10 Worst Evolutionary Designs

JamJam writes "Besides my beer gut, which I'm sure has some purpose, Wired is running a story on the 10 Worst Evolutionary Designs. Ranging from baby giraffes being dropped 5-foot during birth to Goliath bird-eating spiders that practically explode when they fall from trees."

Comments

Old

[hyperion2010]

This was posted 2 weeks ago, it was stupid then and is stupid now. Also, go back to digg with your lists kthxby.

Re:Old

[RobertB-DC]

This was posted 2 weeks ago, it was stupid then and is stupid now. Also, go back to digg with your lists kthxby.

I second that emotion. The most notable thing about the list is that it shows a possibly-unhealthy level of interest in non-human reproduction on the part of the author -- five out of the ten, including "slug genitalia" and "hyena clitoris". Mr. Wolman should either get into a college-level comparative anatomy class, or into therapy.

And lists aren't such a bad thing, in and of themselves. I've gotten addicted to the Cracked Mazagine (sic) lists of things like "The 6 Most Badass Murder Weapons in the Animal Kingdom". Compare those with the Wired.com list, and you can't help but wonder if Cracked already saw this list... and stamped it "REJECTED".

Re:Old

[spire3661]

MY thoughts precisely. It is REALLY hard to make a list of bad evolution using SUCCESSFUL examples. Regardless of the weirdness of the design, it WORKS over the other designs that were submitted over the eons.

Re:Old

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but this gives us the opportunity to disclose the worst design to date.... Martha Stewart

Re:Old

[nietsch]

Indeed. The list virus has dumbed down at least half of the internet, reviewing a stupid list would take things to an even lower level. Lists suck, write original content.

Re:Old

[jasper_amsterdam]

The Hyena clitoris is actually a very good example of 'stupid design', that would make my list if I had to make one. However, most of this stuff just plain moronic.

Re:Old

[Anonymous Coward]

Reproduction plays a pretty large role in evolution.

Re:Old

[kalirion]

Regardless of the weirdness of the design, it WORKS over the other designs that were submitted over the eons.

The overall design may work, but the specifics could use some improvements.

Humans

[Kittenman]

1) Knees

2) Windpipe close to channel to stomach - choking hazard

3) Walking upright leads to distended colon, piles, etc

4) As my wife says, playground close to a sewage works

And first post, BTW...

Re:Humans

[Neanderthal Ninny]

Yes. playground close to sewage, however, cleanliness is close to godliness in this case.

Re:Humans

[Bertie]

Ah, but...

The design of our breathing/eating apparatus may be a choking hazard, but it gives us the ability to do a neat trick that no other animal can: speak.

Ever noticed how babies can feed and breathe at the same time, but you can't? This is because of the shape of their vocal tract, which is more like an animal's than yours at that point. Babies need to get a lot of food down their necks as quickly as possible, because they're busy growing. Speaking can wait.

After a few months, things start to move around - the larynx drops, the back of the throat curves round into a right-angle, and all of a sudden they have to choose between eating and breathing. But the reshaped vocal tract allows them to form configurations of the speech organs which weren't previously possible, and so they learn to speak.

Re:Humans

[colinrichardday]

3) Walking upright leads to distended colon, piles, etc

It also allows us to use our hands better, for things like wielding weapons against animals that would kill us otherwise.

Re:Humans

[MightyMartian]

This amply demonstrates the key fact of evolution. It does not produce optimized designs, but rather compromises. While humans are far more likely to die from choking than darned near any other vertebrate out there, this major survival disadvantage is offset by the advantages of being able to produce a wide variety of sounds. All that counts at the end of the day is whether any evolved feature can in some way positively effect reproductive success.

Re:Humans

[Locklin]

Exhibit A: The Dolphin.

Sure, the human vocal tract is a modification of that of a primate for controlled speech, but it's little more than a bad hack. There are much better ways to do it (if one was to "design" such a system)

Re:Humans

[Locklin]

I think that's the point. It may allow for free hands, but it's a shitty way of accomplishing that. Virtually every insect on earth can walk and have free limbs at the same time.

Re:Humans

[v1]

4) As my wife says, playground close to a sewage works

That's usually the voters at work actually. Parks require large plots of land and are very expensive most places besides flood planes and near sewage treatment plants where property values are very low. And so that's where you find 95% of parks because no one would vote for a park if the price went up tenfold by a change of venue.

Re:Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

If you wanted to eat and breathe at the same time, the obvious solution is to do so with two separate tubes. If you absolutely must have them touch so that you can breathe through your mouth, you should at least have the tube for air on top so that gravity can do the work for you. The whole thing reeks of design that wasn't completely spec'd up front. I bet the customer looked at the prototype and decided what they really wanted was to have the nose in the middle of the face rather than under the chin.

Re:Humans

[retchdog]

Without getting into too much detail with #4, note that urine at least functions as an antibacterial agent: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=297400

As for the other part, well, I'm pretty sure that for most of our evolutionary past, we tended to die long before incontinence would set in...

Re:Humans

[Jaysyn]

And can't wield weapons, thank DEITY$!!

Re:Humans

[paylett]

This is something that I've always found hard to understand with the argument for evolution. Surely the natural selection process would strongly bias against any traits that result in the animal being killed off in the first few minutes. (And likewise a strong bias towards traits that improve birth mortality rates). Yet we see so many instances of "poor design" in the birth process. Four in this article alone.

If natural selection does such a "poor" job of refining the birthing mechanism when there is a clear correlation between some new (good or bad) trait and the likelihood of that trait being propagated to future generations, then how can we reasonably expect that it is also responsible for highly refined systems where there is a much lower correlation between the new trait and the likelihood of producing offspring. (For example, in esoteric features of the imune system, or the brain - the new trait may only even come into play in certain situations during the animals life, and therefore only has any selective power in the specific animals for which it occurs ... unlike traits relating to birth which are immediately tested for all creatures)

If evolution is about compromise, then the most obvious compromises would favour succesful birth. If birth is unsuccesful than other traits don't even get a chance to be tested.

Re:Humans

[madsenj37]

It also allows use to expend less energy than is we used all 4 limbs for movement like our our primate friends.

Re:Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

it gives us the ability to do a neat trick that no other animal can: speak.

Plenty of birds can speak better than a lot of humans I know.

Ever noticed how babies can feed and breathe at the same time, but you can't?

Yes I can, it's called Circular Breathing. Pretty much anybody can do it if you spend some time working at it.

Re:Humans

[ceoyoyo]

1) Don't listen to some article writer at Wired to learn what is or is not a bad birth process. Several of the ones he mentioned seem silly until you know more about them, then they make sense. Other things that continue to seem silly may do so because we just haven't figured them out yet. Similarly, lots of irreducible complexity arguments that originally seemed convincing have famously fallen to new insights.

2) Evolution doesn't produce "perfection" or even necessarily approach it. Evolution is an optimization process. It can certainly get stuck in local minima.

Re:Humans

[colinrichardday]

But our reptilian ancestors had only four limbs each, and having two new limbs wasn't going to happen.

Re:Humans

[colinrichardday]

I've read that the only land animal that can outrun humans over an entire day is the kangaroo, which also uses bipedal locomotion.

Re:Humans

[joeyblades]

I may be reading between the lines here, but it sounds like you're saying that you have doubts about evolution because you perceive poor design? Making a slight leap of faith, I'm going to assume that you favor a designed-by-God explanation for life as we know it?

So if you perceive poor design, what does that say about the designer? Maybe, instead, there is an error in your assessment of what makes a good design? Whether you think these traits have evolved or were created by God (or both), it is pointless to argue that they make no sense. We can only ask, why do they make sense?

Re:Humans

[ucblockhead]

It's cost/benefits. Imagine an animal. Now tweak it slightly. That tweak may increase the incidence of some sorts of death and decrease the incidence of other sorts of death. Does the one outweigh the other? If so, over time, there will be more and more animals with that tweak.

That's evolution in a nutshell.

Evolution means that if a change that makes humans 10% smarter and therefore much more successful hunters and therefore less likely to starve but means a 4% increased infant mortality then that change will spread throughout the population.

Remember that it is not about individuals...it is about populations. Look at how the human mind and body works and breaks down and tells me if it looks like something designed to be optimal, or something randomly created that balances efficiencies and deficiencies to maximize broad statistical success of reproduction. In which worldview does cancer make sense?

Re:Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

What, so you can't imagine an arrangement that allows both speech and "seperate food/air holes"? Sure, evolution tends to reuse things like this but we're talking imperfections and this is certainly one, even if it's one that made the change from animal noises to speech easier.

Re:Humans

[FooManChuYouMoo]

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/may/tramps-like-us

Re:Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of a far better application for my hand

Re:Humans

[The Grim Reefer2]

I've read that the only land animal that can outrun humans over an entire day is the kangaroo, which also uses bipedal locomotion.

How do you define "out run" a human? Average speed? Total distance? Regardless, several large breed dogs can cover more distance at a much higher average speed than a person. Especially ones that were bred for such things, like a Malamute or a Husky. These types of dogs can easily cover 30+ miles in a day while pulling a sled in the snow. A horse can cover easily cover 30 miles on rough terrain, and Arabians and other types of endurance horses can cover 100 mile in a continuous 24 hour period. As far as I know there are endurance runners who have averaged around 70 miles per day, but they certainly are not the norm.

Re:Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

Canines. Dog sled teams pull 100 miles per day across snow pulling sleds on the Iditarod, and go 20 miles per hour in sprint races up to 35 miles. Dogs do even better on dirt without loads.

But we domesticated them for use running down prey that the heavy hitters (humans) would then kill.

Re:Humans

[timeOday]

In which worldview does cancer make sense?

In the worldview of the individual cells that make up your body, evolving traits allowing them to multiply rapidly and without limit, instead of being subservient to the big population of cells (your body) in which they live. In the short term, greed is a supreme evolutionary strategy.

Re:Humans

[Fujisawa Sensei]

This is something that I've always found hard to understand with the argument for evolution. Surely the natural selection process would strongly bias against any traits that result in the animal being killed off in the first few minutes. (And likewise a strong bias towards traits that improve birth mortality rates). Yet we see so many instances of "poor design" in the birth process. Four in this article alone.

