The Real Hobbits and Their Brutal Lives...

while we may not like to admit it Height plays a significant role in human culture with tallness often being viewed as a desirable physical trait and over the last several hundreds of years humans in general have been on an increasing height Trend with newborns today expected to be about 5% taller than their ancestors 100 years ago this trend wasn't always the norm though and throughout time humans have experience their Fair shares of ups and downs in the height Department a roller coaster that becomes almost surreal looking when you add in other human species and not just sapiens across the board there has been some who are quite comparable to us in height as seen in the homo erectus yet for the most part early humans were shorter than us with the hiis for example being about 30% smaller but that's nothing as around 1 million years ago or so a group of archaic humans emerged in the Eastern hemisphere that made even the habis seem like giants representing the shortest human species currently known to science homo floresiensis sometimes referred to as the real life Hobbits our knowledge on these mysterious people is fairly limited and remarkably recent as compared to most human species that we have known about for over 100 years the homo floresiensis has only appeared on scientist's radar in the last 20 and is in fact one of the only homo species to be uncovered in the 21st century the discovery was made when a joint Australian Indonesian team set out on the island of Flores looking for evidence of the the first human migration of modern humans from Asia to Australia however instead of finding evidence for this they instead came across a remarkably well preserved skeleton within the leang bua cave which was clearly human they dubbed the specimen lb1 and noted its unusual characteristics including its blatantly small build leading to its nickname the little lady of Flores and soon after this find more specimens were found in the area totaling to 15 individuals due to their frame and school researchers deduced they had not just found a new Society of people but an entirely new species of homo this naturally generated a bunch of questions which included both why were they so small and how did they come to be as the island that they inhabited is bordered by the lbox straight a deep passage of water that happens to be the deepest in the entire world implying that the island was isolated even during periods of low sea levels this meant that the ancestors of floresiensis had to have reached the island by ocean dispersal with the most probable way being rafting this subsequently led to two different hypotheses with the first being that floresiensis descended from an early migration of primitive Australopithecus or habilis with the argument being that their feet was more similar to those seen in habis and Australopithecus than other hominins but conversely the second hypothesis pushes back on this and argues the floresiensis is the descendants of Javanese Homo erectus as they share similar dentistry and cranium now such a debate could be cleared up with DNA however every extraction thus far has ended in Failure so for now the mystery remains what there is no arguing about though is the remarkable smallness of these humans in the beginning researchers actually thought that the small frame of lb1 was an exception not the rule perhaps the result of a physical condition but as more specimans were found it became evident that they were simply Hobbits or as close to them as you can get as to date the tallest known specimen is only a mere 1. 09 M tall or 3' 7 in while the holotype is even shorter having stood at around 3' 6 in or 1. 06 M at this height floresiensis would be considered well within the range of dwarfism in modern humans and was roughly 40% smaller than the average human born in 1996 additionally floresiensis is even smaller than the shortest groups of modern humans today a title that is usually given to the maanga mauti simong or andamanese people all of whom fall between 1.

37 and 1. 5 M or 4' 6 and 4' 11 ft on average and as such The Limited height of homo floresiensis quickly led to them being dubbed Hobbits after the fictionalized race popularized by JRR tolken however what's ironic is that while these real life humans were actually smaller than the hobbits portrayed in the movies they were essentially identical to the average height of Hobbits in the books making the nickname extremely fitting but it gets even more coincidental as their feet were also quite hobbit-like with them having been unusually large and flat when compared to the rest of their bodies however where they differed was that opposed to Hobbit toes which in the movies appear to be thick theirs were long yet very thin and this combined with the flatness and largess of their feet likely led to them needing to bend their knees more than we do when walking leading to a high stepping gate and therefore slower walking speed and interestingly enough the legs were also more abst than even our own despite their short size but this did not help them much in the weight Department as overall they were still quite grass silent built with an estimated average weight of only 25 kilos or 55 lb making them lighter than a border collie and 1/4 the weight of your typical American male such a small and light build obviously made paleontologist wonder why why were they so small and the answer seems to have been tied to Flores itself which was not the biggest island you could find yourself on being about roughly half the size of Vancouver Island this meant that resources were not especially abundant and thus caused insular dwarfism where the absence of sufficient resources led to an evolutionary pressure of decreasing body sizes and one group of researchers believe that they have actually deduced the exact resource or lack of that led to the florianus dwarfism iodine specifically they mentioned how some of their odd features are key characteristics seen in congenital iodine deficiency such as small bodies reduced brain size large fossa relatively thick limbs double rooted premolar and unusual wrists