Evolution

[Yopaz]

It doesn't the species just dies, it's called survival of the fittest for a reason, the weakest die while the animals more suited to the environment live on and produce offspring therefore passing on its genes.


I have oversimplified it a bit but if you want more details use Google.

The weakest dies is the worst kind of view on evolution there is. Insects don't have the strength you find in most vertebrates, yet they are the rulers of the world in diversity and biomass. Counting all the ants there are more ants (in weight) than the weight of all vertebrates combined. The logic is also flawed since evolution makes the "weak" ones able to survive in various ways. It got to do with the conditions around the organism. Plants gain secondary metabolites to either make poison or look like plants that are poisonous, are they strong? No, not at all. Are they fit to survive in the selected habitat? Yes!

It seems like half the time, its not "Survival of the fittest," its "Survival of the sexiest."

this is kinda true, because what we, or any other animal think of as "sexy" is actually something usefull to there survival, usualy anyway, for example a slender and fitter girl tends to be seen as more attractive then one who may be overweight, this could be because the slender fitter girl can run for longer periods of time possably after prey or away from preditors. and ya i guess posting this in responce to what was obviosly a silly and funny post might not have been propper but i just wanted to expand upon what you said =)

Again, flawed logic. As soon as a disaster happens the slender girl is less likely to survive in a crisis because she can't survive without food for as long as the fat one. A slender girl could probably survive for 10-20 days with water. Let the fat girl (let's say this is a real whale) have water and vitamin pills and she can survive for a year because there's enough energy stored in the fat to let her survive. Remove the vitamins and she can survive for around 30-40 days. A really slender girl would survive less than 10.

Evolution is one of the most complex procedures in the world, and the original poster clearly haven't read too much about it. I haven't read nearly enough of it, and I've read 4 books mostly about it, and I've had a bit of it in my time in university.
For everyone who is interested, read The Selfish Gene. It's much better than any text book on the subject because Richard Dawkins want you to understand what he's saying, not just say what he already knows. Everything is explained so you are meant to understand it despite having no knowledge of it prior to reading it.

 

[Ben Hussong]

It seems like half the time, its not "Survival of the fittest," its "Survival of the sexiest."

For everyone who is interested, read The Selfish Gene. It's much better than any text book on the subject because Richard Dawkins want you to understand what he's saying, not just say what he already knows. Everything is explained so you are meant to understand it despite having no knowledge of it prior to reading it.

This. Anyone who is interested in Evolution, I recommend any of Dawkin's books where he's not talking about religion * he's a bit vitriolic when he's going on about religion but he's a good biologist.

 

[Loop Stricken]

I am not saying it is not a scientific fact. I never said that. I said it was only a theory and thus incomplete which is true. I never ever said in my original post it was not a fact. It is incomplete and you can't really dispute that it is complete because it isn't. What I don't agree with is when people take Evolution to be a finished work when it is not.

No science is ever complete, we'll never know everything, everything's just a theory so fuck it I'm going to live in a cave and lick slime off rocks.

 

[moretimethansense]

I said running isn't that great, which it isn't. If you add in something like spraying urine (which it could do, although I am not 100% on where a dear pisses from) to confuse or even distract the hunter then running away would be more effective.

Baby hippos being protect by there mother, yes I know all about hippos. There bulletproof to most handguns, there skin makes up a third of there wieght etc etc etc.

I think you just invaidated your own point, "just cause IS the fucking awnser, there was no plan, there was no divine hand(probably), shit mutated, what worked, worked, what didn't, died", what worked is the answer then.

I didn't assume they planed out there paths, I was saying dear 'cos compared to alot of other things it's a sitting duck. Besides colour and legging it, theres not alot going on. I meant it like other things have all these defensive measures, why couldn't the dear have one?

Thats kind of what you were doing, saying I was saying elephants and hippos eat dears? Do they even live near each other? Plus aren't both herbivores?

Yeah, I noticed the short fuse ...

That guy with the spinning cow head explained it to me, I think I get it know.

Okay, just saying that running isn't helpful does not make it true, but we're going nowhere here so I'm going to drop this particular point.

Precisly, they don't need to run, most everything else does.

... The fuck?
I'm not sure I'm reading that right so I'm going to skip it.

You mentioned several times that if one species has a usefull method of survival others should have it too, you even use the word decision at one point.
However I'm now going to explain how it is that deer are in no way a sitting duck:
1. As I've said, they can fucking run, fast.
2. They move in large groups, and warn each other when danger is nearby.
3. They breed like rabbits, thus ensuring that the species will pass on it's genes even if I were to take a Gau-8 in to the forest and go nuts, I wouldn't make a dent.
4. Apart from humans there arent any predeters that hunt deer in large numbers, and their predetorst arent all that big, they simply don't need lion seeking missiles to survive.

