Evolution

omega 616

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

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

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

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?

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

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?
 

randomsix

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omega 616 said:
If animals eat the weakest or an abnormal baby did these evolutions occur? Surely the mother would have seen the mutation and eaten it.

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 enviroment? 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 it'self being food?
If the first paragraph above were true, then there would be no evolution. To my knowledge it is not.

That isn't how evolution works. You take an existing animal and nature keeps killing off the members of its species that are the worst at surviving. The result is that ones with traits which are better suited to the environment live and give those traits to their children.

I'm not sure where you got this idea of evolution, but it isn't good. If my explanation isn't good enough, I suggest you find some entry level text and read that.
 

Marik2

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omega 616 said:
I was just thinking about this topic and was wondering how does it work?

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

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

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?

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

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?
Here you go
 

caz105

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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.
 

Jonluw

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The key here is time and large populations. Lots of time.

Imagine if there is a race of horse-like creatures living in fields. They do not eat grass, instead they eat the leaves off trees. Now say there are other creatures living with these creatures in their fields, eating from the same trees. Neither of the two species of creatures are tall enough to reach the leaves at the top, so they all have to compete for the leaves at the bottom of the trees.

Now, just like all humans are different, all (advanced) animals are different as well. This means that - just like with humans - some of the creatures that are born will have a longer neck than the others. Reaching leaves that haven't yet been eaten by other creatures will be marginally easier for the taller animals. This means that specimens with a longer neck will have a slightly higher rate of survival, and will therefore have a higher chance of procreating successfully.
Over the course of thousands upon thousands of years, the species as a whole will obviously end up with longer necks, since a long neck is an inheritable trait.

And then you have giraffes.
 

Worgen

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caz105 said:
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.
actually survival of the fittest is a really bad term for it that was actually coined by a guy who wanted to prove evolution wrong

survival of the best adapted makes much more sense
 

TheDist

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Marik2 said:
omega 616 said:
I was just thinking about this topic and was wondering how does it work?

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

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

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?

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

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?
Here you go
This vid nails it almost perfectly. Remeber X-men or pokemon arn't how it works either ;p
 

TriGGeR_HaPPy

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Marik2 said:
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.
 

Marik2

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TheDist said:
Marik2 said:
omega 616 said:
I was just thinking about this topic and was wondering how does it work?

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

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

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?

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

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?
Here you go
This vid nails it almost perfectly. Remeber X-men or pokemon arn't how it works either ;p
Dont forget digimon :p
 
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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.
 

TheDist

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Glademaster said:
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.




Theory in science is the most solid you can get and not only did we come from apes, we ARE apes.
 

Shirokurou

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omega 616 said:
I was just thinking about this topic and was wondering how does it work?

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

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

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?

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

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?
Natural selection... if you survived thanks to X, then you pass X on to your children. The best survive, the weak die.
Multiply that by billions of years and you'll have a faint idea of how that works.
 

omega 616

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May 1, 2009
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Jonluw said:
The key here is time and large populations. Lots of time.

Imagine if there is a race of horse-like creatures living in fields. They do not eat grass, instead they eat the leaves off trees. Now say there are other creatures living with these creatures in their fields, eating from the same trees. Neither of the two species of creatures are tall enough to reach the leaves at the top, so they all have to compete for the leaves at the bottom of the trees.

Now, just like all humans are different, all (advanced) animals are different as well. This means that - just like with humans - some of the creatures that are born will have a longer neck than the others. Reaching leaves that haven't yet been eaten by other creatures will be marginally easier for the taller animals. This means that specimens with a longer neck will have a slightly higher rate of survival, and will therefore have a higher chance of procreating successfully.
Over the course of thousands upon thousands of years, the species as a whole will obviously end up with longer necks, since a long neck is an inheritable trait.

And then you have giraffes.
Thats the bit I am not getting. You have these horsies trying to much on the bottom leaves, they all have necks roughly the same size (your not going to be having one horse with no neck and one 20 foot long), are the females walking round thinking "oooh his neck is 1 mm longer than all the others, I shall mate with him!" and the males are thinking "yeah, shes into me but her neck is short as hell! Now her over there has a really long neck but shes not a looker!".

Say all animals are like that, there are no great or very weak, there just all kind of samey. How does the female spider, with venom so weak a flea wouldn't even get dizzy from it choose a mate with slightly stronger venom, how does she know? Same for the male? How do they know "If only I had more powerful venom I could eat that lizard".

Why did the jumping spider decide to make wasps it's main meal? How did it get the ability to jump so far? Why didn't it stick to building a web? How did it learn how to get hold of the wasp but avoid it's sting?
 

Xanadu84

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Warning: My responses are not for the weak of heart. This is because compared to animals, humans on the whole are paragons of virtue, kindness, and mercy. This includes Hitler. Evolution is fucked up.

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

Because that is a stable system. See, most evolutionary paths are failures, and the lucky ones are the ones that manage to find a niche. So a random creature mutates, and it gets the ability to eat plants. It does very well. Then, one day, there is a creature that eats meat. There is a ton of things out there to eat, none of them prepared to defend itself from a predator because they haven't evolved yet. It has a field day, it gorges itself, and is able to have kids all over the place. Basically, evolution throws out a bunch of creatures, some eat meat, some plants, some both, some the byproduct of some creatures chemical reaction on a Tuesday. The Tuesday thing dies out of starvation, enough meat eaters survive that can be supported by the rest of the population, the plant eaters are as successful as there ability to eat and procreate allow.

