A couple of headlines caught my eye in the Saturday morning news feed.
One of them, in the sports section, noted that Max Scherzer became the first pitcher
to start the baseball season with 12 wins and no losses in 27 years. A little
further down the column, under Science, was a Los Angeles Times article on why chimps can't throw a baseball at
90 mph.
I
love baseball. I don’t have any connection to the Detroit Tigers, but I was
interested to see that pitcher Max Scherzer “is the only one who has produced
an unblemished record through 12 decisions in 2013, a first for any hurler
since Roger Clemens with the Boston Red Sox in 1986”.
I
grew up listening to Hall of Fame pitcher Dizzy Dean call games on CBS and
watching Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford pitch in Spring Training where I grew up
in St. Petersburg, Florida. There are plenty of hard throwers in baseball these
days and many of them have reached the hundred-mile-an-hour club, but according
to sports writer Red Smith, “Whitey Ford could throw a lamb chop past a hungry
wolf”.
Which brings me back to the animal connection. An article in the June 27
edition of Nature with the daunting
title, “Elastic Energy Storage in the Shoulder
and the Evolution of High-speed Throwing in Homo”, notes that “Some primates, including
chimpanzees, throw objects occasionally, but only humans regularly throw
projectiles with high speed and accuracy”. According the authors, Darwin noted
that the unique throwing abilities of humans, which were made possible when
bipedalism emancipated the arms, enabled foragers to hunt effectively using
projectiles. The authors used experimental studies of humans throwing
projectiles to show that our throwing capabilities largely result from several
derived anatomical features that enable elastic energy storage and release at
the shoulder. These features first appear together approximately 2 million
years ago in the species Homo erectus. Taking into consideration
archaeological evidence suggesting that hunting activity intensified around
this time, the authors conclude that selection for throwing as a means to hunt
probably had an important role in the evolution of the genus Homo.
Of course, that makes perfect sense when you think about it. If early
humans could throw a rock or a spear accurately and with force, they were much
more likely to be successful food gatherers – a perfectly reasonable
adaptation.
When I was a young zookeeper starting my career at Busch Gardens, I had
to undergo an initiation of sorts in the chimp house. Our legendary and
fearsome male, Bamboo, had once escaped, attacked a keeper, and bitten the
man’s calf muscle off. When Bamboo went into a threat display, it was
terrifying. And to make matters worse, he liked to throw his poop as a finale
to his act. The poop came flying with force and accuracy as he scooped it off
the floor and let fly in one smooth motion. But, now that I think about it, he always
used an underhand motion. I never saw him pick it up and throw it overhand from
a wind up or the stretch. Now, after more than 40 years, I finally know why.
