Yes, and that’s an argument for design. It’s the spontaneous appearance of something more complex than mitosis I find surprising on some level. Of course, we think it’s normal because it’s how we are, but it’s an odd bit of complexity to have appeared at all. So we’re just lucky I guess.
A mutation does not make anything more complex.
I think piece you are missing is the big numbers involved. Generally these changes are taking place over a great deal of time and a great deal of generations and you are only seeing the end result which makes it look like it came from nowhere. The numbers are so big that you can have radical looking changes.
It’s not a perfect analogy but being amazed there is a clam that mimics a fish is like being amazed there is a strip mall in a spot that was an empty field 20 years ago. Over time it changed and you are just seeing the end product today.
Uh, certainly sounded like you were pointing at the diversity of life as a reason to question one’s “faith” in evolution.
Except that, as others have noted, one does not have “faith” in evolution, or believe that it has occurred/is occurring only because some respected figure tells us so. The evidence supports it in myriad ways, despite the fact that Weird Things Exist* and that we cannot see evolution occurring in the flesh right now, this very second.
*How this is a reason to question evolution in favor of a Supreme Being mystifies me. What Creator would have produced fire ants? Or an opossum, that supremely successful, hideous and bad-tempered marsupial? Was the Big Fella on cosmic PCP when he came up with that one??
I think it’s just that most people don’t doubt evolution just because some species are amazing; I don’t expect evolution to only churn out mundanities.
What is it about that development that seems so unlikely? It doesn’t seem that odd to me - it’s no more complex than a fault in copying the genetic code ending up with a human who has an extra chromosome or two, and that happens fairly often.
Not necessarily something more complex. It’s possible that some aspects of meiosis already existed in a proto-eukaryote(s). According to the linked article, the only real innovation in meiosis is the formation of synapses between homologous chromosomes. This really only requires a specialized cohesin molecule (to glue chromosomes together) and recombination between homologous chromosomes (as opposed to sister chromatids). The rest is really not so different from mitosis (inhibition of replication would simply be an inhibition of origin of replication firings). Also according to this article the selective advantage is efficient and accurate repair of DNA damage that was probably rampant in early single-celled organisms.
But even if it was ‘more complex’, why the need for ‘design’? There were almost 2 billion years to go from prokaryotic to eukaryotic and 0.5-1 billion years to get to sexual reproduction. I’d say it was doable (obviously, because here we are).
Dio, you really need to learn the words: “I am making a wild guess…” and put them before most of what you say.
Because you obviously do not know that David Attenborough* already did the narration for both series.* They replaced his with Weaver & Winfrey for the US.
What is weird is that camouflage and other defensive evolutionary traits are buttressing the science. The premise is flawed. Evolution favors the characteristic that allows a species to survive. Camouflage is just one of those.
That worm species that, when a snail eats its eggs, creates an egg sac in the snail that migrates to the snail’s eye stem, creating a pulsing psychedelic “here I am” cone, and alters the snail’s behaviour to make it stay on top of the branch rather than in the shadows, which means it’s more likely to be eaten by a bird - which ingestion leads to the hatching of the worms in the bird, which worms then lay eggs, that get defecated by the bird onto the trees and bushes, which eggs then get eaten by snails…
YOU HAVE GOT TO BE TAKING THE PISS.
Sleep fucks with my understanding of evolution.
It’s inherently dangerous (vulnerability-wise) and has an opportunity cost (less time to forage, frolic, or fornicate).
But for most species, it’s absolutely necessary.
Yet there are variations in sleep needs among members of the same species. Creatures that need 1 hour less sleep (than their species’ average) per day should be able to outcompete those who need 1 hour more sleep per day. Wash rinse and repeat.
Extended periods of rest are one thing. But zonking out is something completely different. Even light sleepers face a evolutionary pressuring increased risk of harm.
The timing also baffles me. For the most part, sleep schedules are tied to a 24 hour clock. That’s understandable from a light/darkenss perspective—for diurnal animals, light is the best time to eat, darkness for rest. But it seems to be such an Earth-centric requirement. If Earthtwin had a 40-hour day, would most animals there be awake/asleep for similar proportions?
Baffling, I tell you!
You may hear people matter-of-factly say why we sleep, but in truth it’s still debatable. There is evidence to support that it does provide useful function and is not just a matter of “rest”. For example, a great deal of neural activity takes place during sleep and seems to be associated with the culling of non-useful memories and the strengthening of useful ones.
If you’re going to activate random bits of brain you may want to be physically immobile…
Add to this that sleep often keeps organisms out of danger:
An organism that evolves to be effective in daylight might just walk itself into danger at night. Whereas being attacked while sleeping…doesn’t seem a common way to go, prior to the activities of homo sapiens.
