Oh, These Are the Soul!
I fell in love with bonobos (formerly pygmy chimps) when I found out how much sex they have. It’s pretty much an all-day activity, though lasting sometimes only for a few seconds. I’ve thought maybe if I were to come back in another life and another species, that would be one I’d consider. We are only one percent different genetically than bonobos and, in fact, are closer to those cousins than red-eyed and white-eyed vireos are to each other. There’s not much stress or warfare among them (who’d have time or inclination with so much fooling around going on?) and, on balance, it looks like an ideal life. However, as a model for us homo sapiens, there are some drawbacks. They’re lazy and can afford to be. We cannot.
In a current special edition of Scientific American, an article called “Evolved to Exercise” makes the case that of all the primates, we are the outliers with respect to physical activity. We must keep moving to survive, like sharks and other scombrid fish (which includes tuna and mackerel). Apes and chimps do not.
The author, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke, writes “A typical day’s agenda for a chimpanzee in the wild reads like the daily schedule for lethargic retirees on a Caribbean cruise, though with fewer organized activities. Wake up early, crack of dawn, then off to breakfast (fruit). Eat until you are stuffed and next find a nice place for a nap, maybe some light grooming. After an hour or so (no rush!) go find a sunny tree with figs and gorge yourself. Maybe go meet some friends, a bit more grooming, another nap. Around 5 o’clock have an early dinner (more fruit, maybe some leaves), then it is time to find a nice sleeping tree, build a nest and call it a night.”
In humans, he says, these activity levels would be a recipe for serious health problems. Our taking fewer than ten thousand daily steps is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular and metabolic disease. We see that great apes rarely accumulate even the modest step-count seen among sedentary humans and never approach the higher benchmark of ten thousand. Worldwide, physical inactivity is arguably on par with smoking as a health risk, killing more than five million people annually. A study in Australian adults reported that every hour accumulated watching television shortened life expectancy by twenty two minutes. He writes “I will save you the math: bingeing all 63½ hours of Game of Thrones and its entirety will cost you one day on this planet.”
We see this a lot with dogs, too, as well as other house pets. How much time do they spend during the day sleeping and resting? It seems like most of it. The holy grail for many of us is to have a life like all these animals, but for better or worse, we need to move like sharks or we’ll die. Many in wheelchairs or missing limbs would give everything they own for the chance to be upright and bipedal. Fossil discoveries are helping to piece together why we have evolved this way, but all we need do is embrace the reality of our inheritance.
Walt Whitman wrote “If anything is sacred the human body is sacred…The thin red jellies within you are within me, the bones and the marrow in the bones, The exquisite realization of health; Oh I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul, Oh I say now these are the soul!”
I’m going to go get my ass in the pool now and swim for my life.
