Inventor wrote:
Something strange did happen, but I thought it had been forgotten.
Very early in our line has been placed, The Swamp Ape.
None has ever been found, but they are there to explain why we have a tight skin with a layer of fat under it.
All other creatures with this setup are marine mammals.
We are the ape that adapted to the water, then returned to land?
All of the other land mammals have loose skin, like dogs.
Inventor, yes - this is the fascinating 'Aquatic ape' theory.
It's always been debated what it was exactly that made early ape-men start to walk on two legs - it is a very tiring and difficult thing for quadropeds to do, so the need must have been urgent. It used to be thought that we began to use tools first, so started to walk on two legs to free the forepaws for use, but now it's known that bipedalism came first and tool use later. Was it because they waded in water on a regular basis? Primates such as the proboscis monkey that are somewhat better at two-legged walking than most live in areas that are swampy or periodically flooded.