You claimed that deer being able to run was a crap defence because hippos and elephants can run too, the two have no bearing on each other in the slightest, in light of that I decided to make a funny.

Are you saying I have anger issues?
I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!

Thank god for spinning cow heads!

Finally, because I'm sick of trying to defend the survival practices of deer:

Deer are still around, if they had no way to survive, there wouldn't be any left, not to mention that theyare still doing great despite the fact that they have come in to cantact with humans.
Now take a look at what happened to elephants and hippos after we got to 'em, their survival methods aren't looking so good right now are they?

 

[ProtonGuy]

I just throw a moon, fire, water, leaf, or thunder stone at it and hope for the best.

 

[JochemDude]

Natural Selection, Survival of the fittest. However you want to call it, it comes down to the weak species dying and the strong surviving. The only way to survive is to adept and the act of adapting to the environment is normally considered evolution.
Very interesting how some people here are under the assumption that it's only a theory, well they are apparently the weak species, since they're not adapting to reality.

 

[fractal_butterfly]

I didn't see, unless i missed them any holes aside from the age old "its just a theory " bullshit which i addressed in one of my other posts. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/ this blog by a biologists has a lot of addressing to supposed to problems in evolution in its back catalogue throughout the years.
*edit* Heck the second post addresses a supposed issue in evolution.

The weaknesses in evolution theory are various.
For example: everyone is only debating only about the change of information in the DNA. But what about the mechanisms to read the DNA? Why do they even exist? The DNA is mainly encoded information, and it is useless without a device to decipher it.
Another point is, that the thermodynamic laws of entropy also apply to information. There might be a chance, that an accumulation of minimal genetic mutations lead to a trait, that is useful for survival. But it is also possible, that the new trait is useless (at best) or even crippling the organism (at worst). The probability for a useless mutation is significantly higher than the probability for a useful mutation. If you scramble the letters of a page in a book, you might end up with meaningful new words. In evolution theory you only keep the words, that make sense. But that means, that most of the time, the new text will just be scrapped.
Even if you happen to get a new word, it still has to be in context, or the sentence will make no sense.
This also (and especially) applies, if you let this progress work over several billion years. Information will gradually diminish, not formate and evolve.

 

[Yopaz]

The thing is Evolution is only a theory(wouldn't be called a theory otherwise) and not fully complete and of badly put across in modern society. Although the general idea of it does exist we can't really say we can from apes. I am sure we have a similar ancestor going back millions of years but then again if you go back far enough we all came from space dust.

The thing is that the word theory means that it's almost 100% confirmed to be true. The problem is that most mix up the word hypothesis with theory.

I might not be 100% right here, but the scientific process goes like this:
Idea, someone thinks of something based on observation, hunches or something like that. Then he considers the idea and how it may be worked into tests.
Hypothesis, here the idea is presented and this idea is backed up by facts, calculations and possible ways to prove that it is correct. In this process the tests are designed to prove it wrong.
Theory, this is presented when they can't prove the idea to be wrong, and the theory is valid as fact until someone manages to prove it wrong.

Evolution isn't a theory because no-one can prove it. It's a theory because no-one can prove it wrong. Please, stop abusing the word theory and imagine you know what it means. It proves the arrogance of those who oppose it as that is the most common argument against.

 

[omega 616]

I said running isn't that great, which it isn't. If you add in something like spraying urine (which it could do, although I am not 100% on where a dear pisses from) to confuse or even distract the hunter then running away would be more effective.

Baby hippos being protect by there mother, yes I know all about hippos. There bulletproof to most handguns, there skin makes up a third of there wieght etc etc etc.

I think you just invaidated your own point, "just cause IS the fucking awnser, there was no plan, there was no divine hand(probably), shit mutated, what worked, worked, what didn't, died", what worked is the answer then.

I didn't assume they planed out there paths, I was saying dear 'cos compared to alot of other things it's a sitting duck. Besides colour and legging it, theres not alot going on. I meant it like other things have all these defensive measures, why couldn't the dear have one?

Thats kind of what you were doing, saying I was saying elephants and hippos eat dears? Do they even live near each other? Plus aren't both herbivores?

Yeah, I noticed the short fuse ...

That guy with the spinning cow head explained it to me, I think I get it know.

