Recognizing that fitness is important for a long and healthy life for all species…
We all want
to be fit and healthy, and some of us work hard (harder each year, right?) to
stay in shape. To stay fit, we try to
eat right and exercise. In addition, we
try to maintain good bonds with family and friends while also striking out on
our own, find a great home and a suitable life partner, and aim for some sort
of balance between home and work activities.
How do different species maintain their fitness?
They eat
right, exercise, maintain family bonds, strike out on their own, find good
homes in good neighborhoods, find a suitable mate, raise kids, and hope they
succeed in life. Sound familiar? We share most of our DNA (the hereditary
material in humans and almost all other organisms) with
many other species (over 98% in the case of chimpanzees and gorillas), so the
similarity makes sense.
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Gharial (crocodile family) |
For example, while everyone in an early human population had eyes and a nose, some noses were larger, some were smaller, some were pointy, etc. If having a larger nose somehow led to the owners contributing more of their genes (with the large-nose allele built in) than did the folks with smaller noses, then eventually, after many generations, larger-nosed people would be more common.
What would increase their chances of contributing more genes? Well, if having a larger nose allowed them to smell a scarce resource that let them survive longer, or it was seen as attractive and allowed them to mate with more members of the opposite sex, or it led women to eat healthier food and thus produce more healthy babies, or smelled danger from a greater distance so they could better protect their children, then it would be more likely to eventually produce more mature children.
Slightly more technical: Fitness is
usually referred to for a genetic trait or a population, rather than just a
single individual. Have a large nose might
generally improve survival among a group of people, but any given individual large-nosed
person might unexpectedly die in an accident before having children. Thus, the overall benefits of having a large
nose affects the ability of an average member of a biological population to survive
and produce mature, reproductive offspring.
You can find
many excellent blogs on diet, exercise, and maintaining your own fitness on the
web. I’ve included just a few of them
here, as well as several excellent blogs dedicated to fun facts about
other species and the wonders of the natural world.
Different species different ways of staying fit, I have always been wondering how they keep themselves healthy with all day laying around, www.gettrampoline.com has helped me get fewer answers for myself, Will always take them under consideration.
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