Things like chickens being attacked at night by wolves…was rare in nature because the junglefowl that chickens were (probably) bred from could reach roosting areas at night.
Sleep is also incredibly useful for energy conservation during periods of time when you can’t do much that’s productive, which used to be the case for almost any activity in the hours of darkness, which are colder too. After all, lots of animals hibernate through entire seasons. These days it might be useful to sleep less, but that’s a very recent development.
NOVA had a cool special on dreams. The big purpose of sleep is to allow your mind to problem solve and to build memories.
Faith in evolution has even been covered by the Family Circus
Why do I doubt evolution?
Cuz it’s hard to survice in the wild as a naked ape and yet humans as a group are so damned stupid. Something as stupid and successful as we can only be explained by divine intervention.
Some of the crazier shit nature has come up with, like the aforementioned insane reproductive strategies (ant-that’s-eaten-by-a-rabbit-and-so-and-so), or a Kiwi birds 1lb egg (a kiwi weighs about 5 lbs) or the hackjob of a grasshoppers brain-to-wing wiring, or the human knee’s vulnerability, I count as evidence FOR evolution, not against. I mean, how terrible of an engineer would God have to be to come up with that crap?
And octopuses are SMART. Scary smart. They don’t mimic by instinct, they observe their surroundings and reason out how to blend in. They’re the ninja of the seas.
The best book on evolution I’ve ever read is “The Song of the Dodo” by David Quammen. It covers most, if not all of your issues maybe in a very straightforward and entertaining way. By which to say, its written by a science fan, not a scientist, for people who are science fans, not scientists.
But I’ll take a shot, anyway. Because ‘Life on Earth’ was my favorite show as a kid.
Basically, the idea of evolution as a slow, steady process of general improvement is, essentially, wrong. Well, not wrong exactly, but vastly incomplete.
This is in narrative form, so it’s going to be long. (I had no idea HOW long until after I wrote it. Ah, well)
How to Evolve: A story in Three Parts
Book One: Microsoft (or, “We’re Island Critters, BITCH!”)
Genes for legs 1/4" longer might help you survive if you’re a running type of critter. And if you thrive, you’re likely to have more mates, and more offspring, because the chicks dig a winner. So those genetics are likely to continue, well and good.
But your well-hung genes are going to mix with a vast crowd of less-well endowed ones. Your direct descendants may or may not share your gift. You’ve stacked the deck a bit in your descendants favor, at best. In a wide-open mating environment, with a lot of cross-breeding, your gift is likely to be lost in the genetic sea, as your descendants mingle with their less gifted kin.
You asked about the non-mutants, who are ‘doing ok.’ Well, as long as the non-mutants ARE doing ok, the best you can hope for is that kind of slow, slow refinement.
But what if they’re NOT doing ok? Say you’re one of the descendants of the long-legged critter earlier, and you and your cousin and your critter-boyfriend are blown onto an island by a freak storm while fishing.
There’s no others of your kind there, and nature takes it’s course. Repeatedly. Due to the magic of incest, 40% of the first generation are morons, even by critter standards. They don’t matter much, though, as no one wants to sleep with them. The genetic combination that causes that problem is rapidly bred out, because the population base is small. Likewise, 80% of the population has long legs, and a lucky 20% has VERY long legs. In such a small population, the VERY long legged critters extra offspring have a huge influence.
Fast forward 50 generations. The island now has a large population of VERY long legged critters, with the occasional throwback to a long-legged critter. These long legs and a new sandbar lets your descendants wander back onto the mainland. They’re no longer just critters with slightly longer legs. Now they’re ISLAND CRITTERS, (bitch!) and the regular critters just can’t compete with them successfully.
Maybe they replace the regular critters, maybe not. But either way, the game has changed. Whatever critters do survive will have a LOT of island critter genes, and longer legs on the whole are almost assured.
This type of thing is not going to happen to every critter, of course. But given a lot of critters, and a lot of time, stories like this WILL happen. People do win the lottery, after all.
Ok, the other two are both shorter, I promise.
Book Two: Rudolph. (Or, “I’ll look down on them and say . . . NO.”)
But maybe you don’t want to leave home to help your species evolve? Well, there’s another option. You can hope that the universe changes in your genetic favor.
I’m sure you’ve heard of those British moths that live on white beach trees. 200 years ago, they were mostly white. Occasional freaks would be born of other colors, but they rarely lived long, as they were both conspicuous and delicious. All the other moths laughed at them, and the hot chick moths wouldn’t give them the time of day. A lucky few got laid just often enough to keep their genetics in circulation.
