Deep Space Evolution: Clans

Chapter 112 The Price of Uprightness

From the perspective of human evolution, walking upright is a "decisive step" in the transition from apes to humans.

Walking upright allowed the ancient ape's front and rear limbs to divide labor. After long-term training and evolution, the forelimbs were engaged in more and more activities. They could make various tools and their movements became more and more precise, thus promoting the development of the human brain.

But this "meaningful step" also cost people a huge price.

Intervertebral disc herniation is a "patent" for humans.

Because almost all vertebrate animals in nature are different from humans in that they do not walk upright.

Most of the vertebrate animals walk on all fours or swim in the sea, and their spines do not need to withstand too much pressure from the body.

It is basically the limbs that bear the pressure.

After humans liberated their hands and stood up from the ground, their spine changed accordingly, evolving into four physiological curvatures of the neck, chest, waist, and sacral. Viewed from the side, the spine is more like an "S" shape.

The superposition of the vertebral bodies forms the static bone structure system of the spine, which bears 80% of the bearing capacity of the spine.

At the same time, in order to adapt to load-bearing, the vertebral body gradually increases from top to bottom.

In addition to sleeping in bed, humans spend about 60.00% of their time in an upright position every day.

At this time, the vertebrae of the spine are bearing the weight of the human body above the plane where they are located.

In addition, it also bears the pressure caused by labor and various sports, especially the lower lumbar spine, which bears most of the pressure.

This pressure can easily induce disc herniation.

However, disc herniation does not occur in quadrupedal creatures because the way they move allows the pressure on the disc to naturally disperse, so it does not herniate.

Animals began to live on land from amphibians, and have adapted to walking on four legs for more than [-] million years. However, humans have only been walking upright for a long time, and the evolution is not perfect enough, so there are unique lesions such as intervertebral disc herniation.

In addition, walking upright also brings unique diseases such as "hemorrhoids" and "varicose veins" to humans.

Of course there are many more problems besides these.

For example, the issue of cardiac load has been discussed before.

Another obvious problem is production.

The pelvis of vertebrate animals that walk on four legs is an extension of the spine and is elongated, playing the role of protecting the back.The legs are at right angles to the pelvis, just like the relationship between the tabletop and the corner of the table.

Very strong and durable.

But in order to better support the body and change various functions after walking upright.

Just as the human pelvis has become shorter in order to better walk upright and the pelvis has withdrawn from its role of protecting the back.

The shortened pelvis allows for sharper movements when standing.

In addition, in order to bear the pressure of the internal organs due to the center of gravity, the pelvis has evolved into a three-dimensional structure like a vessel.

Such changes are beneficial to human actions and human body structure.

The pelvis is altered to bear more pressure on humans who walk upright.

But don't forget one thing.

These pressures exist because of gravity, which is downward pressure.

The downward pressure naturally causes the female birth canal, which is already narrowed due to pelvic contraction, to further compress and narrow.

We all know that the fetus in the mother's womb is in the cephalic position during delivery.

That is, the head enters the birth canal first.

In the process of human evolution, the brains of fetuses can be said to be getting larger.

The birth canal is narrowed and the fetal head is enlarged.

This leads to the fact that before the advent of medicine, childbirth was the biggest cause of death for women.

Even with the advancement of medicine now, childbirth is still one of the major causes of death for women.

Production is a journey through hell, which is not an exaggeration.

But that's evolution.

The evolution that humans must face in order to stand up.

And now, Yuan wants to stand up.

Compared with humans, who are only more than 1 meter tall when standing upright, Yuan will become a giant creature with a height of more than ten meters when standing upright.

Although the price that Yuan needs to pay seems to be only the evolutionary quality, the evolutionary quality has indeed solved many evolutionary problems for Yuan.

But when Yuan truly stands upright, he will face more problems.

In the evolutionary simulations in the evolutionary catalog, Yuan deeply felt how difficult it was to stand up.

Sometimes Yuan also thinks that he can just continue to lie down.

But there is always a voice in my head - is this really it?Are we really going to give up on this kind of evolution?Have you really decided to lie down?

