Question

Anthropologists believe that, several million years ago, our ancestors colonized an ecological niche different from the one occupied by the other African apes. Label the lettered parts of your answer. A. What is the unique hominin niche? B. What aspects of the hominin niche have fostered large brains? C. What is altriciality and what might have favored it in the human lineage?

Answer 1

A. A niche is defined as all the environmental factors that shape and influence the phenotypes in a population of organisms. Key elements of a unique Hominin niche include:

• Extractive technically aided interaction with prey and the surrounding habitats.
• Tool making and processing of resources
• Socio-cognitive changes such as multi-step thinking and processing
• Sharing information and communicating for opinions and social judgment.

B. Aspects of the hominin niche have fostered large brains:

Large brains allowed extractive foraging which includes fine motor processing, complex and multi-step activities

Socially intense environment

Large brains allowed ecological complexity to explore more complex niche.

Helps to use tools to protect and defend within the niche and takeover species competition

C. Altriciality is a condition that causes substantial effects on human social and behavioral evolution. It is referred to as obstetrical dilemma. This anthropological hypothesis states that antagonistic selection for a large neonatal brain and a narrow, bipedal-adapted birth canal causes a problem in childbirth and results in an altricial neonate.