If natural selection does such a "poor" job of refining the birthing mechanism when there is a clear correlation between some new (good or bad) trait and the likelihood of that trait being propagated to future generations, then how can we reasonably expect that it is also responsible for highly refined systems where there is a much lower correlation between the new trait and the likelihood of producing offspring. (For example, in esoteric features of the imune system, or the brain - the new trait may only even come into play in certain situations during the animals life, and therefore only has any selective power in the specific animals for which it occurs ... unlike traits relating to birth which are immediately tested for all creatures)

If evolution is about compromise, then the most obvious compromises would favour succesful birth. If birth is unsuccesful than other traits don't even get a chance to be tested.

Considering the following.

Evolution is flawed, makes sense because its an ongoing process.

Creatures are flawed, through the deliberate act of the creator. That makes the creator either a dipshit, or an asshole.

Take your choice.

Re:Humans

[Dahamma]

How do you define "out run" a human? Average speed? Total distance?

Um. You do realize these are effectively the same over a period of time (like 24 hours?)

In case not... how about an elementary school example...

4mph (ave) * 24 hours = 96 miles
96 miles / 24 hours = 4mph

Amazing stuff, eh? ;)

Just to be fair on the rest of your comment... looked it up and the human record for 100 miles is 11:30, while for a horse (with rider!) is about 7 hours. Then again, a human has also run 188 miles in 24 hours. Not saying a horse has never done that, but I didn't find an example. Humans really are well built for extreme endurance running. It's one of the few physical feats we can actually beat most animals in, give us SOMETHING!

Re:Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]The design of our breathing/eating apparatus may be a choking hazard, but it gives us the ability to do a neat trick that no other animal can: speak.[/quote]

Except for crows, parrots, and many passerine birds, which most definitely have the ability to replicate human speech to varying degrees. Oh, and many of these same birds also have the "flow-through" respiratory system you mention babies having.

"No other animal can speak." For fuck's sake, just type "talking bird" into YouTube and get back to me.

Re:Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

Option #3: The creator used evolution as a tool to create existence. Existence demands conflict. Without bad, there is no good. With good comes desire to strive for good. Striving for good leads to competition. Without competition, existence is stale. A perfect world, free of conflict, can not exist, as it would be stale and, therefore, not perfect. Therefore, existence must be flawed; it demands imperfection. Therefore, the toolset of existence - evolution (for living creatures) - must be flawed. If the creator used a perfect tool, existence would be null. Thus, a flawless creator must use a flawed tool.

Re:Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

And all of a sudden they have to choose between eating and breathing.

I know many adults who still try to do both at the same time..

Re:Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever tried to wield a sword while your colon was distended? Come on people don't post unless you know what you are talking about.

Re:Humans

[colinrichardday]

According to this, people have done 152 miles in under 30 hours (record: 20:25:00)

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

Re:Humans

[colinrichardday]

Compared to this? Although they're not pulling sleds

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

Re:Humans

[SilverEyes]

Philosophy based on bread.

Re:Humans

[SilverEyes]

Certainly not the norm, but very impressive 250 k. Besides, who said we hunted down dogs and horses? We're outrunning the slow/weak herd animals. Some profs have done studies where they have reasonably fit students run in the field and take turns chasing down animals. After a while, the animal overheats and cannot fight back.

Re:Humans

[Kral_Blbec]

He isnt saying poor design. He is saying there are a whole lot of traits that would have had/have zero reproductive advantage, yet are clearly evident in modern animals.
I tend to agree. My example is the elephant. The first animals (presumably like a pig) had a short nose. Some random member of the species gets born with a slightly longer nose. Not much mind you, because they cant have very much variation in only one generation, so this nose is barely noticeable to be longer, yet it has so much reproductive advantage that generations later the short snout has evolved to a long trunk? It doesnt make sense.
Another example, this one from the stupid list in the article. Dolphins and whales breathe through a blow hole. Supposedly their ancestors where land mammals that returned to the sea after having had developed for land. At first they held their breath and breathed like every other land mammal, meaning they stayed near the surface. How does their breathing tract move from their mouth, to another orifice? That isn't something that could have been done incrementally.
Granted evolution makes a lot of sense when you look at it and say "it had X million years to change from this to that", but when you get into individual generations, there are a lot of things that COULD NOT have developed because the change from one generation to another would not have been reproductively advantageous. A pig with a nose .2 centimeters longer than another is not going to breed so much more than his friends that the noses of the species are effected.

Re:Humans

[SilverEyes]

Possible (brief, speculative) explanations:

-Could be selected sexually.
-Could be evolving for another purpose before being adopted to its current use.
-Could be related to hormones and embyonic development (many physiological differences in mammals are due to differences in development).
-Could be vestigial.
-Could be 'switched on' by regulator genes.
-Could be simple genetic drift.

Re:Humans

[Kral_Blbec]

Remember that it is not about individuals...it is about populations.
Wrong. Mutations happen at the individual level. If that individual doesnt reproduce, then that mutation (benificial or adverse) is lost. When a mutation of significance happens, which might be once every few hundred generations, that individual is the only one that can pass it along. It has to reproduce so much more than normal that it has enough offspring that the mutation is preserved through not only the first generation, but the second, third and so on. Remember, each generation it goes through, there is only a 50/50 chance that the offspring will have it too.
Mutations in genetics during reproduction are actually pretty rare. Note that mutations later in life dont matter because they no longer have the ability to affect the entire organism. It is a localized mutation, like cancer. Even considering the age of the universe and the earth, there isnt enough time for random chance to have created life as we know it. For the slightest change to a species as a whole, it would require not one, but many individuals to have the same mutation (requiring untold generations to pass), and for them all to reproduce so much more than normal that it spreads to the entire offspring population.

Re:Humans

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Option #3: The creator used evolution as a tool to create existence. Existence demands conflict.= Without bad, there is no good. With good comes desire to strive for good. Striving for good leads to competition.

Where the fuck did you pull this one?

Competition is created because of scarce resources, not a desire for good.

A desire for good creates a desire to share your resources with those who to not less.

Without competition, existence is stale. A perfect world, free of conflict, can not exist, as it would be stale and, therefore, not perfect. Therefore, existence must be flawed; it demands imperfection. Therefore, the toolset of existence - evolution (for living creatures) - must be flawed. If the creator used a perfect tool, existence would be null. Thus, a flawless creator must use a flawed tool.

Therefore must be evil in heaven, and conflict with evil must continue on for eternity. Because without conflict existence itself would become stale and imperfect.

This fails, please refer to a book in your bible called Genesis, where the world was created in this manner. And because the alleged creator did create perfect world, the so called "Garden of Eden", this conclusion is wrong.

Re:Humans

[Kral_Blbec]

very insightful for an ac
This is very close to what I personally believe in.

Re:Humans

[ucblockhead]

No...it is about populations. Individuals die. Evolution happens when genes spread through populations. It is a very common error to think that evolution has anything to do with optimizing the success of the individual.

Re:Humans

[Kral_Blbec]

That all sounds nice, but doesnt actually say anything. It is still ignoring the fact that you have to jump from a short snout to a long one. At which length does it become an advantage? Unless everything you said adds up spontaneously and the length grows 5 inches in one generation, it still has to add up bit by bit and like I said, there is no reason for it to grow a few millimeters at a time so long that it turns out to be a 2 meters cumulative.

Re:Humans

[SilverEyes]

If that individual doesnt reproduce, then that mutation (benificial or adverse) is lost.

Yes.

When a mutation of significance happens, which might be once every few hundred generations, that individual is the only one that can pass it along. It has to reproduce so much more than normal that it has enough offspring that the mutation is preserved through not only the first generation, but the second, third and so on. Remember, each generation it goes through, there is only a 50/50 chance that the offspring will have it too.

Many animals will have multiple generations of offspring. There may be a 50/50 chance for a specific mutation (that is only linked through one gene) to be passed on, but if the offsprings chances improve, they will be more successful at reproduction, and their offspring as well.

Mutations in genetics during reproduction are actually pretty rare. Note that mutations later in life dont matter because they no longer have the ability to affect the entire organism. It is a localized mutation, like cancer.

Rare for a particular part of the gene. Even one mutation in a million base pairs works out to some mutations per generation for any sizable genome. Animals have lots of DNA. I'm assuming you're talking about a mutation rate in terms of base pairs. If you're talking about encoding proteins and so forth, then obviously it's much lower and I apologize for pointing this out.

Even considering the age of the universe and the earth, there isnt enough time for random chance to have created life as we know it. For the slightest change to a species as a whole, it would require not one, but many individuals to have the same mutation (requiring untold generations to pass), and for them all to reproduce so much more than normal that it spreads to the entire offspring population.

Not enough time for random chance -absolutely-, but evolution is a higher order function. It occurs in subtler ways, and in parallel across every species.

Re:Humans

[Kral_Blbec]

If the success of the individual isn't optimized, the genes dont get spread. In other words, when the first individual with the mutation gets eaten as a little fluffy baby, the zero point gain to the population of having that mutation occur is exactly zero.
Evolution has everything to do about the individual, because that is where the mutation and reproduction is happening. Err... in pairs at least.

Re:Humans

[SilverEyes]

Evolution keeps lots of things that aren't necessarily advantageous, they can't just be disadvantageous enough to make a significant impact on the population.
As long as we're both being speculative, here's a shot (and I guarantee my shot in the dark here is wrong, but it's an attempt). Perhaps elephant ancestors have a gene that regulates expression of a protein that controls cartilage. Due to a random mutation, an extra promotor for this protein uncovered from 'junk DNA', and this ancestor expresses the gene in far greater quantities. As a result, a species of pig-sized elephant ancestors develops large noses and ears. Complete with more area to develop on, more olfactory nerve clusters are in the nose, and the ears provide a greater area to gather sound. The mammalian brain, being a malleable enough organ to learn new patterns, identifies the extra sensitivity to sound and smell and can detect more predators easily. Over time, subsequent species find that directing their noses with a finer degree of muscle control (the protein to promote growth of muscle attaching to cartilage has been exapted from the muscles controlling the ears for better directional hearing) allows them to more accurately sniff out delicious tubers, which they dig using their newly evolving tusks. Suddenly, during a drought, proto-elephants (or whatever you want to call them) are able to retain enough water by digging for roots, whereas their less fortunate relatives die off. This new behaviour and trunk-like appendage becomes increasingly useful, acquiring more and more encoding genes and proteins causing a sort of runaway evolution.

