>>11042348I think once you get to macroscopic animals we massively overlook the impact of intelligence and culture (even cross-species interactions) on morphology.
Like, simple environmental pressures just don't apply to us the way they apply to fucking microbes and shit.
Crazy sexual dimorphism is proof of this. Even insects have wildly complex and beautiful forms presumably because of predation by more complex animals, but even then we overlook the question of whether birds are impressed by beauty in favour of the most simplistic answers like camouflage theories.
Humans probably look the way we do largely because of our own aesthetic ideals.
And we may have occupied our evolutionary position because of the rest of the animal kingdom idealising us as weird monkey gods.
There's a feedback loop between those two that may go back way beyond primates.
[spoiler:lit]Plus the dinosaur scientists hiding on the moon must think we look cool this way[/spoiler:lit] so talking about the "best" evolutionary tactics might not be the best foot to start on even when regarding ourselves.
So it might ultimately be most interesting to see what common features we have that derive from mathematical patterns and existential fascinations that have nothing to do with our environments.