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

Because evolution does not actually favor the strongest and most badass: It favors the thing that has a kid that has a kid that has a kid...and so on. Deer have a lot of kids, and are good at finding food. Deer don't need to have scud missiles because they fuck a lot. They don't need anything cool.

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

Evolution works on the level of the gene, not the creature. And creatures arn't trying to guide evolution, they just try to have as much sex as possible, and get as much genetic material out there as possible. A mother has a deformed, creepy baby, the mothers genes are still programmed to pass along as many of its genes as humanly possible. The fact that it doesn't improve the herd any doesn't matter. Hell, maybe the mutated baby will get lucky and find a poor, down on its luck mate desperate to procreate with anything, or maybe it will become a rapist. Either way, the mother gets more of its genes out there. Yes, that is a horrible, dirty, nasty, inefficient, downright evil thing to do. Welcome to nature. Of course, some times, a baby is a true failure, and the effort to raise the failure just detracts from the mothers ability to make other offspring more successful. In that case, the mother will most certainly kill and eat the baby, or at least abandon it somewhere. Hell, maybe it will survive long enough to kill or rape something, in which case the mother still wins. The mothers job is to just throw its genes out there. It's the ability of everything else to murder it that culls out the weaker genes

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?

Evolution doesn't make new animals. It takes old animals, and after countless random, horrible, painful mutations done by chance over millions of years, certain changes favor them in different niches. Lets say there is a food shortage. Thousands of a population die. There are some slightly bigger creatures, and some slightly smaller creatures. Smaller creatures need less food, and are generally more successful. Bigger creatures can murder smaller creatures. The smaller creatures leave for a different place. There bigger babies need more food, and keep getting devoured by all its brothers and sisters in the nest because there hungry and more numerous, and the bigger one has more meat on it. Or they get killed by the mothers because they are to inconvenient. Bigger animals get driven out of that herd, the females refuse to mate with bigger animals because it makes feeding children harder. The animals get smaller, faster, and if they moved to a place with, say, lots of climbing trees, the best climbers get mates, the worse climbers get eaten by ground predators. Meanwhile, the bigger animals that separated start killing bigger animals. They discover a new Niche, and they are more successful when they are better at killing. Smaller ones get killed by aggressive siblings, or thrown out and eaten by the mothers. Assuming they don't get too successful, kill everything around them, and then die a slow and agonizing death of starvation, these bigger creatures become powerful predators. In a few million years, these 2 groups won't even be able to mate anymore, they are too far apart evolutionarily. Now, you have a small, tree dwelling, scavaging, quick creature, and a large, deadly, ground carnivore, both just 2 different niches that were explored by the same creature once there was some evolutionary pressure.

Evolution is a process by which everything tries to murder everything else, some things find a hiding spot to protect against being murdered that are very different, and most things just die. In reality there is no such thing as, "More highly evolved". If you are still fucking and killing, you are successful.
 

Slowpool

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"Survival of the fittest" is one of the most misused terms in the world. It is the implication that only the strongest/best adapted will live to reproduce, while those who are weaker die out. This is not true. "Natural selection" is a much more appropriate term, since it implies only that the best adapted simply have a slightly greater chance of reproducing over the years. There is a very big difference; the former is an excuse used by the worst of us to justify aggression and ruthlessness.

Also, there is a difference between the idea that evolution is "just a theory" and things like gravity and thermodynamics are "just theories". We can measure the laws of physics at any time we wish, and we have yet to see those laws be broken outside of the effects of other laws. Evolution is such an incredibly slow process that we can't measure it in the same way with the same certainty. You can't really compare the ideas.
 

Rayne870

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TheDist said:
Theory in science is the most solid you can get and not only did we come from apes, we ARE apes.
Very true about scientific theory, additionally, your mother is an ape!
 

caz105

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Worgen said:
caz105 said:
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.
actually survival of the fittest is a really bad term for it that was actually coined by a guy who wanted to prove evolution wrong

survival of the best adapted makes much more sense
Nevertheless it is the most well known name for it.
 

omega 616

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TheDist said:
Theory in science is the most solid you can get and not only did we come from apes, we ARE apes.
In a book a read called "the general book of ignorance" it says we came from squirrals, which I much prefer. Don't get me wrong, I love apes and I can see more of a resemblance between us and apes rather than a squiggle but squiggles are sooo cute.

^_^

Worgen said:
caz105 said:
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.
actually survival of the fittest is a really bad term for it that was actually coined by a guy who wanted to prove evolution wrong

survival of the best adapted makes much more sense
I heard it was coined by Darwins assistant, by some guy who was talking about evolution by loads of butterflies in a tropical forrest. I don't what the last part of that sentance has to do with anything but I threw it in there anyway.
 

Decabo

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If you believe in genetics and you believe in natural selection, you believe in evolution, whether you know it or not.