Re:Humans

[Kral_Blbec]

Rare for a particular part of the gene. Even one mutation in a million base pairs works out to some mutations per generation for any sizable genome. Animals have lots of DNA. I'm assuming you're talking about a mutation rate in terms of base pairs. If you're talking about encoding proteins and so forth, then obviously it's much lower and I apologize for pointing this out.
Yes I meant mutation enough to have a difference in protein encoding and physiological change. Individual base pairs are a different matter

Evolution is entirely based on random chance. The base pairs of DNA only mutate randomly in evolution. They cannot consciously change in order to cause a specific physiological change. Its a matter of taking what you are given. An individual has no way of influencing what mutation they receive, and that is the essence of randomness. It's preservation in the species is influenced by how reproductively advantageous it is, but it still is based on the random chance of occurring in the first place.

As for occuring in subtler ways and parallel, I have no idea what you mean by that, unless you are inferring that evolution is the means by which a higher order being (I'm not saying God per se) influences life in our little realm of existence.

Re:Humans

[Kral_Blbec]

Logical enough, except there is still the original problem, would that first mutated individual with the big nose and ears reproduce enough to have it spread through the population? You cant just kill off all of those without the particular mutation.We still have wild boars who would be the prodigies of those in the pack without the longer/bigger noses.

Re:Humans

[SilverEyes]

We seem to be agreeing more than we (or at least I) think. I completely agree with you on the evolution and random chance thing. I just interpreted that you saying that individuals have to be so prolific and more successful in order for random chance mutations to be spread throughout a population, evolution doesn't have enough time for the variation of life we see today.

To counter this I was saying that evolution works in parallel on every extant species throughout time, it's not really a linear process of bacteria -> plant -> pig -> chimp -> human, and that an individual doesn't have to be wildly more successful in order to have their genes spread throughout a population. In retrospect, I should go to bed because I seem to be just replying to those with whom I already agree with (even though we may disagree about the specific rates/numbers/severity/success, etc.) I clued in when you seemed to be suggesting that I thought God (a God, gods) was directing this process. This was not what I meant.

Unless I really did misinterpret what you are saying again.

Re:Humans

[Kral_Blbec]

Agreed. I believe in natural selection completely. In evolution, not so much. I believe that The-Powers-That-Be created this Earth, not by snapping their 8 dimensional fingers and a cloud of smoke, but by the process of focused natural selection. It just makes the most sense to me, kind of best of both worlds scenario.
To me evolution is saying everything was created out of random disorder in a few molecules bouncing around. That defies the laws of entropy.
I see now what you mean by parallel, but not so much for subtler.
With that, I'm going to bed. Good night.

Re:Humans

[joeyblades]

Your examples are only confounding because

1. You don't have enough information to comprehend the selective advantages
2. You make assumptions about the limits of evolution
3. It makes you uncomfortable within your belief system

Just because you can't think of a reproductive advantage, doesn't mean there isn't / wasn't one. The details of the selective pressures that drove most evolutionary changes are lost to unrecorded history.

You assume that snouts can only evolve 0.2cm in a single generation but, perhaps they can, with the right mutation, lengthen 20cm within one generation.

You assume that blow holes moved fractions of centimeters per eon from some other uncertain location, but perhaps they simply erupted from the back of the existing breathing apparatus in one evolutionary jump.

To be sure, the evolutionary evidence for most dramatic body plan changes seems to support the slow and incremental, but there is evidence that evolution can take dramatic steps in shorter periods of time.

Just because an idea makes you feel uncomfortable, doesn't mean you should reject it. Most great steps in human thought were initially rejected as untenable because they challenged the existing belief systems.

Re:Humans

[SilverEyes]

Genetic drift can also help. But back to the issue, I disagree with you. The first mutated individual needs to reproduce, yes. And some of its offspring need to survive (not all, but some), to the point where the trait(s) begin to form their own population(s). In an idea similar to a most recent common ancestor you have lots and lots of ancestors. As long as the trait has a net benefit of being neutral or slightly advantageous (or even with lots of luck, slightly deleterious), it's very likely to be present in a later population. I'll have to pick up this conversation tomorrow as I have to go to bed (and I saw that you just said the same). It seems we have two competing 'thread species' (a sibling thread has a similar discussion going), but we could pick this up later.

Links (I haven't read yet, almost a reference for myself later though).
http://elephant.elehost.com/About_Elephants/Stories/Evolution/evolution.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7347284.stm
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_10_106/ai_53479052/

Re:Humans

[dwywit]

Do tell! I say, can you show me some pictures of the other 5%?

And I've heard that some people are willing to pay for entry to parks.

Re:Humans

[MightyMartian]

You're thinking from an engineer's point of view, but evolution simply does not work like that. Evolution is, at its core, the concept of differential reproduction. Very few traits are absolutely beneficial, and even if they were, the environment can change quickly. In fact optimization can be downright bad for a species. Species that are too tightly bound to specific environments can be thrown into serious trouble when environmental change happens.

If environments were static, maybe you could reach a permanent equilibrium, but environments are not. There are constant pressures on populations, and that makes optimization pretty much impossible.

Evolution is really a statistical science. An trait's survival isn't so much a yes-no, but more a trend. Think of human birth. Yes, it's true, we're born far more prematurely than most mammals, and even at that, passage through the birth canal can lead to death in both the infant and mother. But the survival advantages of having a large brain are so great that the trade-off of higher infant and mother mortality rates is more than offset. You also have to consider that traits don't exist in isolation. Yes, it would be better if the birth canal were widened so that passage of the infant were easier, or maybe even allowing a longer gestation period to permit the birth of more mature offspring, but now you would start intruding on pelvic size, and that means severe disabilities as far as mobility. Since bipedalism also confers substantial benefits on our species, it means there is a physical limit on how large the pelvic area can get before females would no longer be effectively upright. Thus you have two competing traits, and what you ultimately get is the trade-off, that women can still walk, although the center of gravity is different, a sacrifice to some degree of mobility and strength.

Re:Humans

[Capsaicin]

He isnt saying poor design. He is saying there are a whole lot of traits that would have had/have zero reproductive advantage, yet are clearly evident in modern animals.

The problem here the whole notion of "reproductive advantage" which gets evolution arse-end round. Rather we should be looking for reproductive disadvantages. The real question is "will this change increase the chances of the animal dying before it has had a change to reproduce."

My example is the elephant. The first animals (presumably like a pig) had a short nose. Some random member of the species gets born with a slightly longer nose. Not much mind you, because they cant have very much variation in only one generation, so this nose is barely noticeable to be longer, yet it has so much reproductive advantage that generations later the short snout has evolved to a long trunk? It doesnt make sense.

A great example. Will the long nose kill the animal before it has a chance to mate? No. Make sense now?

Re:Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it make you that uncomfortable to know that the meaning of your life is one fixed in thought, and not externally decreed? That randomness exists?

Grow up, for Christ's sake.

Re:Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

I tend to agree. My example is the elephant. The first animals (presumably like a pig) had a short nose. Some random member of the species gets born with a slightly longer nose. Not much mind you, because they cant have very much variation in only one generation, so this nose is barely noticeable to be longer, yet it has so much reproductive advantage that generations later the short snout has evolved to a long trunk? It doesnt make sense.

Even a fairly small snout can turn out to be useful, e.g. see Tapir. I could well imagine the proto-elephants to have evolved from something resembling pigs to something resembling tapirs.

Re:Humans

[rtb61]

If you want to go that way, how about humanity and the lack of a self cleaning butt. Intelligent design, WTF, if humanity was so intelligent you reckoned by now they would have figured a way of genetically engineering a self cleaning backend.

Most poorly physically designed monkey on the planet. If some of them, mind you only minority, didn't have brains they would be of any use at all and likely be extinct by now from some random butt infection.

Re:Humans

[DNS-and-BIND]

Get your godliness the hell out of here. Idiotic Christians like you can dominate all the other discussions with your fundie crap, but stay out of evolution threads, MMMkay? Thx.

Re:Humans

[Fujisawa Sensei]

That last part should be read that your dogma falls flat in its own context much less any actual rational analysis.

Re:Humans

[SilverEyes]

Does it make you that uncomfortable to know that the meaning of your life is one fixed in thought, and not externally decreed? That randomness exists?

Grow up, for Christ's sake.

What? It doesn't make me uncomfortable that randomness exists, I am a proponent of evolution. Did you reply to the correct person?

Re:Humans

[colinrichardday]

Amd what is the percentage of people having distended colons?

Re:Humans

[AndersOSU]

Darwin's fundamental breakthrough in developing evolutionary theory was considering populations, not getting hung up on individuals. Some guy already tried to develop a theory of evolution based on individuals. It didn't work out.

Re:Humans

[AndersOSU]

Evolution doesn't necessarily say anything about abiogenesis.

Natural selection is evolution, and it is random. If you want to talk about directed evolution, there's an article around here somewhere about really terrible designs.

Re:Humans

[AndersOSU]

The idea of god the watchmaker has stood the test of time remarkably well. The important thing to recognize is that it's a non-scientific proposition. There is not and never will be any evidence one way or the other. You can choose to believe one side, and I another, and we can still agree on all maters of substance.

Re:Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod -1: Taking life a little too seriously

Re:Humans

[chadplusplus]

Using the pig snout example, the longer nosed individuals were better adapted "rootin'". Noses got longer and eventually developed other competitive advantages such as the ability to grasp things; however...

If the longer nose was an advantage, why do not all pigs have long noses?

Perhaps the longer snout was neither an advantage or detriment and the longer nosed populations just hung around until finally it grew to the length that it truly was an advantage.

Or perhaps the genetic difference between a short pig nose and a long elephant trunk is very minor and it only took a small mutation to make the change.

Aren't there fossil records of early elephants with short trunks?

Re:Humans

[chadplusplus]

You certainly have a valid point. I suspect many "mutants" died terrible deaths before they ever got the chance to reproduce. But some survived long enough to spread their mutation. Unfortunately, in some cases, I suspect those second generation mutants were all eaten before having the chance to further spread their mutation. But occasionally, and apparently often enough, mutations survived to be spread and create new species. You're not confusing probability and possibility on Slashdot are you?

