As the title states, this is simply for comic relief. I just moments ago came across this article, summarizing a recent publication, and I thought that there are few people on this earth who would even begin to be interested in this slapstick, but there may be some bored and lonely BLHer who may check this out from sheer desperation.

In evolutionary biology, convenient ad hoc tales are referred to as Kiplingesque "just so" stories. This one, the link to which is posted below, is to me a remarkable example of one.

In brief, the authors of this study studied the effectiveness ("strength and stability") of fists in 12 modern males trained in martial arts or boxing, against the same characteristics of the hand in modern chimpanzees if they tried to throw a punch (which I have to emphasize that they never do).

The authors found that the shorter fingers of the modern human allowed greater stability, and increased force, than the longer fingers of chimpanzees would allow (again, I have to say, if they even tried to do this, which they do not).

As an evolutionary biologist who has taught human anatomy and evolution for some years, my favorite line is by the functional anatomist at GW University:

More work needs to be done to make this a compelling argument

Some hallucinatory drugs, and a very tolerant and forgiving attitude, will come in handy as well.

This is not representative of even fringe evolutionary biology, and I still can't quite believe that this wasn't a joke. In particular, I feel for the medical student Morgan, who will come to deeply regret this in later life, starting with his Spring term in med school.

Here is the link:

BTW, it's not really worth checking out:

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/347191/description/Man_the_martial_artist