[HN Gopher] By eating them, hyenas gathered 9 Neanderthal skelet...
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       By eating them, hyenas gathered 9 Neanderthal skeletons in one cave
        
       Author : gmays
       Score  : 15 points
       Date   : 2021-05-13 12:58 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
        
       | benjohnson wrote:
       | Weird bit: Hyenas are genetically felines, but behave more like
       | dogs than the cats we're used to.
        
         | GordonS wrote:
         | > Hyenas are genetically felines
         | 
         | Huh, I didn't know that, I'd always seen hyenas as cousins of
         | dogs/wolves.
        
         | theluketaylor wrote:
         | Hyenas are inverse foxes. Hyenas are dog software on cat
         | hardware and foxes are cat software on dog hardware.
        
           | ttraub wrote:
           | Yes, and weirdly, hyenas didn't get the sharp, retractable
           | claws that all true cats possess. I wonder what advantage
           | this adaptation gave them.
        
       | wellthisisgreat wrote:
       | Not directly related, isn't it somewhat strange, grammar-wise?
       | 
       | Not a native English speaker, but I'd thought English grammar
       | would require to put it: Hyenas gathered 9 Neanderthal skeletons,
       | by eating them.
        
         | freshair wrote:
         | Yeah, that's a bizarre headline. I'm not sure it's wrong, but
         | it's quite strange.
         | 
         | Edit: I'm not sure actually right either. It was not the act of
         | eating that transported the bodies; rather the bodies were
         | brought there so they could be eaten.
         | 
         |  _" Hyenas dragged 9 Neanderthals to a cave to eat them."_
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | drops wrote:
         | Both are fine, if you remove the comma in your example, but the
         | one used in the article puts the focus on "eating" first. It's
         | also more interesting to read: "By eating them..." (who ate who
         | or what?) ..."hyenas gathered neanderthal skeletons" (oh good,
         | interesting archeology, I'll check it out) etc.
        
       | anonporridge wrote:
       | Before reading the article, I was terribly confused about how
       | Neanderthals would have ended up in Africa.
        
       | okareaman wrote:
       | I would like to put in a plug for Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.
       | My intro to this author wasn't good. I listened to him try to be
       | big brain about the pandemic and wasn't impressed, but then I
       | picked up Sapiens. Now I know why people like Bill Gates and
       | Barack Obama recommend him.
        
         | mmmrtl wrote:
         | Trust your first impression of him trying to big brain about
         | the pandemic, that's his whole shtik - compelling blather.
         | Probably you're not a human population history researcher? That
         | would make it very hard to see through his sensationalism
        
           | okareaman wrote:
           | > Probably you're not a human population history researcher
           | 
           | No I am a very interested amateur. I just learned about
           | Denisovans. Sapiens is a good story and I assumed he was
           | simplifying. I plan to go deeper on this subject.
        
           | belugacat wrote:
           | What are some good human population history writers?
        
           | meowkit wrote:
           | Character assassinations without providing links or other
           | material are a net negative and are not going to convince
           | most people you're right.
        
           | proc0 wrote:
           | So you're implying he's all sensationalist, including
           | Sapiens?
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-13 23:00 UTC)