Re:Humans

[holmstar]

How does their breathing tract move from their mouth, to another orifice?

It didn't! Most animals breath mostly through their noses, not their mouths. The nostrils of the proto-dolphins migrated from the tip of the nose to the top of the head, presumably because being able to breathe while keeping your head level/pointed downward has a survival benefit... easier to see enemies/food/whatever swimming through the water, probably.

Re:Humans

[holmstar]

Not when you kill your host. How many cancers do you know of that are highly contagious? And I don't count those that tend to be caused by viral infection.

Re:Humans

[SilverEyes]

Oh, my nesting is all messed up.

Re:Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolution is entirely based on random chance.

Sure, in the same sense that everything that happens from day to day is based on random chance.

Re:Humans

[omris]

But that's the point isn't it? Cancer isn't an organism. It's your own body cells malfunctioning. An organism (like a virus) can cause cancer, but the infection doesn't kill you at all. And on a viral timescale, you dying of cancer 20 years from now is meaningless. In that time you may have been able to infect hundreds of other hosts. Sounds like a fantastic strategy.

Cancer is not subject to evolutionary pressure the way an individual organism is because it's just a part of your body working abnormally. If you want to get even more specific, the genes that cancer cells are over expressing are the same genes that allow you to grow, heal, and use cell receptor only when appropriate (as opposed to all the time). All of these functions are so important to you as an individual that the risk that they will break and stop working right and give you cancer are minute compared to the advantage of having them. And until the last few thousand years, you were so likely to be killed by something else (like starvation, war, infectious disease, childbirth, etc.) that the cancer risk manifested so rarely as to be almost non-existent. You can blame modern medicine for letting you live long enough to develop cancer.

Re:Humans

[mhajicek]

Humans can build very tall structures for living and working in, yet have bodies so fragile that if they fall out of one they splatter all over the ground.

Re:Humans

[rotor]

I think SilverEyes answered the bit about killing off all without the mutation quite nicely with this:

Suddenly, during a drought, proto-elephants (or whatever you want to call them) are able to retain enough water by digging for roots, whereas their less fortunate relatives die off.

As for a "first mutated individual," it may have been a trait that occurred in several individuals much like being tall is in humans. It wasn't long ago that being six feet tall was out of the ordinary. Now it's very common and not uncommon to see someone in a crowd over six and a half. Such heights were an existing trait and as they became more desirable they became more pronounced.

Re:Humans

[ucblockhead]

The thing is, genes can very rarely determine results...they can just change statistical likelihoods. If the mutation causes the adult to be 4% stronger, it can't really effect whether the animal gets eaten as a little fluffy baby. In that sense, it takes luck, essentially, for the gene to get to the point where it can have an effect.

A mutation may be beneficial, but luck may mean that some times the gene gets wiped out when limited to a single individual anyway. The case you are talking about, the instant when an individual represents the first mutation, is pretty much the only time when the fate of one individual matters, an even then, not really as the same mutation may independently arise in more than one. A 4% increase in strength is beneficial, but if the first creature who randomly gets dealt that mutation gets struck by lightening, it won't matter a damn. It is only really when the mutation flows into the population as a whole that evolution becomes more deterministic because it is only then that the slight differences in survival rates can swamp random chance.

Re:Humans

[Grishnakh]

Insects can most certainly wield weapons with their free limbs. They're just not smart enough to figure out how, or why it would be useful.

Basically, our giant human brains have made up for any other deficiencies in our bodies.

Re:Humans

[Ajaxamander]

Might also include a "Whooosh" in there too, as GGP was turning a common phrase to comic effect...

Re:Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to go on automatically assuming I am Christian. The problem is that you automatically assumed that I meant good in each case as in morally good. What I meant was good as in "good for the individual". If there are resources available that improves the individual's life, they will strive for them. Hence, they will strive for (the) good (resources). And what is this heaven you speak of? The universe is cyclic, with everything exchanging. I just don't think I will exist in my current form with the next big bang comes around.

In any case, your entire refutation falls flat because you based it upon an incorrect assumption. All you proved was that I couldn't be a fundamental Christian. Well done, sir, for accomplishing nothing.

Re:Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to go on automatically assuming I am Christian. The problem is that you automatically assumed that I meant good in each case as in morally good. What I meant was good as in "good for the individual". If there are resources available that improves the individual's life, they will strive for them. Hence, they will strive for (the) good (resources). And what is this heaven you speak of? The universe is cyclic, with everything exchanging. I just don't think I will exist in my current form with the next big bang comes around. In any case, your entire refutation falls flat because you based it upon an incorrect assumption. All you proved was that I couldn't be a fundamental Christian. Well done, sir, for accomplishing nothing.

Is that the best your ID instructor could come up with to refute my argument?

Its no assumption, ID is a fundamentalist Christian theology, no mater how you spin it, no mater what label you put on it. So you're still regurgitating modern fundamentalist christianity theology.

All you're doing now is trying to assign new definitions to words that were used in a known context.

And you are probably posting from the the school where that nut-job professor is giving you credit for Internet trolling.

Re:Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

either a dipshit, or an asshole

"Hmm, can't use a strawman anymore, they're onto that.... Loaded question to the rescue!"

Re:Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of god the watchmaker has stood the test of time remarkably well. The important thing to recognize is that it's a non-scientific proposition. There is not and never will be any evidence one way or the other. You can choose to believe one side, and I another, and we can still agree on all maters of substance.

The laws of Moses have been around a long time too, doesn't mean working or cooking on Sunday is a stoning offense.

Clearly...

[bsDaemon]

Clearly, no intelligence was involved in these designs. I guess that solves it.

Re:Clearly...

[Kligat]

{
state_entry
      { if (funny animal feature like platupus);
llBloviate "godhasasenseofhumor"
      else
llBloviate "godmadeitsobeautifully"
      xor
llBloviate "itmustbethedevilswork"}
}

Can you still get modded up if you write your post as if it were a programming language even if you have no clue what what programming language you just made up?

Spartan Giraffes

[Knave75]

Perhaps the great fall is a way to cull the weak giraffes. Those that do not survive the 5 foot drop would never have been successful in the wild. Ditto for the slow-evolving shark siblings. If your brother eats you in the womb and you do not adequately defend yourself, then you simply did not deserve to live.

Seriously though, evolution does not provide traits that are advantageous, it simply removes those that are disadvantageous, relative to other traits. That is a subtle but important difference. Eating your brothers and sisters in-utero sounds pretty gross, but unless it hurts the reproductive rate of those who carry that gene, there is no reason to weed it out.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[Anonymous Coward]

> Those that do not survive the 5 foot drop would never have been successful in the wild.

I think surviving that fall and not breaking anything has more to do with luck than with a genuine measure of health and skill. Which is okay if you hate unlucky giraffes (blame the victim!), but rather silly otherwise.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[tool462]

Exactly. The only way I can think of to even start to consider a "worst evolutionary design" would have to be in terms of adaptability. I.e., how sensitive is the life form to small changes in its environment? Even that is full of problems though, as "best" and "worst" are measured only relative to the current environment. Any stable population could be considered the best solution for its environment--at least a local maximum, if not global.

As a side note, this thread is also why you should never invite a pedant to a party. We have the capability of sucking the joy out of nearly any conversation.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[tieTYT]

Seriously though, evolution does not provide traits that are advantageous, it simply removes those that are disadvantageous

Um, source? If this were true, wouldn't we still be single celled organisms right now?

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[geekoid]

"...evolution does not provide traits that are advantageous, ..."
Yes it does.

"it simply removes those that are disadvantageous"
That would assume you ahve all traits at the 'beginning'.

New traits can develop from new mutations.

You seem to be a little too Lamarkian.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[Anonymous Coward]

There are few, if any, stable populations. In fact most populations fluctuate wildly, for varying reasons. Often these fluctuations have a definite cause (like predators), but if you see a species in isolation they will seem quite random.

And guess what ? Sometimes these populations hit zero, just by accident. That's another species extinct. For every species of large animals alive, there are over 5000 extinct species.

There are several thousand species of humans, but only 5 surviving species. And when we say 5 surviving species, we really mean 1 that has any significant numbers, 4 down to their last members.

Of course that's the "endgame" of evolution : a singular species that conquers at least the earth, possibly the galaxy. The only way this can possibly be avoided is that there are different, and exactly equal, global optima in the fitness function (which is mostly about efficiency), something which is more unlikely than flying pigs bringing presents to the astronauts on the ISS on Christmas eve.

So that's one things socialists' eugenics theories were right about : in the end, there can be only one species. Whether that'll be humans is, of course, another question. Seems unlikely if you ask me.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[v1]

There are a couple animals in the wild that birth several young at a time, and the siblings kill or eat each other until at the end of the rearing there's only one left. (the strongest) I think they were both birds iirc. Anyone happen to know what critters I'm thinking of?

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[nizo]

Same thing for the spiders: the sure footed ones pass their genes on, while those less sure footed explode on the ground.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[samurphy21]

I think perhaps we all have a difference of symantics between "evolution", "mutation", and "natural selection".

natural selection will select those most fit for survival within a species, thereby weeding out those with undesirable traits in relation to the rest.

mutation provides the grist of the natural selection mill, giving it new material to select from.

Evolution is the overall process of species adapting genetically and eventually forming new and more numerous species.

Thats how I view it, but IANAEB.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[v1]

"...evolution does not provide traits that are advantageous, ..."
Yes it does.

Possibly more correct to say that evolution continuously offers random features which may or may not be advantageous, and the features which are detrimental to its survival tend to be removed from the gene pool.

OP is correct in saying that evolution in itself doesn't provide anything specifically helpful. It does encourage traits that happen to be beneficial though. Evolution is not the process of trying improvements, that's what heterosexual reproduction is for. The purpose of evolution is to improve on the survival of the accidentally better designs.

There are an insane number of good examples, but I'll toss out a good one now. Sickle Cell Anemia. Sucks if you have it, has a variety of nasty side effects and no visible benefit. Except if you live in say, Nicaragua, and are exposed to malaria-bearing mosquitoes all the time. Something about the cell shape defies the virus, SCA sufferers are immune to malaria. So the SCA expression there is very very high because although it grants a disadvantage, it also grants an advantage. Interesting thing about SCA is you only need one gene to have immunity, and require both to get the nasty side effects. But it's advantageous enough to be kept.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[apoc.famine]

Two comments:
 
Why the FUCK is idle showing up on my main page again? I killed it for good reason the first time.
 