Okay, just saying that running isn't helpful does not make it true, but we're going nowhere here so I'm going to drop this particular point.

Precisly, they don't need to run, most everything else does.

... The fuck?
I'm not sure I'm reading that right so I'm going to skip it.

You mentioned several times that if one species has a usefull method of survival others should have it too, you even use the word decision at one point.
However I'm now going to explain how it is that deer are in no way a sitting duck:
1. As I've said, they can fucking run, fast.
2. They move in large groups, and warn each other when danger is nearby.
3. They breed like rabbits, thus ensuring that the species will pass on it's genes even if I were to take a Gau-8 in to the forest and go nuts, I wouldn't make a dent.
4. Apart from humans there arent any predeters that hunt deer in large numbers, and their predetorst arent all that big, they simply don't need lion seeking missiles to survive.

You claimed that deer being able to run was a crap defence because hippos and elephants can run too, the two have no bearing on each other in the slightest, in light of that I decided to make a funny.

Are you saying I have anger issues?
I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!

Thank god for spinning cow heads!

Finally, because I'm sick of trying to defend the survival practices of deer:

Deer are still around, if they had no way to survive, there wouldn't be any left, not to mention that theyare still doing great despite the fact that they have come in to cantact with humans.
Now take a look at what happened to elephants and hippos after we got to 'em, their survival methods aren't looking so good right now are they?

You don't get alot of people agreeing with you, do you? I can tell 'cos I clearly just said "I think I got it now" but you still keep quoting me trying to correct me.

Just another little thing, I was using dear in a different way that what you are thinking. I was using dear as something with very little in the way of defence, to talk about things before the dear that also had very little in the way of defence.

But whatever, this argument that you (yes you started it, I wanted to learn and you wanted to insult) started was over about 2 quotes ago.

 

[Ben Hussong]

*quoted post*

I didn't see, unless i missed them any holes aside from the age old "its just a theory " bullshit which i addressed in one of my other posts. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/ this blog by a biologists has a lot of addressing to supposed to problems in evolution in its back catalogue throughout the years.
*edit* Heck the second post addresses a supposed issue in evolution.

The weaknesses in evolution theory are various.
For example: everyone is only debating only about the change of information in the DNA. But what about the mechanisms to read the DNA? Why do they even exist? The DNA is mainly encoded information, and it is useless without a device to decipher it.
Another point is, that the thermodynamic laws of entropy also apply to information. There might be a chance, that an accumulation of minimal genetic mutations lead to a trait, that is useful for survival. But it is also possible, that the new trait is useless (at best) or even crippling the organism (at worst). The probability for a useless mutation is significantly higher than the probability for a useful mutation. If you scramble the letters of a page in a book, you might end up with meaningful new words. In evolution theory you only keep the words, that make sense. But that means, that most of the time, the new text will just be scrapped.
Even if you happen to get a new word, it still has to be in context, or the sentence will make no sense.
This also (and especially) applies, if you let this progress work over several billion years. Information will gradually diminish, not formate and evolve.[/quote]
Okay I am not a biologist * I've studied evolution some, but i'm hardly a biologist, hard science is my girlfriend's thing she's double majoring in Biochem and pysch so i have no clue what most of those words are i will admit. I have a couple of videos that address 20 arguments against evolution, but im not sure if they would touch on what you said, all I can say is I think Phyrangula.com has addressed at least one of those, they deal with a ton of arguments against evolution.

 

[dkyros]

Its how we view survival of an organism on a time scale (years to millions of years). We see evolution happen much faster in more rapidly dividing organisms, specifically microorganisms. This is why a few years after an antibiotic is introduced into the market that can treat a certain disease inevitably becomes ineffective due to resistance(MRSA, MSSA, GISA, GRSA, VRE, MDR TB). On a larger scale we see certain phenotypes prevail in certain circumstances due to an inherent benefit of having that phenotype in the environment around it. Over time changes to the base organism are made again and again.
The theory does say that the earth is more than 6000 years old. All I have to say here is Flying Spaghetti Monster...

 

[Uszi]

The simplest answer is that populations evolve, not individuals. Any animal is born with a set of traits and it is stuck with it. But populations are fluid and constantly changing.

I was just thinking about this topic and was wondering how does it work?

Simple.

All organisms reproduce, passing their traits on to their off spring.

All organisms have variable survival rates. Some organisms survive better than others.

All organisms have variable reproductive rates. Some organisms reproduce better than others.

Organisms which have traits that increase the chances of them reproducing tend to pass the those traits on to future generations, and conversely organisms which have traits which make it more difficult for them to survive/reproduce don't pass their traits on.

