Evolution - Reality and Misconceptions

Evolution - Reality and Misconceptions

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Eric Mc

Original Poster:

121,764 posts

264 months

Wednesday 15th August 2018
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Thought I'd start a thread here for those who want to discuss how evolution works i.e. what changes to an organism are due to biological evolution ( i.e. genetics) or other, sociological, factors.

There was a strand developing on this in the "Trump" thread in the news section which is really not appropriate in that forum.

Simpo Two

85,147 posts

264 months

Wednesday 15th August 2018
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For 99.999% of time evolution has been the result of random mutations which are then selected, or otherwise, by 'survival of the fittest'. In other words, if a mutation confers an advantage, no matter how small, you are more likely to live, breed, and pass that advantage on.

Society now allows, indeed encourages, organisms called people to live and breed when in earlier times they would not have done so. That is contrary to evolution as nature intended it. To be blunt, we now pay stupid and lazy people to breed, and keep those with genetic diseases alive to breed and pass them on. We are changing the very process that got us to the point where we can change it.

randlemarcus

13,507 posts

230 months

Wednesday 15th August 2018
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And a good evening to those followers of Galton. Remember, Thanos did nothing wrong smile

gothatway

5,783 posts

169 months

Wednesday 15th August 2018
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Alpacas usually give birth between mid-morning and mid-afternoon (in contrast to sheep for example which seem to choose to give birth in the small hours just after you've given up watching them and gone off to bed). The theory is that alpacas have evolved to do this because in their native Andes it gets very hot during the day and very cold at night, so the babies (crias) get best benefit from the heat and a better chance of surviving both the cold and night-time predators. As an aside, if a cria is not up and running around within a couple of hours, it's not a good sign.

My own experience, of 50 or more births, is that 90% or more do indeed make their appearance between say 11 a.m. and 3 p.m..

This seems credible to me as an example of evolution, if there is a gene determining when the mother gives birth.

However, a breeder once said to me that this cannot be the case as the species has now been in temperate climates for a few generations. I would expect it to take many many generations for the tendency to disappear. Which one of us was correct ?

Halb

53,012 posts

182 months

Wednesday 15th August 2018
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gothatway said:
However, a breeder once said to me that this cannot be the case as the species has now been in temperate climates for a few generations. I would expect it to take many many generations for the tendency to disappear. Which one of us was correct ?
How long is a generation? Have you seen that experiment with (cannnot recall of foxes or minks or similar) in russia where they breed a wild animal into a domestic one within a few generations? THey got all bushy tails and other things that humans find appealing. It took barely any time at all since generations of the animal are fairly short.

4x4Tyke

6,506 posts

131 months

Wednesday 15th August 2018
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Simpo Two said:
For 99.999% of time evolution has been the result of random mutations which are then selected, or otherwise, by 'survival of the fittest'. In other words, if a mutation confers an advantage, no matter how small, you are more likely to live, breed, and pass that advantage on.

Society now allows, indeed encourages, organisms called people to live and breed when in earlier times they would not have done so. That is contrary to evolution as nature intended it. To be blunt, we now pay stupid and lazy people to breed, and keep those with genetic diseases alive to breed and pass them on. We are changing the very process that got us to the point where we can change it.
The important aspect of fitness you are missing is suitability to the current environment, for example the different finches suiting the different seeds that make up the available food. Some 'disadvantages' might offer advantages in other regards, a male Peacock's plumage for example is a burden, but confers a sexual selection advantage. In a different place or time or predators the reverse could be true.

Your second paragraph owes more to eugeninces than natural selection, because you are ignoring the environmental aspect. Stephen Hawking had a genetic disease, a disadvantage in your book However his extremely high intellect suited the modern world and provided him with sufficient sexual selection advantage to have three children. Alan Turing on the other hand, likely equally brilliant was unsuited to the environment of his time, today his survival and ability to reproduce could easily be very different using a surrogate or as sperm donor. Your view also ignores that evolution tends toward the mean, with that mean being governed by the environment constraints.


4x4Tyke

6,506 posts

131 months

Wednesday 15th August 2018
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gothatway said:
However, a breeder once said to me that this cannot be the case as the species has now been in temperate climates for a few generations. I would expect it to take many many generations for the tendency to disappear. Which one of us was correct ?
Probably you. The environment needs to impose some selective pressure against that trait. The number of generations necessary would be governed by the strength of that pressure and I can't see much in the scenario you describe, if anything the availability of human assistance might reinforce it. The breeder would need to breed more young from those birthing outside those hours to override the mean of the population.

That tendency may also be gene linked with something that is being selected, for example in persian cats, their flat faces are linked to mental impairment compared to other breeds of cat, that impairment makes them more suitable as lapcats for people.