Secondly, RE: Evolution, they apparently missed the big job of of hyena clitorises - it allows the female to be in complete control of mating. In hyena circles, the males are inferior, and have to be on good terms to pass on their genes. It's a genetic chastity belt.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[Anonymous Coward]

the fall of a baby giraffe is much like the spanking the doctor gave you. teh shock to the system that makes your system start working.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[Zapo_Verde]

There are several thousand species of humans, but only 5 surviving species. And when we say 5 surviving species, we really mean 1 that has any significant numbers, 4 down to their last members.

According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_(genus)) there is only one species of humans remaining, Homo Sapiens. The last species of humans besides homo sapiens died out about 12,000 years ago.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[ucblockhead]

Darwin's theory explains how evolution occurs due to mutation and natural selection. Mutation is a core part of the theory.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[ucblockhead]

Certain traits may cause other creatures with other traits that previously weren't detrimental to die out due to competition. That seems to be "advantageous".

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[Ren.Tamek]

Perhaps the great fall is a way to cull the weak giraffes. Those that do not survive the 5 foot drop would never have been successful in the wild.

A common fallacy on the subject of evolution is that every trait that an animal has is in some way good or useful for an animal, but this is just not the case, and this is a perfect example to illustrate why.

Being tall is advantageous for many reasons, one of which is browsing leaves on tall trees. The distance between the womb of a tall animal and the ground is going to be a long way as a consequence of this, but it confers no obvious advantage, it is just a fact of the situation. Ungulates are well known for having tough newborns, and most species can walk only a few hours after birth, so it is quite likely that they were predisposed by their ancestry to having the genes to deal with the problem.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[demonrob]

good thing it turned up on your main page then isn't it, otherwise we'd never have shared your knowledge of animal clitori.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[timeOday]

Perhaps the great fall is a way to cull the weak giraffes.

Sure, maybe.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[Nazlfrag]

There's still Sasquatch in North America, a population of Yeti in the Himalayas, the Australian Bunyip and of course the Belgians.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[tapanitarvainen]

There are a couple animals in the wild that birth several young at a time, and the siblings kill or eat each other until at the end of the rearing there's only one left. (the strongest) I think they were both birds iirc. Anyone happen to know what critters I'm thinking of?

Several hawks and eagles are like that, and some waterfowls like boobies also routinely end up with just one chick alive (even if they don't actually eat their siblings). It's always the oldest that survives unless it happens to be sick or die young by accident, because of the head start it gets by hatching earlier. In evolutionary sense it might be said the younger siblings are just insurance in case the oldest dies young. (In some species younger siblings occasionally survive when it's an exceptionally good year; in some, two or more normally survive but in bad years older ones eat their siblings, &c.

Other interesting evolutionary designs are certain spiders whose young always eat their mother - not to mention some whose female eats the male during intercourse. :-)

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[skine]

Yes, but what GP was specifying was that evolution, mutation and natural selection are not the same thing at all. It's similar to how hydrogen and oxygen atoms are essential parts of a water molecule, but it's crucial not to just lump the three together as being one in the same.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[Potor]

How can you talk about evolution having a purpose? That implies design.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be overly pedantic but malaria is caused by protozoa not a virus.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[Anonymous Coward]

Some Pelican species! They tend to have two or three young and most of the time the biggest pushes the others out of the nest. Once out of the nest the rejects starve.

BTW - a remarkably stupid article, not worth the electricity needed to download it

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[Anonymous Coward]

[Sickle-cell anemia] "Except if you live in say, Nicaragua, and are exposed to malaria-bearing mosquitoes all the time."

It's a really good example of how "better" or "advantageous" depends greatly upon the local environment. This is the case for all traits, and the fact that environments are so varied is one of the main reasons that life remains diverse: there is NO "best"/"most optimal" solution for all conditions. There are only local optima, and even those are temporary because environmental conditions also change through time.

One small detail with the SCA example -- the classic geographic area where it applies is equatorial Africa, where the gene is most abundant in the indigenous population. I don't think the gene was more frequent in the indigenous population of Nicaragua, although, obviously, anybody with the gene that moves to central America would have the same advantages in a malaria-prone area.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolution adds traits; natural selection removes them.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[tgibbs]

The theory of natural selection entails a mechanism for generation of new diversity. Darwin postulated this, because the theory of natural selection required it to function. Darwin's prediction was confirmed with the discovery of mutation.

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[Anonymous Coward]

It astounds me you are commenting on malarial adaptation and you don't even know that it is a parasite x.x

Re:Spartan Giraffes

[ucblockhead]

Darwin's theory describes how the evolution occurs through the process of mutation and natural selections. Mutation is a core part of the theory, as core as selection.

Design?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no design or creator, it is merely the outcome of enviromental factors. Silly Title

Hit And Miss!

[capandjudy]

Clearly evolution is a hit and/or miss process. This just illustrates this principal.

Re:Hit And Miss!

[gardyloo]

Sometimes spelling is that way, too.

Another worst design.

[kurt555gs]

The Pontiac Aztec. God they were ugly.

Re:Another worst design.

[josteos]

Sadly, it's why I stopped watching Dark Angel. It was the Car-Car Binks of Post-Apocalyptic Seattle.

Re:Another worst design.

[RockWolf]

The Pontiac Aztec. God they were ugly.

Must've been evolution, because there sure wasn't a lot of intelligent design that went into that one...

Re:Another worst design.

[DigiShaman]

You mean the Pontiac Ass-Tech?

Re:Another worst design.

[Rudisaurus]

Second only to the Nissan Cube. Now THAT'S ugly!

Re:Another worst design.

[dotgain]

Uhh, Nissan Stagea? That's pretty fahhkin' ugly, I reckon the Cubes are cute!

Cowboy Neal!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this needs to be a poll.

platypus

[Anonymous Coward]

They forgot platypus.

Gut bacteria

[bar-agent]

That's a good point -- why don't we have cellulose-digesting gut bacteria? And why can't we just pop a pill and add them?

Re:Gut bacteria

[Anonymous Coward]

The bacteria that produce cellulase to digest cellulose don't live very long in a carnivores stomach.

I'm not entirely sure why. I was going to say the ph was wrong, but that can vary dramatically for cows depending on their feed.
Perhaps our other enzymes break down the bacteria?

Re:Gut bacteria

[jonored]

The apparatus to ferment cellulose into digestibles internally is rather large and high-maintainence. There's the multiple 'stomachs' before the main one where the bacteria breed, the cow routinely vomits up some to mechanically reprocess, and occasionally when venting becomes blocked for any reason a cow dies becuase their lungs were crushed by the expanding gasses in their stomach. termites get away with a lot because of being small. Additionally, there was that study that indicated that developments in the human intellect were associated with us starting to use cooking as an external digestion method - might not be the best thing for us in particular to add digesting some of the hardest foodstuff to use when we already diverted that energy to brainpower. And if we use cows properly we get the best of both worlds anyways - fueling ourselves off of cellulose with only the effort of keeping a few cows to eat. Of course, we don't, and use them as an inefficient step between stuff we /can/ eat and us, but that's another issue.

Re:Gut bacteria

[tacarat]

I did my homework, but got hungry on the way over.

Re:Gut bacteria

[Anonymous Coward]

Because a grass diet is a full time commitment.

Ruminants teeth grow for their whole lives. Ours don't, so they would not last very long.

Re:Gut bacteria

[Bertie]

There's more than one approach to breaking down cellulose. Rabbits have a rather less sophisticated apparatus than the cow, packing a single stomach chamber and a big appendix full of helpful bacteria.

I suppose we could have developed something like this. The catch is that breaking down cellulose by this method requires two passes through the digestive tract, so we'd have to eat our own shit.

I dunno about you, but I'm happy enough doing without.

Re:Gut bacteria

[Anonymous Coward]

What about rabbits? They are much smaller than cows and have a simpler digestive system (no regurgitation or multiple stomachs) and still seem to do ok.

Re:Gut bacteria

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do we need to digest cellulose? There are plenty of plants that we can eat, and cellulose provides an important function in that it provides enough bulk to push feces out regularily, so that the hamburger you ate 2 months ago isn't still rotting inside your gut.

Re:Gut bacteria

[emandres]

As to the possible nutritional benefits of cellulose, I don't know, but I do know that I'm pretty glad for the "auxiliary" functions it plays in my digestive system. If you all of a sudden start digesting cellulose, prepare for some of the worst constipation you and your gastroenterologist have ever seen. Not to mention the fact that to get rid of the cellulose munching bacteria you would have to go through a horrible GI tract cleansing regimen.

Re:Gut bacteria

[CCW]

Rabbits eat their poop as part of their digestive process, rather than chewing their cud. If you want to call that ok, go right ahead. Evolutionarily you are correct, they do quite well, but lets not overstate how efficient they are at digesting - everything gets run through twice.

Re:Gut bacteria

[tgibbs]

The use of bacteria to break down cellulose is itself an ugly evolutionary kluge. It would be much simpler if mammals made cellulase. But the bacteria were already there, and natural selection frequently chooses the most direct solution rather than the ideal one.

Re:Gut bacteria

[tgibbs]

Yet cattle and rabbits excrete just fine despite digesting cellulose. For that matter, a lot of the bulk is bacteria.

Re:Gut bacteria

[Grishnakh]

As the other poster pointed out, rabbits eat their own shit because of their simpler digestive system. I'll pass on that, thanks.

However, since rabbits already exist, and are happy to eat cellulose and turn it into protein (in their own muscles), we can take advantage of this by keeping rabbits around to eat grass, and then eating the rabbits. This works great with cows, too (and is more efficient since a single cow has hundreds of pounds of edible meat). Of course, since factory farms in America feed cows all kinds of shit (including ground-up cows) and pump them full of antibiotics unnecessarily, they're really not that healthy to eat any more. As an alternative, you can get bison meat from better grocers. It's much leaner than cow meat, and isn't allowed to be raised the way cows are.

If it's stupid but it works, it isn't stupid

[Cyberax]

"If it's stupid but it works, it isn't stupid" - that also applied to evolutionary designs.