although I will say not everyone agrees with this take and some argue that their fossa was not enlarged or different from our own and besides being much shorter and lighter than modern humans the fues Enis was quite anatomically different as well so while from a distance you like could not notice anything unusual besides their stature up close there would be no misunderstanding that these were not Homo sapiens as an addition to their unusual feet and legs they also had distinctive clavicles and shoulder girdles that were proportionally short while the humoral head and their elbow joints were Twisted at a lesser angle than our own which paired with a clavicle shape likely led to them being in a permanently shrugging or slightly hunched forward position that along with their size would have given them a pretty unusual appearance f furthermore they differed from us that they had protruding brow ridges no prominent chin and primitive canines yet Advanced mullers but despite these striking contrasts there were some similarities between us and them with one of the most important ones being that the fues ences had brains very similar in shape to our own with the only markable difference having been the size and actually floresan individuals had some of the smallest brains of any know human species with the volume being just 380 cm cubed less than half the size of the erectus brain and more than three times smaller than modern human brains yet because their bodies were so small the implications of their small brains were not as severe as you may think as their brain to body mass ratio was still within the range of homoerectus furthermore their broadman area 10 which is tied to cognition was about the same size as ours implying that their brains likely did not affect mental capacity and sure enough fluores Enis remains are associated with complex behaviors such as the control of fire butchering of animals and the manufacturing of stone tools which actually bore many similarities to the stone tools created by nearby Homo Sapien populations and their advanced technology proved to be extremely important as the island of florus during the pla scene was something of a real life Lost World being home to Giant Exotic Life wherein some of the biggest creatures and predators around were animals we typically don't imagine as being nightmarish but here on Flores they went ins gigantism resulting in creatures that are usually smaller becoming absolutely massive one such animal that experienced this was a stor from Hell leptoptilos robustus the genus is actually still around and are described as very large tropical stores but the robustness is thankfully long gone as this bad-tempered stor was way more massive than its living relatives having stood at 180 cm or 5'1 in while its wingspan topped 3. 6 5 m or 12 ft equal to the wingspan of the largest birds today while it retained the classic slender body scene in STS its bones were much heavier and thicker than normally seen leading paleontologists to assume that a rarely flu and probably spent most of its days stalking the land instead using its height and Powerful eyes to pinpoint prey which seems were typically consisted of rats and reptiles but sadly for our distant cousins there is a fair chance they were not spared by the STS because as juveniles homo floresiensis would have been well within the prey range being similar in weight to larger rats and even as adults it's possible that a large stor could take them out and remarkably this stor wasn't the only bird floresiensis had to watch out for as it also lived with a large type of vulture the Trion oips like the stor the genus of vulture is still around but the species found on Flores is not for now that species remains unnamed and its true size is a mystery but it's been deduced that at the very least it was larger than homo floresiensis at least when it came to Dimensions now this may sound worse than a giant stor but given that its living relatives are predominantly scavengers it's likely that this vulture was the same that being said its closest living relative the white-headed vulture has been observed hunting when the occasion presents itself sometimes even killing animals up to 10 lb or 4.

5 kilos so if we assume that the Flores vulture was at least double its size that would again put Juvenile and subadult floranes within killing range no bueno although being hunted was likely not their biggest problem with these birds but rather competition they caused over prey and hunted herbivore specimens do in fact show that floresiensis rarely made Scavenging cut marks suggesting intense and frequent conflicts with other carnivores over Kon but neither bird was the true obstacle or threat on these islands with that crown going to an animal very much still around on this island today vinus kimodo enus better known as the kimoto dragon these large monitor lizards which are the current biggest lizards on Earth are endemic to a few Indonesian Islands including Flores were like now terrorized the inhabitants during the PTO scene they were without a doubt the largest terrestrial Predators around with known specimens reaching up to 3 m or 10 ft and sometimes weighing up to 90 kilos or 200 PBS and they aren't just big as they possess an array of features that make them utterly terrifying likely a reason why they heavily inspired the movie King Kong for starters each kodo Drgon possesses a jaw filled with zedon teeth which is defined as teeth which are flattened recurved and serrated similar to the dentition scene in many theropod dinosaurs in other words very very sharp and the kimoto dragon can be very liberal with how viciously they use these teeth as lost ones are quickly replaced every 40 days so don't expect them to go easy on prey in live observations of their hunting verify a very brutal killing method as they often dispatch prey by causing catastrophic lacerations and tearing large chunks of Flesh off of an animal with the throat often being a prime target during ambushes and while they are known to kill prey within seconds many times the prey is often consumed while alive so that's all to say that any fluores Enis