Do you really not want to see the view from standing up?

Although Yuan's evolution does not require adaptation to nature and will not be naturally selected, Yuan needs belief in evolution.

Yuan needs to understand one thing, he can evolve.

Eventually, Yuan thought of a sea creature.

Sea slug.

To be more precise, it should be said that it is one of the more special types.

A species that likes to backstroke in the sea - the Poseidon sea slug.

Of course Yuan didn't call this little thing that.

Yuan called it a multi-limbed sea slug.

Poseidon sea slugs have three to six side limbs on their sides, and many tentacles will grow on these side limbs.

Yuan doesn't want to grow tentacles, but wants to grow side limbs like the sea god sea slug.

Of course, if he is standing up, Yuan's side limbs should be called appendages.

Yuan is ready to grow another pair of limbs behind the current hind limbs.

His body is too big.

The weight that the two limbs need to bear is too much, so if you can't bear it, why not grow two more legs?

Use four legs to bear body weight.

The current forelimbs evolved into arms, and the body began to stand up from the current hind limbs. A pair of strong limbs appeared behind the hind limbs to share the body's mass.

In this way, the overall height will drop a bit, but it doesn't mean that it won't grow back.

Through the adjustment of the evolution catalog.

Yuan finally determined how he will evolve next.

Yuan's body structure is 2 meters long for the head, 11 meters long for the trunk, and 3 meters long for the tail.

The cross-sectional width of the trunk is 2 meters and the height is 0.8 meters.

The height of Yuan's legs is 1.2 meters, which are respectively 4.5 meters and 12.5 meters in the entire body.

Next, Yuan will increase the size of his body and strive to reach a length of 18 meters.

It's just that the 18 meters of added length is behind the hind limbs.

Then, Yuan will let his body grow new appendages 18 meters away from his body based on his 15-meter body shape.

In other words, when Yuan's body is lifted, all the forward mass of the hind limbs is pressed on the hind limbs, while the backward mass of the hind limbs is borne by the hind limbs and appendages.

At the same time, in order to bear the weight of a body that is at least 12 meters tall, and to increase the mass of the body after standing up in the future, the body will change its shape for the placement of internal organs, and Yuan's spinal vertebrae need to be changed.

Just like humans, Yuan needs to increase the size of his spinal vertebrae from top to bottom.

The lower the vertebrae become, the larger they become.

At the same time, the pelvis needs to change its structure and become stronger.

Because the mass of Yuan's upper body is much heavier than the mass of his lower body.

Therefore, the pelvic structure must be on the current hind limb and cannot move backward.

If you look at the pelvis as a level to distinguish the body structure, Yuan's appendages are actually used to support the tail.But how could Yuan do such a common sense thing?

The main function of Yuan's pelvic structure is just to support the upper body. Instead of calling it a pelvis, you can call it another name and call it a support structure.

As we all know, Yuan needs to take in evolutionary qualities, and he needs to take in a lot of evolutionary qualities.

And Yuan who needs to take in a lot of evolutionary qualities is bound to eat a lot.

Yuan's stomach needs to have enough space to accommodate these foods.

And if the entire digestive tract is stuffed into the upper body, the space that the stomach can accommodate in the upper body will become very limited.

In this way, if Yuan still hopes to eat enough creatures, then what he must do is increase the size of his upper body.

As volume increases, mass increases.

The lower limbs also need to evolve.

Pulled around and moved the whole body.

So is there a way to increase gastric capacity without adding too much burden to the limbs?
Yuan had the genius-like idea of ​​moving the intestines back in the digestive tract, that is, moving the intestines from the upper body to the lower body.

Anyway, after standing upright, the structure behind the "pelvis" can be regarded as the tail.

Since it is meant to balance the body, there is no harm in filling it with some intestines.

As for the upper body, due to the backward movement of the intestines, wouldn't the free space allow Yuanduo to grow several stomachs?

Yuan also thought very clearly.

He did not choose to make his stomach bigger directly, but chose to grow more stomachs.

As we all know, the stomach relies on digestive juices to digest food.

Then there is bound to be a problem when the digestive juice digests food, and that is the contact area.