Also, some of these 'design issues' might in truth be advantages. For example, sea mammals can swim through oxygen-depleted dead waters just fine - they don't depend on dissolved oxygen.

Exploding Spider

[dunezone]

I have heard of these giant spiders breaking apart like glass but yet to see any documented footage of it happening.

Re:Exploding Spider

[Anonymous Coward]

Found a pic of the result of one of these
"explodes"

Re:Exploding Spider

[hedwards]

Despite what the article says, it isn't a bad design. The goliath bird-eating spider is very close to the limit for size on a creature with an exoskeleton. Exoskeletons tend to get weaker the larger the body and at a point just a bit bigger than this creature the exoskeleton is no longer able to handle it.

And yes, it does happen, a drop of pretty much any tarantula, even from waist level is going to prove to be fatal. I'm not sure how this is a bad design since we'd probably be killed falling out of a tall tree. And from an evolutionary standpoint dead is dead, dying quietly 3 weeks later isn't that much different than blowing up if it prevents you from procreating.

It has a purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

"Besides my beer gut, which I'm sure has some purpose,"

It's an evolutionary adaptation to keep the sun and rain off your feet.

Re:It has a purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

and ensure that other, more suitable candidates, get picked during the mating season (friday night in the bar), thus weeding out the undesirable traits.

Re:It has a purpose

[tacarat]

Genitalia camouflage.

Not Design!

[TrippTDF]

The scientific community has enough to worry about with the term "design"... we should use these examples as proof that there is no design! Although they are logically not the best example of how to propagate a species, we should not confuse evolution with design.

Re:Not Design!

[sleeponthemic]

Not to mention the fact that people shouldn't confuse evolution for "perfection". We're choosing an arbitrary point in time (now) to draw a line in the sand, claiming organisms should be perfectly adapted at this point. Wrong.

Re:Not Design!

[twostix]

It's funny, the hanger ons to the scientific community have worked *so hard* to diminish the idea of god in the common man and replace it with their utopian ideal of a purely "science" based society - where "science is anything that furthers their ideal no matter how shakey or psuedo.

And replace it they have, with the outcome being lists like these where the average person just replaces the word "god" with "evolution" and "nature" but doesn't replace the belief system behind it (some invisible force consciously "designing" the world).

Unintended consequences for the win.

Re:Not Design!

[arminw]

....we should not confuse evolution with design....

That is right, evolution is random, but design is purposeful.

Re:Not Design!

[ucblockhead]

Not to mention that Evolution is an algorithm that very much suffers from local maxima. Even given infinite time, creatures might not become perfectly adapted.

Re:Not Design!

[johanatan]

You, sir, have my vote for best post. Quite illumining.

engineering principles

[petes_PoV]

It doesn't matter if it's stupid or looks ugly, so long as it gets the job done.

In any evolutionary system, provided the species with the "mistakes" survives to maturity in sufficient numbers to maintain the population, it's a success.

Maybe the real stupid evolutionary "designs" belong to all the thousands of species that have been too inflexible to survive and have become extinct.

Worst?

[sleeponthemic]

How can having a kangaroo crawl into a protective area (where prey cannot pick them off easily) be considered poor design? Are they forgetting our dingos are partial to a bit of baby?

Re:Worst?

[geekoid]

Because a good design would have given them lasers.

Yeah, lame article that seems to be written by someone who doesn't grok the fact that evolution isn't a process that gives us the ultimate species based on our preconceptions of what is stupid.
And somethings are just chance or an evolutionary byproduct.

Re:Worst?

[FooAtWFU]

How can having a kangaroo crawl into a protective area (where prey cannot pick them off easily) be considered poor design?

That would be because of the "epic crawl" part. Have you never seen this on the Discovery Channel or something? The pupa is this tiny slug-like thing, maybe a centimeter long, and it needs to crawl halfway up its mothers' front side and then back down into the pocket. The mother kangaroo is there licking a trail into her own fur to make it a liittle bit easier for the poor thing. Not just really weird, kinda risky on the newborn.

Re:Worst?

[sleeponthemic]

How can having a kangaroo crawl into a protective area (where prey cannot pick them off easily) be considered poor design?

That would be because of the "epic crawl" part. Have you never seen this on the Discovery Channel or something? The pupa is this tiny slug-like thing, maybe a centimeter long, and it needs to crawl halfway up its mothers' front side and then back down into the pocket. The mother kangaroo is there licking a trail into her own fur to make it a liittle bit easier for the poor thing. Not just really weird, kinda risky on the newborn.

Clearly I have been too busy playing knifey spoony. Jesus.

Re:Worst?

[dwywit]

I don't think they followed the kangaroo design all the way through. A female 'roo can have up to 3 youngsters going at once, all at different stages - the slug, attached to a nipple in the pouch, a joey not quite big enough to go venturing out, and a juvenile who stays mostly outside, but comes back for a feed once in a while. She produces 3 different kinds of milk, too - each type ideal for the feeder. She can also put the slug on hold if conditions deteriorate, e.g. drought. Not indefinately, obviously. It's self-control of the population - adapting your reproduction rate to the prevailing environmental conditions. Imagine that happening to humans?

Kangaroos are fascinating creatures. Ever seen the footage from the rear-facing keel-view cam of a 'roo in motion?

Re:Worst?

[Grishnakh]

The problem is that the author of the article is an idiot. As I read somewhere else, the thing about the giraffes isn't even a problem, because the 5-foot fall is necessary to break the umbilical cord and to start the baby breathing. Hhuman babies frequently have to be slapped when they first come out; giraffes don't have hands to slap their newborns, so a short fall does the job.

re: programming language

[plopez]

first prove it is a real programming language, i.e. turing complete.

I'm sure I'll be modded "off topic" for this one.

My first impression is that your language isn't since there is no way to loop.

Mostly bad examples

[Anonymous Coward]

A few have merit but most are pointless. Here's one of the best.

1 Sea mammal blowhole. Any animal that spends appreciable time in the ocean should be able to extract oxygen from water via gills. Enlarging the lungs and moving a nostril to the back of the head is a poor work-around.

I take it they don't know much about biology. Mammals don't have gills because in part they aren't able to extract enough oxygen from water for mammal brains. The nose holes shifted and merged to make feeding more efficient because most whales feed on plankton and krill. It allows for a head down posture which is better for feeding. The author seems to have limited knowledge of the subject it was more personal observations and not much fact. A more interesting point with baby giraffes would be is the distance dropped a limiting factor on giraffe heights? Would they have longer legs if it wasn't because of baby deaths from a greater height?

Re:Mostly bad examples

[tacarat]

If time wasn't an issue, I wonder if taking a bunch of gill breathers and a oxygen enriched tank would produce something smarter. How would their societies evolve and what tools might come about. I think it's fairly obvious fire wouldn't be discovered for a good long while :P

Re: programming language

[tacarat]

It's still in the Alpha and Omega stage.

Smarter than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

I have long been a reader of the New Scientist magazine. This is a STRONGLY anti-creationist publication. I have long been amazed at reading article after article praising the intelligence and magnificent designing abilities of evolution. So it would seem that this article from Wired has it all wrong. Just because it may look to them to be a bad design, maybe evolution is cleverer than they think and there are very good reasons for doing it this way.

omg print slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG, it has come to this? I read this in my HARD COPY of Wired magazine two days ago! What gives? Slashdot used to be the website to break news... now it is following a magazine mailed out several days ago! Yikes...

Purpose of the beer gut

[turing_m]

Storing fat is a useful way of surviving famine or food shortages. Unfortunately the stored fat always makes the male less athletic, less able to fight, hunt, evade, etc. Storing extra fat on the gut/love handle area is probably the best compromise for athletic purposes - lowest center of gravity possible without adding excess weight to the legs (which have to change direction rapidly).

The worst places to store fat in large quantities are at the extremities such as fingers, toes, hands, feet, forearms, calves and the head, because of the reduction to athletic performance.

Ass, thighs and chest aren't as great as the mid-section but aren't terrible. These areas are where women usually store their fat because if they stored it on their gut men can't tell if they are are pregnant or not.

Re:Purpose of the beer gut

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that a beer keg in your tummy or are you just happy to see me?

Re:Purpose of the beer gut

[FiveDozenWhales]

Also, conspicuously visible fat is historically a great way of saying, "Hey, look at me! I'm so successful that I can eat TONS of food!"
Not so true these days, though...

Re:Purpose of the beer gut

[UltimApe]

There is also a strong push that identifies the fat in the butt as an alternative to the tail... (tails are typically used as counter balance)

going along with our loss of hair along our body, leading to beater heat disapation.

You don't have to outrun the lion, just your friend... and be sure you can run far enough away that they can't track you.

Re:Purpose of the beer gut

[MrCrassic]

That's weird; wouldn't it be beneficial for non-athletes to have fat stored around the extremities solely because most body heat dissipates through them?

Re:Purpose of the beer gut

[MrCrassic]

Sorry to double post, but I also think that fat gravitates to those areas for women to increase their sex and reproductive appeal.

Re:Purpose of the beer gut

[MrCrassic]

It's funny that you mention that. It's been historically recorded that fatter women were actually very much sought after in Victorian times precisely for this reason. Bigger women usually indicated higher status and were more closely associated with "natural" feminine beauty.

Thanks to the 60's and skinny models, now the general idea of "beauty," at least in the US, is a twig-thin, blonde-haired and short woman with at least 34C's and a "decently"-sized ass to match. Or maybe it's Asian women now.

All I know is that I still like my women big. Don't know why.

Re:Purpose of the beer gut

[Grishnakh]

No, the idea of "beauty" for reasonable people is being in shape and healthy. Not anorexically-thin, not fat.

Back in Victorian times, how many of those fat-ass women lived to old age? Sitting around all day doing nothing and letting servants do everything for you, getting no exercise at all, doesn't equate to being healthy, or having a long lifespan.

It's fun, but don't draw conclusions from it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh isn't this a great parlour game! Did you know that the retina is backwards, which is why we have a blind spot? How horrible, how inefficient!

These types of things are all very fun to discuss. But please oh PLEASE do not draw any inferences from them. They don't mean ANYTHING, from a philosophical or theological perspective.

