12/28/2023 0 Comments Giant chimpanzee![]() The bonobo is found in a 500,000 km 2 (190,000 sq mi) area within the Congo Basin of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Central Africa. Some individuals have sparser, thin hair over parts of their bodies. īonobos are distinguished from common chimpanzees by relatively long limbs, pinker lips, a darker face, a tail-tuft through adulthood, and parted, longer hair on its head. Taxonomically, the members of the chimpanzee/bonobo subtribe Panina-composed entirely by the genus Pan-are collectively termed panins. While bonobos are, today, recognized as a distinct species in their own right, they were initially thought to be a subspecies of Pan troglodytes, due to the physical similarities between the two species. Why couldn’t Gigantopithecus do that? “It may be that mammals have higher metabolic needs, converting more of their energy intake into heat, because they’re warm-blooded,” Clauset says.The bonobo ( / b ə ˈ n oʊ b oʊ, ˈ b ɒ n ə b oʊ/ Pan paniscus), also historically called the pygmy chimpanzee (less often the dwarf chimpanzee or gracile chimpanzee), is an endangered great ape and one of the two species making up the genus Pan (the other being the common chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes). Until an asteroid plunged them into armageddon, they were both enormous and successful for tens of millions of years. Every animal species has an effective upper limit on how big it can become how close it can get to the edge of the precipice before toppling off into oblivion.Īt least that’s the case for mammals-dinosaurs were a different story, Clauset acknowledges. That’s why goliaths such as Gigantopithecus and the giant sloth no longer roam the Earth. In fact, Clauset found that extinction rates increase as a species gets larger in size. That means your population tends to be smaller and more sensitive to fluctuations.”Īs a result, changes in weather or climate that threaten a food source can reduce a large-bodied species’ numbers to the point of “demographic death.” It’s that “as you get bigger, you tend to have fewer children. It’s not just that a bigger body requires more food, says Clauset. “There are short-term advantages that come with being bigger, but it also brings long-term risk,” says Aaron Clauset, a computer scientist at the University of Boulder, who has studied the body sizes of thousands of species spanning two million years of the fossil record. The rise and fall of Gigantopithecus illustrates why, over time, size can yield diminishing returns. "Relatives of the giant ape, such as the orangutan, have been able to survive despite their specialization on a certain habitat,” said Bocherens, because they have “a slow metabolism and are able to survive on limited food.” Had it been less gigantic, it might have endured somehow. Gigantopithecus, a fruit-eater, failed to adapt to the grass, roots, and leaves that became the dominant food sources in its new environment. ![]() “When, during the Pleistocene, more and more forested areas turned into savanna landscapes, there was simply an insufficient food supply for the giant ape." ![]() ![]() “Due to its size, Gigantopithecus presumably depended on a large amount of food,” explained Herve Bocherens, a researcher at Tübingen University in Germany, in a press statement. Gigantopithecus thrived in the tropical forests of what is now southern China for six to nine million years.īut around 100,000 years ago, at the beginning of the last of the Pleistocene ice ages, it went extinct-because in the changed climate its size had become a fatal handicap, a new study suggests. You’re less vulnerable to predators, and you’re able to cover a lot of territory when looking for food. If you’re an animal, there are advantages to being gigantic. Fossils indicate it stood as high as 10 feet (3 meters) and weighed up to 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) Sometimes, in evolution, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.Īnd Gigantopithecus was pretty darn big. ![]()
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