A stomach, when a large amount of food enters it, there is bound to be a lot of food filling the middle area.

And with Yuan's size, if he really eats food that can fill his entire stomach at once.

Then the filling in the middle is definitely more food.

Even the digestive juices can flow into the middle of the layers of food through the penetration of liquid.

But judging from Yuan's stomach, even if the digestive juice can enter the innermost food surface, not much will remain in the end.

The food in the middle must wait until the outer food is digested before it can further come into contact with the digestive juices, so the digestion time will be lengthened.

From this careful calculation, we can conclude that the speed of food digestion is actually directly proportional to the contact area between food and digestive juices.

That is, the larger the contact area between food and digestive juices, the faster the digestion speed.

Because digestive juice can be regarded as secreted by the inner wall of the stomach.

Therefore, the contact area between food and digestive juices is directly proportional to the surface area of ​​the stomach lining.

The larger the surface area of ​​the stomach lining, the more digestive juices are secreted.

Therefore, it can be concluded that if you want to digest quickly, the surface area of ​​the inner wall of the stomach must be large.

So how to increase the surface area of ​​the stomach lining with the same volume?

Increased folds in the lining of the stomach.

Or, like Yuan, it would be more extreme and choose to grow several stomachs for digestion together.

Isn't that what genius is?
In terms of collecting evolutionary qualities, Mr. Yuan can come up with something unexpected.

And the backward movement of the intestines will also bring about a proper cleansing benefit.

That is, when excreting Yuan, you only need to raise your tail slightly.

If it were the previous plan, then Yuan would have to lift up his tail, which is several meters long.

This is not excretion, this is clearly strength training.

It's just like choosing to squat on the toilet instead of sitting on the toilet.

Purely torture yourself.

Moreover, the backward movement of the intestine can also reduce the burden on the lower limbs to a certain extent.

After all, Yuan can't be eating all the time.

When the stomach bag is empty, the quality of the upper body will naturally decrease.

At the same time, Yuan's entire intestine is quite heavy even when it is empty.

Move these intestines to the rear and let the appendages take some of the pressure.

Overall there are many benefits.

In addition to changes in limbs, bones, and digestive tract.

Yuan's skull and facial features also needed to be slightly changed.

After all, judging from the current structure of the Yuan Dynasty.

After erecting his upper body, Yuan's head was facing the sky, looking up at the stars.

The perspective of looking directly at the sky is not just on land, but even in the sea is a rather abstract way to move forward.

Yuan needed to straighten his head and look straight ahead.

Fortunately, Yuan is different from other fish in the sea. Yuan has a neck.

This eliminates the need for the Yuan Dynasty to evolve a neck.

But even without additional evolution, Yuan still needs to make his neck more flexible.

At the same time, change the normal position of the neck to support the head forward.

The change of head position and perspective will inevitably require Yuan to adjust the position of his eyeballs.

At least the position of the eyeballs needs to be closer to the middle.

The distance between the eyes needs to be narrowed a bit.

At the same time, the muzzle of the Yuan needs to be prominent, so that it is more suitable for eating.

In addition, the rest of Yuan's internal organs also need to be changed.

Not only the location changes, but also a little structural change is required.

After all, the situation when lying down and standing upright are different after all.

And due to changes in body structure, the exoskeleton also needs to change a little simultaneously.

You can't keep the exoskeleton the same while growing in size, otherwise it will collapse immediately.

And these evolutions require little by little changes.

Standing up straight is by no means an overnight evolution.

Yuan had to go through quite a few changes during this period.

Fortunately, the specific evolutionary process has now been determined.

Yuan only needs to realize these things step by step according to the evolutionary plan he has set.

Yuan eventually called it the "Erect Plan."

And this journey has come to an end in Yuan's continuous thinking.

Yuan has seen the coastline through ocean resonance.

This time, Yuan finally knew what the real continent was.

The coastline stretches as far as the eye can see.

The endless land.

Yuan finally saw the land that occupied 29% of the planet's surface area.

　Let me tell you something, I am going to change the name to "Deep Space Evolution: Clans".

　　
　
(End of this chapter)