The Sheep is perhaps more interest, we've breed them for a long time, so there must be some advantage to night births that overrides the benefit of human assistance, it may or may not be gene linked.




gothatway

5,783 posts

169 months

Wednesday 15th August 2018
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Halb said:
gothatway said:
However, a breeder once said to me that this cannot be the case as the species has now been in temperate climates for a few generations. I would expect it to take many many generations for the tendency to disappear. Which one of us was correct ?
How long is a generation? Have you seen that experiment with (cannnot recall of foxes or minks or similar) in russia where they breed a wild animal into a domestic one within a few generations? THey got all bushy tails and other things that humans find appealing. It took barely any time at all since generations of the animal are fairly short.
Does the length of a generation matter, rather than the number ? In Europe/US/Australia we typically start breeding them at 3 years old and they will usually have one cria per year until 8-12 years old. In South America they probably start at 2, but their lifespan is probably shorter. Natural selection is presumably compromised because humans govern the animals' matings, selecting pairings for particular traits (e.g. fleece quality rather than the time at which they give birth) and generally preventing unplanned matings.

4x4Tyke

6,506 posts

131 months

Wednesday 15th August 2018
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Halb said:
gothatway said:
However, a breeder once said to me that this cannot be the case as the species has now been in temperate climates for a few generations. I would expect it to take many many generations for the tendency to disappear. Which one of us was correct ?
How long is a generation? Have you seen that experiment with (cannnot recall of foxes or minks or similar) in russia where they breed a wild animal into a domestic one within a few generations? THey got all bushy tails and other things that humans find appealing. It took barely any time at all since generations of the animal are fairly short.
That is a good example of linked genetic traits, selection for less feral animals is what gives them floppy ears and fluffy tails.

That does raise an interesting point, do we find them more attractive that way because generations of human evolution tied with dogs as domesticated wolves. Have people been selected to find floppy ears more attractive, because our ancestors that found that found floppy ears more attractive, paired more successfully with those tamer dogs than the people that prefered more pointy ears that were less tame. I have to say, yes I think so.


CrutyRammers

13,735 posts

197 months

Wednesday 15th August 2018
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Simpo Two said:
For 99.999% of time evolution has been the result of random mutations which are then selected, or otherwise, by 'survival of the fittest'. In other words, if a mutation confers an advantage, no matter how small, you are more likely to live, breed, and pass that advantage on.

Society now allows, indeed encourages, organisms called people to live and breed when in earlier times they would not have done so. That is contrary to evolution as nature intended it. To be blunt, we now pay stupid and lazy people to breed, and keep those with genetic diseases alive to breed and pass them on. We are changing the very process that got us to the point where we can change it.
"Nature" does not "intend" anything.

NoVetec

9,967 posts

172 months

Friday 17th August 2018
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I've been thinking recently about the wonder of adaptations that take minutes - mainly our eyes adjusting to the dark. Presumably this has an evolutionary basis measured in hundreds of millions of years? Something that our greater mammalian ancestors started to do rather than our primate cousins?

4x4Tyke

6,506 posts

131 months

Friday 17th August 2018
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NoVetec said:
I've been thinking recently about the wonder of adaptations that take minutes - mainly our eyes adjusting to the dark. Presumably this has an evolutionary basis measured in hundreds of millions of years? Something that our greater mammalian ancestors started to do rather than our primate cousins?
Just to be clear, adjusting to light levels is not evolution itself, but that capability is the result of evolution of our eye providing an iris and lens manipulated by muscles. Species have different combination of rods and cones. Rods provide fine grained black and white perception and work well at low light levels, cones provide colour perception but needs lots of light. Cones are more specialised that rods and they are both highly specialised nerves. Light sensitivity is found in some bacteria, it basically goes back to the earliest life, eyes have evolved many different ways in a vast number of stages that are not fully understood. Take insect eyes seemingly made up of tens and hundreds of separate eyes, they are actually much simpler and closer to our retina. They have no eyeballs or lens like mammals.


Edited by 4x4Tyke on Friday 17th August 21:30

Kccv23highliftcam

1,783 posts

74 months

Friday 17th August 2018
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CrutyRammers said:
Simpo Two said:
For 99.999% of time evolution has been the result of random mutations which are then selected, or otherwise, by 'survival of the fittest'. In other words, if a mutation confers an advantage, no matter how small, you are more likely to live, breed, and pass that advantage on.

Society now allows, indeed encourages, organisms called people to live and breed when in earlier times they would not have done so. That is contrary to evolution as nature intended it. To be blunt, we now pay stupid and lazy people to breed, and keep those with genetic diseases alive to breed and pass them on. We are changing the very process that got us to the point where we can change it.
"Nature" does not "intend" anything.
Qualify your statement, or else the thread just goes the way of all the others....

