Comment on Petrichor
superkret@feddit.org 1 year agoWe evolved in the Savannah.
Rain means the watering holes are filling up, which is obviously good cause we need water, but it also attracts prey animals.
I’m still missing something here. For it to be useful, I’d imagine that it would need to inform decisions, and do so where existing senses would fail.
At least in my environment, if I can smell rain, I could also just as easily use my eyes to see the cumulonimbus clouds and say “rain, due east”.
In the savanna are there scenarios where the only awareness of rain would be smelling it? Can you derive directionality at 5 parts per trillion? Does it matter?
you can smell it coming before you see it imo. that gives you time to get to shelter and to move to where the water/food is
This, of course, was summarized most eloquently at the zenith of human evoloution: the 1982 hit single by Toto clearly stating, “I bless the rains down in Africa.”
Oh wow all this time I thought they missed the rains of Africa
“I guess the rain is down in Africa” for me.
Some of those rains went unblessed because someone missed them.
You think rain is your ally?
You merely adopted the damp. We Brits were born in it, molded by it. I didn’t see dry sand until I was already a man…
Run! He’s a mossman!
Heh. Molded.
Their spelling was moulded by the US
Was that area a desert 250,000 years ago?
The North African region was a lush verdant region 11,000 years ago, which is not so long ago considering humans already spread far and wide around that time.
The whole continent of Africa (as every other continent) went through several major climate changes, small and big. Pretty sure there were at least five major turnovers from wet to dry climate and back since then, and numerous before.
Fun fact, there are some theories that the Sahara desert was actually caused by over foraging from early goat herding.
So to a degree out ancestors may have already caused some climate change.
Republicans and climate science deniers favorite fun fact
Your ape’s first anthropogenic climate disaster.
MBM@lemmings.world 1 year ago
You’d think more African animals (especially predators) would have that ability, then