And then people say competition is what makes society go around.

Nah, cooperation is the core of everything we do, and we should embrace it as much as possible.

More broadly, we developed more slow twitch muscles that granted us greater fine motor skills, and subsequently the ability to create and use tools. Other apes retained their fast twitch muscles, so their ability to use tools is limited, but pound-for-pound they're FAR stronger than humans.

I agree. I don’t know that I’d rank it quite as high as some other factors if we’re trying to find some function for “causal elements for human ecological success” or something like that, but there’s no doubt it was selected for and the degree to which we are good at it is a good indicator of its importance. Good call.

That’s a fantastic question!

There’s archeological evidence that modern humans were far more mobile than we have generally assumed (see eg David Graeber), but we’re talking 10-20k years ago there, which is very recent in evolutionary time where we’d be talking about physical adaptations.

SJ Gould, who was the origin of the spandrel idea, warned frequently against telling “just so” stories to try to reverse engineer the processes of selection that led to this or that feature. However, I do think that the hominid physique enabled multiple things. It has been observed that you won’t ever see a spider or octopus or dolphin moving fire from one place to another. That’s something that bipeds are able to do, and fire is one of the things we think was a key development. It’s the same with generalized tool use. So we can see there may have been multiple selection pressures leading towards bipedalism.

If distance running were truly a spandrel, we’d have to say that it was a consequence of these selective pressures giving rise to the body plan, but wasn’t itself selected for. I’d be more conservative on that one, and hazard a guess that distance running (or efficiency in long distance movement) was also a selective pressure. I just don’t think the evidence is there to say that it was the dominant one at that time.

That’s a fascinating question. I am not sure about animal research on dreaming, but Thomas Metzinger is an experimental philosopher (for want of a better term) who studies the basis of the concept of the self as a coherent entity, and his work includes extensive research on phenomena like lucid dreaming, phantom limbs, and out of body experiences. I’m not talking about anything paranormal - there’s conditions under which people’s experience of perception and self become separated from our ordinary experience of “my self is sitting behind my eyeballs.” He collaborates closely with experimental psychologists and neuroscientists, so between his work and references you might be able to see if there’s a correlation.

It isn't polite to brag, sweetie.

And throwing shit very well

Snail takes a 1.3 days to crawl a mile, 280 miles a year. With a huge amount of wealth you can just move to the otherside of the country or ocean every 6 or 7 years.

I can't permanently trap it, so I can put it in a safe that opens after like 1000 years?

Heck, slings were around even before bow and arrows and can definitely be considered long range

They recently discovered evidence that the atlatl was used 30,000 years ago.

I believe certain breeds of dogs and horses can keep up with us, but only because we bred them to.

To follow an animal often required tracking it when it ran out of sight. Our sense of smell stinks, so we looked for clues on where it went. That's smart

That, plus we are good at throwing things and we sweat. Which means we have range and we can cool off while still being active.