(Example) The vagus nerve in giraffe's neck is as long and ungainly as it is because of the way it develops in the fetus. To make it more efficient in the adult would require a change in the course of fetal development. And depending on how you change the course of fetal development, other things need to change, too. This is a very large and complex system of interconnected dependencies. To look at one isolated phenotypic feature and say, "Hey, I could have designed that better!" bespeaks of a total lack of knowledge about what all is involved in development.

I will say for the record that I believe in evolution, not intelligent design. But whenever I heard people "on my side" using examples like this as "evidence" for NOT intelligent design it frustrates me. You have absolutely no idea the entire bredth of changes -- on every level, from genetics to protein synthesis to overall development -- that would be required to make whatever "inefficient design" work better. It isn't as simple as looking at the adult and saying "this nerve should go here, instead!"

So, that's my little rant. Examples like these are fun. They're entertaining. They're cute.

They are "evidence" of absolutely nothing.

Re:It's fun, but don't draw conclusions from it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought we had a blind spot because there aren't any receptors where the optic nerve enters the retina. And how is the retina backwards? Forgive me, IANAB. I know that light is projected onto the retina much in the same way that it is through a camera so that it is "backwards" but the brain does a pretty good job of sorting that all out. Don't you think? Heck, it even does a pretty darn good job at filling in our blind spots! How long did it take to even figure out that blind spot was there? And if you needed to have a blind spot, why not put it off center and out of the fovea so it doesn't interfere with the vast majority of visual processing?

In conclusion, I support your point but not the way you introduce it.

Re:It's fun, but don't draw conclusions from it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The individual cells in the retina have one side that is photosensitive, and one side that has the axon that connects back to the optic nerve. Think of it like a light: bulb in front, plug in back. (Except this lamp receives light instead of sending it out.)

In a well-designed eye, the photosensitive part would face the front of the eye, and the "connecting cable" would point out the back.... meaning, the optic nerve would NEVER HAVE TO pass through the back of the eye. The connecting cables would already BE outside of the eye, pointing back to the brain.

But that's not how it's arranged. The photoreceptive parts are pointing to the back of the eye, and the "cables" are all pointing IN, to the center of the eye. So how do they get to the brain? They collect together into a bunch, pick a spot and "punch through" the back of the eye all at the same spot..... Where they go through the back of the eye, obviously there can BE no receptors. Hence, the blind spot.

Re:It's fun, but don't draw conclusions from it.

[bakes]

Your explanation is clear, but raises the question: if the photoreceptors are pointing the wrong way, how do they receive the light?

Re:It's fun, but don't draw conclusions from it.

[Cochonou]

This is because the receptors let light pass through them. A "superior design" in light collection efficiency (albeit probably a trade-off with some other characteristics) are the eyes of cats or crocodiles. They feature a reflective layer behind the retina called tapetum: this allows light to go twice through the photoreceptors. This is also why you often see their eyes shining in the dark.

Re:It's fun, but don't draw conclusions from it.

[Anonymous Coward]

But surely an omnipotent, omniscient being would be capable of a better design?

Re:It's fun, but don't draw conclusions from it.

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't mean ANYTHING, from a philosophical or theological perspective.

Huh?
It pretty clearly points out that we weren't designed or at least that the designer isn't omnipotent.
I'd say that has a very big theological impact (see: Genesis).

Re:It's fun, but don't draw conclusions from it.

[intheshelter]

said the lowly subject He created. . . .

Re:It's fun, but don't draw conclusions from it.

[Anonymous Coward]

See, this is the part of the argument that's just wrong. You quite simply don't know that.

It's entirely possible that the "inefficiencies" you see in the design of the eye are a trade-off -- a decision because God had decided to work within the constraints of the physical unvierse (that he probably came up with based on optimizing OTHER sorts of principles), and given the constraints he'd decided to use, this design happened to be the "best option".... the one that solved the most problems in the best way.

Now, of course, I can't prove this -- but you can't disprove it either. As I said in my original comment, you're just looking at the engineering properties of one feature. You have to imagine that an omnipotent omniscient creater would understand EVERYTHING involved. Maybe making a more "efficient" eye would require too much dinking with the embyonic development process, that would throw other developmental things out of whack. Maybe it would require too much energy, causing the organism to require eating too much food to effectively survive. And so on: you quite simply don't know what all of the other effects of a "simple design change" in the eye would be. It's quite possible that our eyes WERE the "best solution" given the constraints of the problem God was trying to solve.

Re:It's fun, but don't draw conclusions from it.

[TheThiefMaster]

Cells are transparent, the light goes right through to the correct side.

It does blur our vision slightly though.

Re:It's fun, but don't draw conclusions from it.

[Grishnakh]

The cells aren't opaque; light passes through them to the photoreceptors. However, this causes a huge decrease in sensitivity, so while it works fine in the daytime, our low-light vision sucks.

By contrast, an octopus has its photoreceptors pointed the right way, and has excellent low-light vision, which it needs on the sea floor where there isn't a lot of light.

However, if we had eyes like an octopus, would we go blind if we went out in the daytime in Arizona without sunglasses (or a welding helmet)? Maybe the photoreceptors are backwards so that we can handle the high-light conditions we're frequently in.

Of course, another poster pointed out cat's eyes as being superior for night vision (which they definitely are; I'm constantly tripping over my cats in the dark). And cats don't have problems with Arizona sunshine; mine like to go outside as much as they can here. Unfortunately, I believe cats have poor color vision compared to humans.

design!

[fermion]

There are so many bad "designs". baby butterflies dying because they can't get out of the cocoon. Reasonable from an evolutionary perspective, but what designer would want to kill baby butterflies.

Or what about pain that will never go away. What is the purpose of have a burn victim still feel pain days after the injury. Or lifelong back pain. What kind of design relishes in making organisms suffer for no apparent reason?

Then of course there is sex. From a procreation point of view, one would the process to be as simple as possible, not a few to several minutes of interaction. One could have designed us so the interaction was separate from reproduction. That way we could couple as needed, to have orgasms, but then make babies only when it was useful. The combination of the two is obvious trickery, and it says something about the design.

Re:design!

[Anonymous Coward]

What sort of designer would produce something in large quantities with less than perfect quality, test the productions for errors, and recycle those that don't meet/exceed expectations? Hmm...

From a procreation point of view, one would want the process to be simple enough for the population to grow but not so simple that the population grows out of control. You can only support so many babies at a time, let alone people. It's not until relatively recently that the distinction between coupling and baby making has been made. It seems pretty efficient to me to incorporate the coupling and emotional aspects with the actual production of offspring.

Re:design!

[garompeta]

fermion the question is not if a single baby butterfly dies, the question is how many thousands of eggs are there to compensate that loss. Overall it is efficient and that single flaw doesn't really have an impact for the survival of the species.
Now if that problem affects the sustainability of the species, then the flaw becomes an issue.

"One could have designed us so the interaction was separate from reproduction"

Orgasms are a medium and a necessary lure, otherwise we would extinct very soon. Without the thousands of millions of "mistakes" made by men, our world population would be way lower.
While in the first world countries sex became a ludic recreational device, in third world countries it still has the primordial function as a mean to survival. Also as you can see comparing the population pyramids of developed countries with higher life expectancies from the third world countries which has a very lower life expectancies, the pyramid is literally inverted.
The lower expectancies of life, people have an outrageous amount of kids... and we have our case of butterflies here, but the flaw in this case is social and economical rather than genetic.
This "reproductive function" of sex becomes very evident after the great wars. The American Baby Boom was a direct influence from the World War II, and that is reflected in every country that had great losses during the wars. It wasn't a state policy that ordered to their citizens to reproduce, it was natural and unconscious, which is very interesting.

Very similarly happens with our primordial need of food. When we are really hungry in the verge of starvation, we don't get picky, we eat whatever is digestible, will be pulling roots eating raw grains and meat. Once you are pretty full our tastes get more sophisticated and try to also satisfy our palate: eating loses the function of nutrition, it becomes a luxury.
In the "civilized world" sex has also became a snack and a gourmet dish for the connoisseurs and we are all the time trying to remove its calories from it while improving its flavor, forgetting the nutritional value of it.

the human foot

[circletimessquare]

the human foot is the stupidest most ugliest thing. the shape is completely pointless, the whole 5 wiggling toes thing is absurd and useless. to say toes help us grip and balance is to argue from the starting assumption that the human foot its the best design, which it obviously isn't. a truly intelligent design would be something like pan from greek legend: hooves. now a hoof is smart

and the foot is also the most accessible argument against intelligent design in your rhetorical toolbox. i mean come on, look at your damn foot: how can you look at a human foot and NOT see that it was once a monkey hand for gripping trees coopted into the need to walk instead, and that this "foot" is a relatively "new" development in our monkey lineage?

next time you're confronted with an intelligent design moron, take off your shoe, resist throwing it at them, and show them your foot

Re:the human foot

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, point out that men have nipples.

Re:the human foot

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say unlike the popular theory that says hominids evolved from apes only by walking around plains, I'd rather think the adaptations are a lot better suited to walking waist deep in the rivers and lakes that crisscrossed and dotted those plains. Why not? While other higher primates were running around trying to find fruit or leaves, there were nice high calorie things like fish and water-chestnut like plants that could be had for little effort other than noodling about and occasional swimming. If you're going to be in the water a lot, then having paddle-like feet, losing most body hair, having enough body fat to float on, and having a downturned nose that keeps most water out actually makes more sense than having such features for primarily running around in open fields. I'd say being able to run on two feet and see around open fields was a nice side effect of what the evolved traits were originally for.

Now if only some anthropologists out there could start finding stuff to back up this hypothesis that makes a lot of observational sense compared to the prevailing theory.

Re:the human foot

[slim]

Don't dis feet.

Google for 'barefooting' and find all the people who are finding that wearing minimalist shoes improves their posture, fixes back pain, and makes simply walking/running around fun again.

In fact the whole foot and leg are very well adapted to their purpose.

Hooved creatures need four legs to balance. We can stand upright by doing nothing but twitching tiny muscles in our feet -- if we've not allowed them to atrophy, by wrapping them up in big cushioned shoes for our whole lives.

Re:the human foot

[Grishnakh]

Total BS. Human feet are not evolved for walking around on hot concrete or asphalt surfaces, broken glass, snow and ice, etc.

