I didn't know chimps could laugh?

I guess most animals that are capable of basic emotions could also be 'capable' of feeling amused. The only problem is that they don't have a high enough level of self awareness to recognise somthing as being funny.

In fact, water makes up a large part of most living things. Water covers more than two-thirds of the Earth. About 70 percent of the human body is water. And more than 70 percent of a tree is made up of -- you guessed it -- water!

The water on the Earth's surface is mainly found in oceans (more than 97 percent) and frozen polar ice caps and glaciers (about 2 percent). Less than one percent of all the surface water on Earth is fresh water that people can drink.

as i said the only true thing that we have over the other animals is humor

as for brain power chimps are as smart as they need to be to be chimps

cats are as smart as they need to be to be cats

Ever since the Pre-Cambrian (600 million years ago), ice ages have occurred at widely spaced intervals of geologic time - approximately 200 million years - lasting for millions, or even tens of millions of years. For the Cenozoic period, which began about 70 million years ago and continues today, evidence derived from marine sediments provide a detailed, and fairly continuous, record for climate change. This record indicates decreasing deep-water temperature, along with the build-up of continental ice sheets. Much of this deep-water cooling occurred in three major steps about 36, 15 and 3 million years ago - the most recent of which continues today. During the present ice age, glaciers have advanced and retreated over 20 times, often blanketing North America with ice. Our climate today is actually a warm interval between these many periods of glaciation. The most recent period of glaciation, which many people think of as the "Ice Age", was at its height approximately 20,000 years ago.

Although the exact causes for ice ages, and the glacial cycles within them, have not been proven, they are most likely the result of a complicated dynamic interaction between such things as solar output, distance of the Earth from the sun, position and height of the continents, ocean circulation, and the composition of the atmosphere.


Climatic Cooling from 60 million years ago to present day
Between 52 and 57 million years ago, the Earth was relatively warm. Tropical conditions actually extended all the way into the mid-latitudes (around northern Spain or the central United States for example), polar regions experienced temperate climates, and the difference in temperature between the equator and pole was much smaller than it is today. Indeed it was so warm that trees grew in both the Arctic and Antarctic, and alligators lived in Ellesmere Island at 78 degrees North.

But this warm period, called the Eocene, was followed by a long cooling trend. Between 52 and 36 million years ago, ice caps developed in East Antarctica, reaching down to sea level in some places. Close to Antarctica, the temperature of the water near the surface dropped to between 5 and 8 degrees Celsius. Between 36 and 20 million years ago the earth experienced the first of three major cooling steps. At this time a continental-scale temperate ice sheet emerged in East Antarctica. Meanwhile, in North America, the mean annual air temperature dropped by approximately 12 degrees Celsius.



http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ice/chill.html

No. I might believe a fresh banana tree is 70% water but definately not a giant sequia tree.

i didn't say that follow the link

More evidence that theres global cooling, not global warming.

The funny thing is, the White House's only intelligable defense is "Its all a conspiracy to raise the Weather Channels raitings"

that is better than blaming the whole thing on mankind

That depends entirely on how you define "laugh."

This is yet another open question that is driving animal behavior research. The Wiki isn't a bad place to start. I hadn't ready anything like it before, but it seems like *rats* might also laugh

here is a new discussion idea

there are right now two human species on the planet

Sorry but the definition of a different species requires the inability to procreate, or produce fertile offspring.

sorry in the 70's 80's and 90's we were homo sapiens

now in 2006 they are using sapien sapien

and that is two species since i am sure that all of the homo sapiens haven't died yet

Wait what, first we were Homo Sapiens now we are Sapien Sapiens...

Doesnt Homo Sapien, mean wise man or something. Doesnt Sapien Sapien mean wise wise.

That makes no sense.

Or maybe it means same man, i dont remember. Still doesnt make sense.

acctually i just read the discription

sapien sapein means wise man

and

homo sapien has been reassinged to a group that lived 100,000 years ago


or it could just mean modern man

what i have abserved tho is that non of the so called pre humans lead to us

we just appear in the fossol record some 10,000 years ago

almost the same timing that the bible says it happened

the last two pre humans neanderthal and cro magnum neither lead to mordern man although they try to make it sound like we come from cro magnum

never mind the experts cant agree on who we are we are either homo sapiens or sapien sapiens or homo sapien sapien


all of which may mean wise man

Don't confuse evolving standards for taxonomy (formal naming in biology) with changing "facts," and don't confuse the rise of "civilization" with the evolution of our species.

The fossil record shows that anatomically modern humans first appeared about 200,000 years ago. The agricultural revolution was about 10,000 years ago.

so we came about before our ancesters the neanderthals and cromagnams

and don't forget that the neanderthals had a bigger brain than we do

the only problem they had was that they had to spend all their time looking for food

so no time to think ie dream

Neanderthals are not an ancestor of Homo sapiens sapiens. They were a related species in the hominid family.

Cro-Magnon is a term used to describe the earliest modern humans in Europe, and since I'm of European descent, they are probably among my ancestors.

yes, all the nations that were blessed with native grain, became great. Aztecs, incas etc owe their might to corn. Egypt, Babylon, Israel etc owe their might to wheat. Then the Asian powers owe theirs to rice.

Anyone missing out on rich grain stayed tribal... good example being here in Australia. We have arguably the oldest civilisation - Aboriginal. And what do they have to show for themselves after all that time? Nothing! nothing but a few clever hunting techniques and thats it!

good grain makes all the difference, not race.

and the surprise is that all of the civilizations developed farming tech at the same time period

and they also tamed fire at the same time period

ie no time for said tech to travel between the groups

i dunno? all i know is that humans are quite observant, and i think any tribe on Earth encountering natural growths of grain would soon enough develop farming as a natural course of events.

true but what the aztecs and mayans did with corn no one else has copied including nature

The thing is about 5 prominent and different species of 'humans' existed in the same time period or around the same time period. Cro mangus existed in Northern Europe, but disapeared at about the same time(give or take a thousand years) as we arrived there. Some scientists think we either got into a war with each other, or they just died out. Other smaller human species got issolated on island and such, there are records to other human species living in the last 2000 years.

I think the differences in the species were only superficial... like the differences between Asian and Uropean today.

any remarkable human skelletons scientists can dig up, i would bet you could find somone in the world that would have same. The fact that you could find a whole tribe of neandathols too me just means the kids look like their parents! so what? I can still see neandethols walking around today!!!