likely to live.

Perhaps if physics one day limits space travel to small vessels only feasible for midgets, and of course, space travel becomes possible.

Are midgets the future?
Do you have any idea how many health problems midgets face?
http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/pediatrics;116/3/771

All of you people talk about evolution as if survival of the fittest applies to all species. Survival of the fittest only applies to species dumb enough not to be fittest. Humans are the fittest species on planet earth, and our only real concern should be aliens in space. We should be expanding out into space right now but instead we fight among ourselves to see which individual is fittest, so as a species we arent capable of evolution until we recognize that there might be predators smarter than outselves waiting to prey on us up in space somewhere.

O...k...

Anyways... humans are not the fittest. Cockroaches are...

Turuthseeker, nothing stops us from living like roaches, we just don't want to.

...

I don't even know what to say... :eek:

... we don't have the advantages that the roaches have. It's a matter of genetics. Ya know? Guess not...

Oniw17:
It's not the same with Humans
Recent studies have shown that women under the age of 20 who reproduce, have children with a much expanded life expectancy.

If you are concerned about the population problem, perhaps airborn Ebola will help reduce it by 90%, leaving the planet with a sustainable population so that resource restrictions will be unnecessary.

As Dr. Pianka says: "Humans are so dense (in population) that they constitute a perfect substrate for an epidemic."

http://www.rense.com/general70/massdeath.htm

So what are you trying to say that we should get women under 20 years old to get pregnant. That would be hot but if we do that we would have to teach these dam kids to stop freakin getting mad diseases because they dont use condoms or dont use them right.

I was reading about the homo floresiensis species of humanoid, and it said that many species miniaturize on islands because of the shortage of food, and less large predators and other large animals to compete with for food. Isn't that the situation that most of the western world is facing today? Food is dieing off with the wilderness, and so are the large animals that we have to compete with. So our survival would be more likely if we were smaller. Could the human species be evolving into midgets?

No. Us Westerners are getting huge and huger. Hugerest even. People today are more massive than people have ever been, because our diets are top notch.

No. Us Westerners are getting huge and huger. Hugerest even. People today are more massive than people have ever been, because our diets are top notch.

Its called Obesity.