Then, the industrial revolution happened, and suddenly, the beach trees were all smog-covered and dirty, and the white moths stood out like white moths on a black tree. So did the yellow moths and the orange moths, if they existed. But the black moths and their comic-book collections blended right in. The few remaining moth chicks made do, and thought of England.
200 years later, most moths are black. Occasional freaks are born of other colors, but they rarely live long, as they are both conspicuous and delicious. Then, the green revolution happened, and suddenly, the trees are getting lighter again.
In short: Freaks and losers are not failures of evolution. They’re heroes who never got their chance, and a buffer against environmental change. Lips that look a little like a fish are a useless waste of resources when you’re land dwelling, but come in surprisingly handy when your plain floods.
Still with me? We’ve got one more, but it’s the one science teachers always forget.
Book Three: High School Never Ends (AKA: Settling, the zoological version)
Every creature, like every high school student, fills a certain niche in it’s ecosystem.
Nerds produce homework. Bullies prey on the nerds. Slackers survive by avoiding notice. Geeks provide entertainment, cool, sexy people provide aspirations, and jocks provide glory and random beatings.
Now, lets get back to the critters from Book 1. What if, when they’d arrived on the island, there were island critters already? Unless the regular critters are MUCH better at crittering than the island critters, they’re not going to be able to supplant them.
That leaves them with the same choice faced by millions of people with liberal arts degrees: do something you’re not used to, or starve.
You can’t make it as a critter, not here. You try running down critter-prey, but the island critters gang up on you and chase you into the swamp. This is not just humiliating, but scary. As every critter knows, the swamps are full of crawlies. Crawlies are disgusting reptiles that crawl through swamps and ambush the kinds of things that live in swamps, including the occasional critter.
On the mainland, the crawlies would get you if you went near the swamps. On the island, though, there ARE no crawlies. And you’d be surprised what you can eat if you’re hungry enough.
So, we’re back to the same story of incest and inbreeding as in Book 1, except the pressures are different. The 20% with VERY long legs just get stuck more often, it’s the 20% with short legs who’s offspring survive. The same for the 15% with wider feet, who I didn’t mention earlier. Two of your offspring have Dumb Critter syndrome, which means they’re mute, have only 80% of the brainpower of a normal critter . . . and due to their smaller brains, use only 70% as much oxygen. They’d be worthless on the plains, but do very well here.
In 50 generations, the swamp is full of mute, banjo-playing critters that spend most of the time hiding under the surface, only to spring out when something edible gets close. If critters could talk, the island critters would use tales of Swamp Critters to frighten their children.
In short (yes, I am aware of the irony) the answer to the question “How the hell could anything that weird exist?” is usually, “because all the easier jobs were taken.” There’s an island in the Gulf of Mexico where there are a giant version of a snake that’s small on the mainland, and a dwarf version of a snake that’s big on the mainland. The ‘Big Snake’ niche was empty when the little snakes showed up, so they grew to fill it. When the big snakes showed up later, the ‘Big Snake’ niche was full, so they ended up in the ‘Little Snake’ niche, and shrank to fill it.
Not exactly what you asked, but it covers at least a good number of the points before I got off-topic. And after I wrote all that, I feel I kind of have to post it . . .
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Amazing what you can accomplish when you have work to avoid, isn’t it?
Also, recent studies have indicated that sleep may be useful to regulating a population’s pressure on resources. Top-end predators like lions and housecats really put pressure on prey animals, and a given population of prey animals can support more predators of they spend less time preying and more time, well, sleeping. And having more predators (even if less active) is good for several reasons, among which are insurance (in case a lot get killed) and genetic diversity.
Jesus. I would like to formally apologize for all the misapplied homonyms in that last post. Sleep deprivation and over-reliance on a spell checker are, apparently, a bad combination.
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Plus, I should have used goths as the joke in part two, not comic book geeks.
But evolution can’t be proven; it can be demonstrated. I hate those commercials where some such medicine has been “clinically proven.” No it hasn’t. It’s been “clinically demonstrated.”
And I have no beef with using “faith” because unless one becomes an expert in one’s field, you can only have faith (trust) that all of the scientists are correct. I’m not an expert in Newtonian physics, but I have faith that the engineers that built the airplane I’m on applied the physics correctly.
Oh, I have no beef with natural selection.
Clearly wings didn’t develop as a “leap of faith” to become something good for flying. Contrary to what is usually stated, “half a wing isn’t good for anything” must be an incorrect statement id evolution makes ant sense – a mutant with something we would call a “partial wing” must have some advantage over its non-mutant relatives, or the mutation wouldn’t persist.
One theory that’s come out recently is that the proto-wing didn’t develop to help the creature fly, but to help keep it down against its tendency to glide so that it could run fast and climb trees.