PSYO 1011 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Parental Investment, Bipedalism, Sociobiology

• School: Dalhousie University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYO 1011
• Professor: n/a

Document Summary

Harmful traits become rarer: adaptation, products of natural selection, change, via natural selection, that allows organism to meet survival challenges, domain specific adaptations. Human evolution: application of above concepts to human evolution. Prominent theory: scarce vegetation favored bipedal locomotion. Because it freed hands to use weapons. Fostered tool use: group hunting more successful. Encourage social organization & development of specialized roles in group i. e. ) hunter/protector (males); nurturer of young (females: tool use, bipedal locomotion & social organizations place new selection pressures on body & brain. Human brain evolves over period of several million years: greatest growth occurs in areas concerned with higher mental processes, i. e. ) attention, memory, thought & language. Comparing species: comparative method, homology, analogy, determine the function & phylogeny (relatedness) of behavior, useful in tracing evolutionary pathway, similarity between species based on a common ancestor, similarity based on convergent evolution rather than ancestry. Possible homologues to the human smile: chimps & macaques, silent teeth-bearing display.