Kawasicki

13,041 posts

234 months

Friday 17th August 2018
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Kccv23highliftcam said:
CrutyRammers said:
Simpo Two said:
For 99.999% of time evolution has been the result of random mutations which are then selected, or otherwise, by 'survival of the fittest'. In other words, if a mutation confers an advantage, no matter how small, you are more likely to live, breed, and pass that advantage on.

Society now allows, indeed encourages, organisms called people to live and breed when in earlier times they would not have done so. That is contrary to evolution as nature intended it. To be blunt, we now pay stupid and lazy people to breed, and keep those with genetic diseases alive to breed and pass them on. We are changing the very process that got us to the point where we can change it.
"Nature" does not "intend" anything.
Qualify your statement, or else the thread just goes the way of all the others....
Isn’t it obvious...Nature doesn’t have intentions...Nature isn’t aware, it is not a sentient being.

Kccv23highliftcam

1,783 posts

74 months

Friday 17th August 2018
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Kawasicki said:
Kccv23highliftcam said:
CrutyRammers said:
Simpo Two said:
For 99.999% of time evolution has been the result of random mutations which are then selected, or otherwise, by 'survival of the fittest'. In other words, if a mutation confers an advantage, no matter how small, you are more likely to live, breed, and pass that advantage on.

Society now allows, indeed encourages, organisms called people to live and breed when in earlier times they would not have done so. That is contrary to evolution as nature intended it. To be blunt, we now pay stupid and lazy people to breed, and keep those with genetic diseases alive to breed and pass them on. We are changing the very process that got us to the point where we can change it.
"Nature" does not "intend" anything.
Qualify your statement, or else the thread just goes the way of all the others....
Isn’t it obvious...Nature doesn’t have intentions...Nature isn’t aware, it is not a sentient being.
simple isn't it.

James_B

12,642 posts

256 months

Saturday 18th August 2018
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Kccv23highliftcam said:
Qualify your statement, or else the thread just goes the way of all the others....
I’d agree with the statement. There is no “intent” with evolution, or nature, no teleology, just the result of mutations and selection.

And this I think is one of the biggest misconceptions about evolution, that it was working along a path, with intent, and the aim of producing us.

Alongside that is the linked misconception that we are in some way at the top of the evolutionary tree, as opposed to just one twig amongst many at the end of a vastly branched and intertwined tree.

Moonhawk

10,730 posts

218 months

Saturday 18th August 2018
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Simpo Two said:
Society now allows, indeed encourages, organisms called people to live and breed when in earlier times they would not have done so.
And vice versa. Pretty much every organism on the planet begins to breed as soon as they reach sexual maturity - however most humans have put societal rules in place to delay this into adult hood.

This can also have an effect since the probability of introducing birth defects increases with age (slowly at first, but accelerates rapidly in the early 30s).

Simpo Two said:
That is contrary to evolution as nature intended it. To be blunt, we now pay stupid and lazy people to breed, and keep those with genetic diseases alive to breed and pass them on. We are changing the very process that got us to the point where we can change it.
Evolution has no direction or intent. The only criteria is that the organism breeds and passes on genetic information to the next generation. Over time, evolution will tend to produce organisms that are better suited to their environment. This is not a conscious intent however, it's just an emergent result of the mutation/selection process. Better suited organisms will be more likely to breed and therefore pass on their genetic information.

Arguably the people you refer to are more suited to the current environment and breed more successfully and in greater numbers.

Edited by Moonhawk on Saturday 18th August 07:19

Nimby

4,572 posts

149 months

Saturday 18th August 2018
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Halb said:
Have you seen that experiment with (cannnot recall of foxes or minks or similar) in russia ...
The famous experiment is the one for silver fox tameness.
Several clips on Youtube eg this one.

TwigtheWonderkid

43,244 posts

149 months

Sunday 19th August 2018
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Simpo Two said:
To be blunt, we now pay stupid and lazy people to breed, and keep those with genetic diseases alive to breed and pass them on. We are changing the very process that got us to the point where we can change it.
Humans have evolved to find kindness sexually attractive. A lioness couldn't give two hoots is a lion is a nice bloke, so long as he's the fittest strongest lion on offer. Humans have evolved to value other traits, which is how come I get laid. I wouldn't get a sniff of action if I had to rely of physical prowess.

We find people who care about society as a whole and who want to help people that would be left to die if they were a weak lion in a pride of lions, sexually attractive. So you could argue that the concern you raise is in fact evolution at work.

Dunno really, just a talking point.

4x4Tyke

6,506 posts

131 months

Sunday 19th August 2018
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Human beings are social species, building communities is a survival strategy that works well even for apex predators. We see it in prides of lions, packs of wolves, pods of dolphins. It seems to be the case when your competition is the same species or a different one. However that killing the off-spring of rivals still persists even in human beings. I don't have the exact figures to hand but children much more likely to die or be subject to violence from a step parent than their biological parents, especially a male step parent despite the social construct of the evil stepmother.