Surely it happened on accident that animals are heard by predators while they sleep? Because I snore a bit and people have told me such
Snoring is probably an overall detrimental trait, given that it’s primarily due to our our upright anatomical changes since it comes with poorer breathing - it’s just not been detrimental enough to outweigh the other benefits of our evolution though. Plus, our tendency as a communal species to stick together in groups likely outweighed any effect (positive or negative) in the “predators eating us in our sleep” category of natural selection.
I’m no expert, that’s just my hunch. But this is a good question IMO!
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Human smell would deter them before the snoring did. Just like how animals mark their territory, most wildlife would steer very clear of any human encampments. Don’t forget we often lit fires that give off smoke, left bodily wastes at camp perimeters, and hadn’t invented shampoo to mask our stank.
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Not really how evolution works. Snoring isn’t going to increase chances of reproduction or the survival of those offspring. We’ve already addressed that snoring wouldn’t deter predators because they’d already be avoiding human encampments due to scent.
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Snoring could be a relatively modern thing aka only in the past thousands of years. We know it was treated with thyme in Egypt. But human diets have changed a lot, we evolved wisdom teeth because of how much more chewing our foods required. We also likely maintain higher body fat levels.
- Snoring could if it warded off predators to allow you to survive and procreate
No because as I covered in point 1 scent markings would deter them from a further distance. Animals are territorial, as such they will habitually avoid areas with humans. So there would not be enough selective pressure to create any evolutionary advantage as that would require people who don’t snore dying at higher rates than those who do.
Hungry animals like humans
Wouldn’t the predators then evolve to eat snoring, unaware people?
So, human packs tended to be unusually large for predatory omnivores, with night/morning watches. Most predators would not attack a full pack of H. sapiens unless they had numbers on their side, which few animals would besides a handful of very large packs of Hyena (Both African and Eurasian). A small pack of humans that had fallen on hard times would definitely be at higher risk but snoring in a large human pack wouldn’t really be much of a risk at all. Most things that hunted us, would wait until we spread out foraging or were exploring in small enough numbers that they could overpower our numbers.
Neanderthals moved in small bands. Part of our advantage was that we tended to have bigger packs and relied on safety in numbers.
Right, so snoring probably has no actual advantage, then.
Lots of traits have no advantage or disadvantage. It’s loosely a consequence of our posture, which does have evolutionary advantages, but with a byproduct of snoring that by itself doesn’t help or hurt (besides being mildly annoying to our kith and kin).
Yes, that’s the point I was trying to lead OC to with my question.
If it didn’t scare them off then maybe. But snoring doesn’t mean unaware. My wife snores but the slightest noise and she’s awake.
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I’ve had this thought also - a snoring human kind of sounds like a large, growling animal. So maybe it is a defence mechanism to ward off potential predators. But I’d be interested in hearing an actual expert opinion
a snoring human kind of sounds like a large, growling animal
Yeah. I shared a campsite once with a stranger who snored really loudly, and my god, he legitimately sounded like a growling grizzly it was that intense.
You haven’t been mauled in your sleep by a tiger I presume?