Over time, some traits pass throughout populations and become more common.

Given enough time, this produces significant changes within the population.

Why when all creatures great and small, crawling out of the primordial ooze, did some animals evolve to be herbivores/carnivores/omnivores?

If you come up with a new strategy, then you don't have to compete with as many other organisms, and that increases your chances of surviving/reproducing.

For instance, the first life was cellular and produced it's own food autotrophically---using the environment and the sun to make their own food. Sometime along the way, cellular organisms learned how to "eat" other cells, and presto--they now have a new food source and don't have to compete with others for it.

How did some evolve to have venom that can do all kinds of fucked up shit and others didn't?

You'd have to look up the evolutionary history of venom, which isn't exactly difficult. This is a much more specific question.

How can a bird eating tarantula have the ability to throw it's hairs off it's body to defend itself but a deers only form of defence is it has eyes on the side of it's head and can run pretty quick?

How about you look up the animals in question?

The shortest possible answer is that evolution can only work with what it's given. For instance, if a deer developed a mutation or new adaptation that could launch quills or hairs, then that trait might spread throughout the population.

But I think you're looking at this wrong. You're comparing two distantly related animals--spiders (arthropods) are not very similar to deer (chordates) at all. How about, why did porcupines evolve the ability to launch quills but not deer? Or why did tarantulas and porcupines both evolve similar mechanisms?

If animals eat the weakest or an abnormal baby did these evolutions occur? Surely the mother would have seen the mutation and eaten it.

I don't even know what your talking about?
Not every animal eats it's young.

If I made a new animal, which had no defence or offense, then plonked it down in the animals version of hells kitchen (Aus) how would it evolve and adapt to the environment? If it gets eaten then it can't send a message to it's kids saying "evolve a way to stop being eaten. It sucks!", so how does it over many generations evolve the ability or a way to stop itself being food?

Depends. People plopped bunnies down in Australia, which have virtually no offense or defense, and they fucking took over the entire continent [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia]:

It doesn't the species just dies, it's called survival of the fittest for a reason, the weakest die while the animals more suited to the environment live on and produce offspring therefore passing on its genes.


I have oversimplified it a bit but if you want more details use Google.

"Weakest" and "fittest" are a poor choice of words, and these aren't really the terms used in modern biology. Really, you talk about organisms which are better adapted to an environment replacing those that can't compete.

That doesn't mean that an organism which can't compete is inferior in some way.

The thing is Evolution is only a theory(wouldn't be called a theory otherwise) and not fully complete and of badly put across in modern society. Although the general idea of it does exist we can't really say we can from apes. I am sure we have a similar ancestor going back millions of years but then again if you go back far enough we all came from space dust.

Exactly.

Just like gravity is "just" a theory.
And germs are "just" a theory.
And relativity is "just" a theory.
And atoms are "just" a theory.

Evolution, gravity, germs, atoms are all equally "just" theories. But the language "just" seems to indicate that you do not understand that in science a theory is a unifying body of valid hypotheses.

 

[Yopaz]

Did you even bother to read past the first page or do you just jump on something without even bother to read the thread? I have already answered this already. I never disputed evolution and said it was wrong which what you seem to be thinking. I said it was only a theory and not a truth like some people think which it is. In fact Relativity is just a theory and not a complete one at that. The great thing about Science is there is always something else to add always one more step to take. Being happy with one theory is stupid.

We can't in any possible way have more than one theory. If you got more than one theory you don't understand the word theory! If you got 2 theories (this is a hypothetical situation as it is impossible) those two would have to have been experimented and tested, if both reached the stage of theory, one of them, or even both would be invalid, because there can only be one theory! You think of hypothesis. Gravity is a theory, and that is a pretty strong one. It's not a fact, it's a theory, do you want to claim there might be a possibility gravity doesn't exist? If you can prove that theory wrong, you will win the Nobel prize in physics for sure. There's is nothing stronger in science than a theory, and saying that we need to improve the evolution theory... Yeah, do you know that we improve our facts EVERY day? Every year new discoveries are made, every book on evolution is outdated the moment it is published because the theory improves as we speak. The phylogeny is changed every month, if not every week or day. You clearly know a little, but not nearly enough to actually make a serious statement. I don't know close to what I need to make one. Science is complicated, but science is constantly trying to improve itself, it's what drives us. We may work entire lives to get an answer, and when we get the answer, we try to improve it.

 

[moretimethansense]

You don't get alot of people agreeing with you, do you? I can tell 'cos I clearly just said "I think I got it now" but you still keep quoting me trying to correct me.

