Um...Neanderthals had thumbs, and fairly large brains. We pretty much wiped them out. If they weren’t “competent competition”, I’m not sure what you’d call “competent” (unless it would have been some species that wiped us out, who would be here having the exact conversation, or something so delicately balanced that I doubt would ever happen).
Controversial: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_admixture_theory—but in any case, 1%-4% of the genome? That’s close enough to extinction...if coyotes interbred with dogs, and lots of household dogs had 1%-4% coyote DNA in them, but there would be no coyotes in the wild, I’d treat it as “extinct enough for me.” :)
First of all; I don’t see any apes or monkeys competing with us presently. Also, we are an evolved species. There have certainly been competitors along the way—perhaps said monkeys or apes and most certainly neanderthals as moshez mentioned. We’ve won though; that is hardly arguable.
Other simians compete with us for territory, but kind of like a team of quadriplegic children would compete in the World Cup, so it’s not immediately clear that it counts as competing.
Is it relevant that humanity doesn’t have competent competition?
I wonder how we’d be doing if we were up against coyotes with thumbs.
Um...Neanderthals had thumbs, and fairly large brains. We pretty much wiped them out. If they weren’t “competent competition”, I’m not sure what you’d call “competent” (unless it would have been some species that wiped us out, who would be here having the exact conversation, or something so delicately balanced that I doubt would ever happen).
I thought they were subsumed into the European branch of Cro-Magnon (us).
Controversial: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_admixture_theory—but in any case, 1%-4% of the genome? That’s close enough to extinction...if coyotes interbred with dogs, and lots of household dogs had 1%-4% coyote DNA in them, but there would be no coyotes in the wild, I’d treat it as “extinct enough for me.” :)
We haven’t wiped out coyotes, so they might be more competent competitors (even without thumbs) than Neanderthals.
First of all; I don’t see any apes or monkeys competing with us presently. Also, we are an evolved species. There have certainly been competitors along the way—perhaps said monkeys or apes and most certainly neanderthals as moshez mentioned. We’ve won though; that is hardly arguable.
Other simians compete with us for territory, but kind of like a team of quadriplegic children would compete in the World Cup, so it’s not immediately clear that it counts as competing.