They might have been fine for walking around on bare ground, muddy river bottoms, etc., but modern life is completely different from that. Walking around barefoot today is a recipe for disaster, or at least burned soles. This is why most people don't do it except in the comfort of their homes.

Re:the human foot

[slim]

You didn't Google did you.

"Barefooting" involves choosing footwear that protects you as much as necessary, without cushioning you unnecessarily. Going as close to barefoot as you can, while staying protected from the dangers you've described.

I was trying to avoid namedropping a product, but we're talking about things like Vibram Fivefingers -- although something that's not purpose-built, such as a basic Converse shoe with its very basic sole, do almost as well.

OTOH in temperate climates (e.g. Britain), the asphalt doesn't get too hot for bare feet that are accustomed to it. I spent a few summer weeks as a student, going barefoot around my home city at the time (Birmingham). I only stopped because of social pressure from some of my peers. I never stood on any broken glass or similar, simply by watching where I was going.

The fact is, the human foot is great for lots of situations - and would be good for more if we didn't let it get all soft and vulnerable by wrapping it in cotton wool.

Re:the human foot

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, I don't see the benefit at all. Good shoes let you walk it lots more places without having to worry about watching every step for broken glass or other hazards, worrying about it becoming too cold and getting frostbite (which tends to affect the feet first), for those in colder climates (which is lots of people in industrialized countries), worrying about it getting too hot and burning your feet (which is lots of people in hotter climates, such as Arizona where I live and many places near the equator), etc. Good shoes also provide proper support and eliminate back pain.

The whole reason humans invented clothing is so we can protect our bodies from the elements, and survive and even live comfortably in many more places than we can naked: in the rain, in the cold, in the heat, etc. Shoes/boots are just another article of clothing which let us go places we can't barefoot. Running around town without shoes makes about as much sense as walking around in a hot, sunny environment without a hat and sunglasses, or in a cold environment without a coat and gloves. You can do it, but why? So you can inflate your ego because you managed to "go without" while no one else made that sacrifice?

Re:the human foot

[slim]

Sorry, I don't see the benefit at all. Good shoes let you walk it lots more places without having to worry about watching every step for broken glass or other hazards, worrying about it becoming too cold and getting frostbite (which tends to affect the feet first), for those in colder climates (which is lots of people in industrialized countries), worrying about it getting too hot and burning your feet (which is lots of people in hotter climates, such as Arizona where I live and many places near the equator), etc.

I think the difference is what we mean by "good shoes". The best shoe would be one that protected you from the things you describe, while still allowing you to use the nerves and muscles in your feet to do what they're meant to do.

Fine, if it's really cold, I need to keep my toes warm. The rest of the time, I'd really prefer to be in sandals, or barefoot. Hot asphalt can be uncomfortable, but your skin develops resistance (just like a beginner guitarist's fingers).

Good shoes also provide proper support and eliminate back pain.

This is the important bit. Evidence is mounting that all that support and padding do more harm than good.
http://nymag.com/health/features/46213/

Running around town without shoes makes about as much sense as walking around in a hot, sunny environment without a hat and sunglasses, or in a cold environment without a coat and gloves. You can do it, but why? So you can inflate your ego because you managed to "go without" while no one else made that sacrifice?

Everything's a compromise between sacrifices. Everyone else was sacrificing their posture, and their awareness of the ground beneath their feet. That's a valid choice of course. But probably in most cases one that wasn't consciously made.

It's quite amazing when you try it, how much variety there is in the ground you walk. I urge you to try it - it makes walking fun again.

On the other hand, there is pure genius.

[tjstork]

For those that want to look at nature, there's plenty of male chauvinism to go around for bitter old men to look at. One example of pure chauvinistic genius is one animal, and I think its the giraffe, whose schlong goes and mashes up whatever giraffe baby might already be in there, just to make sure that he knocks up the lady giraffe with his own seed. Then, there's the lion, who, after killing off a rival, causes the lady to spontaneously miscarry, and she then mates with him to carry his seed.

Re:On the other hand, there is pure genius.

[bhiestand]

Not to mention the fruit fly, which has a scoop-shaped penis. Its penis scoops sperm out of the female fly, so he can replace it with his own, thus increasing the odds that the babies will be his.

Re:On the other hand, there is pure genius.

[Doctor Faustus]

Not to mention the fruit fly, which has a scoop-shaped penis. Its penis scoops sperm out of the female fly, so he can replace it with his own, thus increasing the odds that the babies will be his.
Forget the fruit fly. That's why the human penis has the shape it does.

Re:On the other hand, there is pure genius.

[Grishnakh]

The human penis is much the same. The head is actually quite efficient at scooping rivals' sperm out. There's been research on this.

Re:On the other hand, there is pure genius.

[bhiestand]

Thanks, I didn't know that!

Sorry for the slow reply, haven't had internet for a while.

Not evolutionary design ....

[gstoddart]

It's not really evolutionary design, it's evolutionary results.

Evolution doesn't sit down at the drawing board and try to figure out how to give birth to a giraffe. This is the end result of bazillions of little experiments that ended up with the rather comic/disturbing notion of a baby giraffe falling that far.

I'm sure to an advanced species, our mating habits, genitals, mode of breathing, and whatnot look hilarious. :-P

Cheers

Re:Not evolutionary design ....

[Anonymous Coward]

...
I'm sure to an advanced species, our mating habits, genitals ... look hilarious. :-P

Speak for yourself, I would classify mine more in the "impressive" category.

Re:Not evolutionary design ....

[spire3661]

Yours is the first comment in this discussion ive read that even mentioned the large scale trial and error aspect of evolution

Re:Not evolutionary design ....

[TheDugong]

"Let's face it, even if it [sex] feels good, it [sex] looks silly" - Frank Zappa.

Must have been a a member advanced species.

Re:Not evolutionary design ....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure to an advanced species, our mating habits, genitals, mode of breathing, and whatnot look hilarious. :-P

If you think our mode of breathing is hilarious, you've never seen a lady with a fine rack inhale deeply.

Hella Dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a really fucking stupid list, even for slashdot.

Recursion implies looping

[tepples]

first prove it is a real programming language, i.e. turing complete.

Many actual programming languages in wide use are not Turing-complete because they lack the means to address an unbounded processing memory. But they are LBA-complete (processing size proportional to input size), which is all that matters in practice.

My first impression is that your language isn't since there is no way to loop.

If there is recursion, there is looping.

Re:Recursion implies looping

[retchdog]

If there is recursion, there is a means to address an unbounded processing memory, unless the recursion is explicitly restricted in some way (as it is in the case of LBA which is equivalent to context-sensitive grammar).

Re:Recursion implies looping

[plopez]

damn nerd. We're quibling over definitions of "real" but I'll give the the LBA. Still no sign of recursion though which, IIRC is logically equivalent to loops.

The worst evolutionary design

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentlemen. I present to you the Platypus.

Evolution != Superior

[jellomizer]

I think there is odd concept that Evolution produces the most efficient methods should be reduced. Evolution creates good enough, not perfect creatures. As well during the process better designs have failed for lesser designs as temporary conditions create such a situation. Sure good designs hold a better chance but like probability you can still get whipped out.

The spleen taught you nothing?

[Anonymous Coward]

tsk tsk...

careful when evolving

[demonrob]

Its all just fun and games. Enjoy. Just be careful you don't evolve anything stupid on yourself when drunk.

Balls

[parvin]

So, lets see. We have an organ, arguably the most critical organ in the male part of the species. Problem: it requires a temperature a couple of degrees cooler than core in order to function.

Option 1: Rework the design so it can function a couple of degrees warmer. Encase it safely (like the heart).

Option 2: Create a simple cooling system within the core whereby the organ, safely ensconced, can function properly.

Option 3: Stick the critical organ in a sack on the outside with a bunch of pain receptors. Thanks, Darwin!

journey not a destination

[gurps_npc]

Evolution is a process, not an end goal. The creatures described here are not 'completed', but are instead a work in progress. Also note, many of the 'issues' have secret advantages. For example a whale can dive deeper than most fish can swim because of the huge lungs that go with the blow hole instead of the gills that are more limited.

Human Vagina

[belloc1]

The ripping and tearing during birth leads to infections and often death of the mother prior to modern medicine. It also causes major stresses on the newborn child again often leading to death.

Mercy

[cowtamer]

5 Goliath bird-eating spider exoskeleton. This giant spider can climb trees to hunt very mobile prey. Yet it has a shell so fragile it practically explodes when it falls? Well, at least it can produce silk to make a sail. Oh, wait -- it can't!

If such a population-limiting feature on this monstrosity is not mercy shown to us by the Almighty Lord, what is it??

Low blow

[type40]

Come on. Don't make the whole post a troll.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/08/10/1237245/College-Credits-For-Trolling-the-Web?art_pos=23

That's just not fair, luring them in with a softball post only to have them get slaughtered by the slashdot rank and file.

Low man.

No such thing as evolutionary design

[secondhand_Buddah]

There is no such thing as evolutionary design. Evolution is a natural process that happens over time, guided in its process by the indeterminable events and environments that it may encounter. Evolution is the end result of all of the minor adaptions that have happened over time.

Re:No such thing as evolutionary design

[Thong]

Sort of like the monkeys and typewriters thing. Wow you evolutionists will believe anything.

Re:No such thing as evolutionary design

[secondhand_Buddah]

Google Epigenomics

Evolution is not "bad"

[nomad-9]

There are no such things than bad evolutionary designs. Evolutionary traits of organisms that have managed to survive are by definition all successes.
It is about survival & reproduction, not perfection.

capability for self destruction

[Walter White]

IMO the worst evolutionary result is a critter with sufficient intelligence to develop technology capable of destroying their own species (and probably a lot of others as collateral damage) and with inherited behavioral tendencies to pursue that goal.

that doesn't make any sense

[circletimessquare]

your water monkey idea only would work in a large swampy ecosystem. none of which existed in the time and place we made the transition to bipedalism. on the contrary, the currently accepted theory, that we were evicted out of the trees when jungle changed to savannah, makes far more sense

Bad article

[pubwvj]

That article was an excellent example of a lack of understanding of biology and evolution. Too bad it got any press.

Excuse me ....

[Anonymous Coward]

.... but "design"?

How about top 10 misconceptions about evolution?