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Top 10 Evolutionary Adaptations
oneill40 writes "The New Scientist has an interesting article up listing the Top 10 most amazing things to have evolved, including sex, death, the eye, language and parasites!" From the article:"Sponges are a key example of multicellular life, an innovation that transformed living things from solitary cells into fantastically complex bodies. It was such a great move, it evolved at least 16 different times. Animals, land plants, fungi and algae all joined in." J adds: Number four, Language, got a careful look from Carl Zimmer a while back. It's Pinker vs. Chomsky, winner take all, pass the popcorn!
You don't see any of these deficiencies in an octopuses' eye. So God's supposed "crowning creation" has worse vision than the lowly octopus?
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
in bad form replying to my own post, but here's a link to the npr audio on the discovery.
NPR STORY
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Language requires very specific parts of the brain to work correctly. This has been seen in brain damaged people and children with certain birth defects. It may be very difficult if not impossible for them to learn a language, understand or speak it. This indicates that we have language-specific hardware built in. The abilities of the chimps is no surprise here - in fact, it supports the idea that we are evolved to use language, considering chimps are our closest genetic relatives. Other animals can learn human language to some degree too, and do in fact communicate amongst themselves. But really, it's a huge advantage for a group to be able to communicate within its ranks. From the altruistic warning cry to, oh I don't know, mating songs, language has had very good reasons to evolve.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Not quite correct. This simplest bacteria (no nucleus) uses only RNA. The mechanisms of transcription have likely evolved significantly as well.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Immortality, now that would be a nice adaptation!
In the short and narrow terms, death seems like a failure but globally and long term, death is necessary for the survival of the species.
On a microscopic level death is vital to keep the whole organism healthy. The article specifically mentions cellular programmed suicide. Most of the time, cells in multicelluar bodies like ourselves commit suicide when they detect abnormalities in themselves. So far researchers have identified the gene (p53) in humans that directs this behavior. Cancer is the result when p53 fails to work correctly.
Macroscopically, death and evolution are mutually intertwined. The creatures with the most desirable traits can direct the path of the species with survival. Less desirable genes are removed from the population by death. In addition to gene and trait selection, death keeps populations healthy by keeping populations in check. Death ensures that limited resources are not depleted.
Imagine if every human that ever died of simple old age was still around today. I don't think the Earth could support that many humans. Because we at the top of the food chain, there are few if any predators that keep our population in check. We could easily deplete all the food, space, water, etc.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I've been trying to find the "Last Stop" for an argument for evolution for quite some time. I finally found this amazing article: 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution.
I'm sure many of you (who wanted to know anyways) have come across this but this is the cat's meow for evolutionary arguments. It is designed to be easy to read, but it does not pander to the lowest common denominator (in fact far from it).
If you haven't read it, you WILL learn something new.
Sunny
Be my Friend
What bacteria would that be?
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Arceobacteria,Proteobacteria, and Cyanobacteria are the oldest, and all have a nucleoid ( non-membrane region containing one circular DNA molecule -- one circular chromosome).
The membrane is not a defining attribute for DNA use. First DNA developed, then the cell evolved a purse to stash it in.
DNA may or may not be the basal component of what constitues life, but once you get past its presence, things look pretty mechanical, not organic.
That's the ten million dollar for biologists these days. Nobody really knows. RNA world, aka, the "naked gene" idea is one idea. It is also thought that something resembling a primative cell membrane can develop out of abiotic chemical processes, just like strands of RNA can.
According to the RNA world idea, early Earth had these strands of RNA floating around that served as self-replicating genes/proteins. But the environment is very hostile to such critters. So they take up squatting in these proto-cell membranes for shelter. Over time, they developed the ability to do some housekeeping, do repairs on the proto-membrane and generally modify it to their own needs. Eventually the naked genes became "owners" instead of "renters".
There's some problems with this idea - the big one being that if there isn't anyway of getting nutrients in and waste out of the proto-cell membrane, these proto-cells would be deadly traps, not shelters. Getting food in and crap out of a membrane is still a big gap to cross, unless the problem can be broken down further. But at least we're better of than "toss a bunch of amino acids into a box, and shake it until a cell comes out".
In short, they're working on it. Intelligent design is a possibility, but it isn't the simplest one, so it gets sliced out by Occam's Razor, unless Occam gets trumped by fresh evidence. The Intelligent Design idea doesn't explain where this designer came from, so it isn't any simpler, it just push the problem further back. The hypothesis doesn't make any predictions that the naturalistic hypothesis doesn't, so, in general, it isn't falsifiable. Maybe specific variants of the intelligent design theory can make falsifiable predictions, but the general theory doesn't. Any the promoters of ID are very careful not to make falsifiable predictions...
Think about it this way - one scenario of intelligent design is that the designer was a time travelling human. We know that humans, who are capable of intelligent design, exist. We can't exactly say the same about God. We aren't very far away from being able to create very primitive life, and from there, evolution would do the rest. The only thing we are missing is time travel, but that could change next week.
Which would you prefer to assume: that life was created by a time travelling human, or that "naked genes" managed to eventually figure out the care and feeding of cell membranes, even if we don't know how they did it quite yet?
Intelligent design is a possibility, but it isn't the simplest one. Until we find evidence suggesting intelligent design - like finding a 2016 US quarter buried in 4 billion year old rock - it best to assume some naturalistic scenario took place, even if we don't know what that scenario is just yet.