caught by this lizard were in for a very terrible time and to make matters worse even if something is attacked and escapes they're not out of the woods yet as kimoto Drgon saliva is venomous for a long time it was believed that the odd behavior displayed by prey after being bitten was the result of large amounts of bacteria within the mouth causing infection but now it's understood that the kimodo dragon does indeed have venom which have been recorded to prevent blood clotting lower blood pressure induce hypothermia and even cause muscle paralysis leading to shock and loss of consciousness there is also the problem that despite being solitary in general kimodo dragons are known to gather around struggling or Fallen prey leading to an animal often being feasted on by multiple individuals and thus making Escape that much more impossible and thanks to their teeth and Venom prey many times larger than humans let alone the flues ences are targeted such as the water buffalo and stons back in the day with both of them sometimes being over one ton to make matters worse based on witness huntings we also know that remarkably small Koto dragons sometimes only being 30 lb or 13 kilos can take down prey much larger than floresan is 2 painting a very Grim picture for our distant relatives additionally even modern humans who are larger more powerful and technologically advanced are known to be attacked from time to time and over a 30-year plus period 24 attacks were reported with a fatality rate of 20% Which just to put that into perspective is greater than The lethality of shark attacks and not that they need it but kimodo are also protected by rugged skin which is reinforced by armored scales that contain little Bones called osteoderms which when numerous and next to each other create a sort of biological chain mail so even with weapons floresiensis would have had an extremely hard time dealing with this apex predator and scientists do think that these real life dragons dominated the Inland parts of Flores and were a significant contributor to the mortality for the fluores Anis population while also making Scavenging very difficult especially when considering the fact the kodo have amazing tracking capabilities being able to detect carryon up to 6 M or 9. 5 km away and they weren't the only reptilian predators to watch out for as back in those days Flores was home to a fair amount of saltwater crocodiles as well nice these large bees tended to stick to Coastal environments including mangrove swamps making any Ventures there quite questionable because as you likely know saltwater crocs are pretty gnarly being the largest reptiles on Earth at the moment sometimes exceeding one ton in weight and possessing one of the strongest bites period that clocks in at around 16,400 Newtons you know just nearly 27 times more powerful than the bite of a wolf and because of their presence the homo floresiensis perhaps did not eat as much Marine prey as you would expect an island dwelling human to do and thanks to their size this was yet another apex predator which did not make things easy for them now this being said because homo floresan lived in groups and had a variety of weapons at their disposal the tyranny of the reptiles may not have been as dominant as expected and our distant cousins were ultimately still very efficient Hunters likely praying on the smaller inhabitants of Flores with rats and other rodents in particular having seemingly been a primary source for calories as multiple species were widespread across the island and diverse in size with the two largest having been the papagus and the now extinct spis both of them were giant from a normal rat's point of view and as adults they were likely comparable to the size of a rabbit in the grand scheme of things and because in general there weren't many predators in Flores these rodents were probably found pretty much everywhere at all times and while these smaller creatures were a huge part of homofloriensis diet these Hobbits also made good on the saying it's not the size of the dog in the the fight but rather the size of the fight in the dog as fossil evidence shows that despite being tiny they still managed to take down the biggest animal in the island the stegodon this is an extinct genus of probo cidian that is closely related to elephants and superficially looks a lot like them and on Flores they're one of the Unlucky mammals to experience dwarfism and thus leading to the species stegodon florenes but they were no doubt still big especially when compared to the other animals on the island with the largest adults weighing around 1. 7 tons and measuring 6.

2 ft or 190 cm at the shoulders however over time they did end up getting smaller and smaller and by the late Pline most adults would have been about 570 kilos or 1,260 lb in weight it's likely that homo florensis hunted the stegodon throughout this entire time though it has been suggested that they only really went after juveniles using points perforators blades and microblades to kill and butcher these tusked mammals meanwhile adults were likely off the menu for a good chunk of predators but when they died they played a huge role in the ecosystem providing carryon for numerous carnivores and also facilitating intense conflicts between them making for an interesting spectacle to say the least during Hunt's for stegodon or looking for food in general the homo floresiensis would have had to watch out for the island smaller yet still deadly predators such as a variety of snakes which included highly venomous ones like the Javin spitting cobra who as its name suggests can spit venom from a distance other venomous snakes present consist of Russell's Viper the white lipped pit viper and if they wanted to take a swim the blue lip sea crate and to add fuel to the fire there would have been large non-venomous snakes slithering around as well since Flores is known to Harbor the longest snake in the world the reticulated python this is a lesser known fact about florid as pythons are not super common there but they do indeed exist and are known to reach exceptional sizes with one found in a cave measuring 20 ft or 6.