Just another little thing, I was using dear in a different way that what you are thinking. I was using dear as something with very little in the way of defence, to talk about things before the dear that also had very little in the way of defence.

But whatever, this argument that you (yes you started it, I wanted to learn and you wanted to insult) started was over about 2 quotes ago.

I don't actually.
But I was trying to correct arguements that you made before you "got it", often people "get it" but still make erronius statements.
I'm not trying to be condesending here, I'm just not good at not being so.

And I was trying to point out that they have all the defence they need, but I think we're going in circles here.

I'm a bit offended here, check back a few pages, note that I made a number of posts trying to explain in clear and simple terms, I only started getting shirty when you seemed to be ignoring info, deliberately misunderstanding points that were being presented and putting forth the same kind of arguements and questions that hardcore idiot fundies use to "disprove" "eviloution", I frequent FStDT and your posts were remarkebly similar to some particularly bad anti-evolution arguements.
I took it to be trolling, or willful ignorance, I'm glad I was wrong, though I'm a bit incredulous that it took so long.

At any rate I think you're right that we should drop this now.

 

[Uszi]

I said it was only a theory and not a truth like some people think which it is. In fact Relativity is just a theory and not a complete one at that. The great thing about Science is there is always something else to add always one more step to take. Being happy with one theory is stupid.

Theory is truth in science.
You're quibbling semantics, not science.

Are germs truth?
Are atoms truth?

Evolution is one of the best supported theories around. It draws great support from physics, geology, biology and chemistry.

It seems like half the time, its not "Survival of the fittest," its "Survival of the sexiest."

No matter how sexy you are, you can`t reproduce if youre dead.

There are a lot of evolutionary strategies that place sexiness above survival.

Look at male peacocks, or fire flies, or crickets or frogs/toads.

All of their sexy mating behavior attracts predators and gives away their position

Of course, you reach a balancing point between being irrisitably sexy and surviving long enough to reproduce.

 

[Uszi]

There is so much evidence for evolution that denying it is like denying the holocaust, most people just automatically deny it in the face of huge evidence because it would bring their faith to shambles.

There are actually more historians who deny the holocaust then their are biologists who deny evolution. Fun fact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution

 

[omega 616]

You don't get alot of people agreeing with you, do you? I can tell 'cos I clearly just said "I think I got it now" but you still keep quoting me trying to correct me.

Just another little thing, I was using dear in a different way that what you are thinking. I was using dear as something with very little in the way of defence, to talk about things before the dear that also had very little in the way of defence.

But whatever, this argument that you (yes you started it, I wanted to learn and you wanted to insult) started was over about 2 quotes ago.

I don't actually.
But I was trying to correct arguements that you made before you "got it", often people "get it" but still make erronius statements.
I'm not trying to be condesending here, I'm just not good at not being so.

And I was trying to point out that they have all the defence they need, but I think we're going in circles here.

I'm a bit offended here, check back a few pages, note that I made a number of posts trying to explain in clear and simple terms, I only started getting shirty when you seemed to be ignoring info, deliberately misunderstanding points that were being presented and putting forth the same kind of arguements and questions that hardcore idiot fundies use to "disprove" "eviloution", I frequent FStDT and your posts were remarkebly similar to some particularly bad anti-evolution arguements.
I took it to be trolling, or willful ignorance, I'm glad I was wrong, though I'm a bit incredulous that it took so long.

At any rate I think you're right that we should drop this now.

To be totally honest, I got quoted so much I just couldn't keep up or remember what I typed to who. Also youtube is very distracting when your trying to make points.

No I believe in evolution and all that jazz. They were? I don't know what that site is but wow, how can you not believe in it? Seems pretty obvious (from fossils and stuff) to me that is happens, just wasn't sure how.

 

[CptCamoPants]

Whatever can survive the longest and make the most babies wins evolution.

 

[Danman1]

Here you go

That's a really good video, thanks for putting it here.
If anyone's interested in what the Theory of Evolution is really about, or just wants to brush up on it, this video is for you. It's only ~10 minutes.

I'm not sure why it took 4 different comments on the video in a row to make me finally click it, but yours happened to be the one to do it. You win grabbing my attention.
Good video, btw.

 

[Snowpact]

not only did we come from apes, we ARE apes.

Isn't the biggest misconception about evolution that we come from apes? If I remember correctly, the theory of evolution states that we did not evolve from apes, but that we do have a common ancestor from which we both originate. We are not apes, we are primates. Big difference there. Right?