How do monkeys swim?

What style do you recon they do? Has anyone actually seen a monkey swimming?

 

They swim like dogs do. A modified dog-paddle; a monkey-paddle.

 

they do the monkey stroke -stroke the monkey-stroke the monkey

 

Monkeys do not swim. They hate the water and the only time they will swim is if there is something life threatening or they fall in water.

 

i wonder at what stage humans created the swimming we know today? though i cant imagine a gorilla or an orangutan or a chimp swimming like a dog, like i cam imagine a baboon or a little spider monkey, ore a gibbon but once they start having body structures similar to humans, i cant imagien doing it caus people never swim like that .. or is that just the cultural construct that i see and not an instinctive human teaching himself to swim? or is the whole point that humans are incapable of typical animal swim, and must resort to new forms of swimming that are structured and formed?

i just find it fascinating how humans dont really do the whole animal swimming thing thats basically the same for all animals

or is freestyle meant to be the highly advanced natural one?its the only one that incorperates the same basic movements but its so different

 

I'm not positive where I read it, but I know that its an official and at least moderately respected hypothesis that part of human evolution can be attributed to an increased need for aquatic skills. Humans are by far the best swimmers out of all primates, and some of the best swimmers period for terrestrial creatures. The length of our bodies, our upright pose, and our longer legs are all features that enable us to swim much better than other primates (I'm sure there are more features but I cannot recall them..). Quite fascinating really. I like your inquisitiveness, stonerbill.

Oh, and hello hipforums community. I've been reading these forums on occasion for a year or two, finally decided to join up. Happy to be here.

 

It seems like the basic human stroke is still the dogpaddle: head above water, paddle with the front limbs. The others are advanced techniques, but anyone who is learning how to swim is probably going to learn that first, and anyone who can't swim will probably do that if they ever had to...unless they panic and just thrash around...

And yeah, the theory is called Aquatic Ape, suggests humans started walking upright when supported by water. They say even the direction our body hair grows (different from other apes) is to be streamlined, and the fact that we are the only ape with subcutaneous fat (like a marine animal) was to keep us warm in the water.

I don't buy it, what kind of idiot ape would walk around in croc infested rivers in Africa? We wouldn't have survived long if we were doing that.

 

The first time you got in water you doggie paddled...or drowned.

But it's probbly because we walk on two legs, even monkeys can walk on 4, and our arms are shorter then out legs...making us have to find a different way to swim.

All the other styles are us just being cocky.

 

I don't know if you know this but babies under 6 months old are excellent swimmers. I bullshit you not, they are able to hold their breath for like 6 minutes, and something happens where they are unable to swallow the water and drown. this instinct goes away though, and you have to re-learn how to swim.
The aquatic ape thingy says that during some part of our evolution we would live in the water some of the time. I think that we just gave birth and would raise kids there for a little while. The water is a relatively safe place to be, if you are wary of the types to go to, and it takes a long, long time for a human to be able to walk, so if they swam the mother could keep an eye on them, and they would be mobile.

 

welcome to the forums!

 

Aquatic ape is all fine and dandy except when you look to the inland or even the Norse. Many tools (i.e. paddles, boats, big ass ships with ugly horns and representative gods) were invented out of the lack of swimming ability. Swimming is pleaurable, drowning is not. Or perhaps seadragons were merely the torrent of currents and overwhelming waves that our hairy ancestors had to deal with? Perhaps they said fug it, and built themselves a ship. But, how did they decide to build the ship? How the hell did they apply their own water dynamics( a bipedal) to the construction of something that floated and even caught the wind? Human babies live in water for roughly nine months yet will seek surface air rather than the 02 present in agua once outside the womb. Cause for an inate ability to float rather than sink?

I'm gonna be thinking about monkeys and water all night now. thanks bill, there's monkeys in the bong.

 

Yeh the baby thing is pretty interesting, it goes to support reasoning that some point in human evolution babies were required to swim. either that, or it is a lasting instinct that comes about in the womb, when a baby must be able to block off his airways (even though theyve never opened doesnt stop it from being a necessity) when submersed in liquid.

 

That movie Auqa world. Lol.

 

u mean water world?

 

Well, the theory is that we were "aquatic apes" when we were starting to walk upright, like, 3-5 million years ago. Not Homo sapiens itself, but an ancestor. So the fact that some peoples don't know how to swim is more about crocodiles, rip currents, and just plain superstition than anything else. (maybe those superstitions of sea monsters is an evolutionary holdover from fearing crocs in the rivers of our ancestral African homeland?)

Yeah, but Eugene, there is no way an ape would want to put it's baby in the water. African rivers are teeming with crocs (and hippos, very dangerous) and most animals stay away from water except for drinking, and then they are very wary. Any ape that would leave it's baby in the water, even while supervising, would soon be a mother without a child. And since these ape-men would have had very few defenses (sticks, and later, maybe some sharp stone tools), it wouldn't have been enough, not even close. Even today, with steel blades and guns, it's easy for people to get killed by crocs if they're stupid and swimming around in the river.

 

but who says the sea monkeys would have swam in the Nile and not in lagoons in some distant, and safer place?

 

Wouldn't make much difference. There's crocs in pretty much every body of water in Africa...not to mention other land-based predators like to hunt around watering holes and rivers. Animals don't like to hang around them, expecially not small, mostly defenseless apes.

But hey, I'm not an expert on the subject...maybe I'm missing something. Still, I don't find the theory too likely.

 

one thing i dont think has been cleared up about human development is why humans lost their hair, but all other monkeys preserve it

 

and why we grow facial hair so long lol i dont see how that happened, that humans grow head and facial hair forever, yet barely any hair on the rest of the body

 

I've read a few things on it

First, the body hair was lost after we had become two legged and left the trees in favor of the open forests and savannah. At first we were like normal apes, still hairy but two legged, digging for roots, eating berries and maybe the occasional small lizard or whatever. But when we started becoming more active, hunting more often (probably around when Homo erectus/Homo ergaster evolved, since they were the first to leave africa, indicating a farther-ranging lifestyle), we needed to be able to cool ourselves better during all that activity. We lost the body hair so we could sweat, but kept the hair on the top of our heads to protect our heads from the harsh tropical sun.

As far as the beards? Don't really know, something to do with sexual selection, a distinctive feature indicating a mature male, same with male chest hair. I know armpit and pubic hair exist because of pheremone producing glands in the area, the pheremones come out in sweat and stick to the hair. Again, sexual selection, indicating sexual maturity. Long head hair may have started as protecting the head from the sun, but probably was taken over by sexual selection; they liked mates with long, soft hair on their head, those who had longer hair bred more often, and it became the norm.