We should have some good dinner conversation, what with you rambling, me rambling, etc.

There are numerous reasons why walking upright was so essential to our evolution. Food-gathering, and importantly, the ability to travel long distances away from the forest, and to see from a higher vantage point. I've seen lots of shows on this.

I don't see gorillas as a dead end of evolution any more than chimpanzees, etc. In my view, they are all dead ends. Not because they couldn't evolve, but because of the dominance of humans. All major large animals exist at our whim. Survival of the fittest has no application anymore. In our species or any other large mammals.

Evolution is such a long-term process; and we are so rapidly destroying the ecology and habitat of our world and theirs, that evolution and natural selection has no realistic application any more on this planet, except for insects, etc, which mutate to avoid insecticides, etc.

If humans were wiped from this world, it would be interesting to see which species would come to dominate eventually. I'm not an expert in evolution, and I don't know when our ancestors diverged from those which evolved as Bolgani and Chimps, or when they are supposed to have diverged.

It would take so long, however. There is a species of snake, I forget where, which comes in all different colors, since it hasn't been around for the time period necessary for a species to become uniformly alike in coloration. This takes immense amounts of time.

It would be an interesting premise for a book. All humans die, and eons in the future, what would life be like. Not Planet of the Apes stuff, of course, but the primates would probably, because of hands, fingers, intelligence, etc. eventually evolve into a dominant species again.

Tarak, rambling barbarian