And say, the "survival of the fittest" and "natural selection" and "mutation"


Aren't animal species on this planet supposed to be less and less?

Or does it mean there were more, once?

Yes, there were more creatures in the past,and they were generally larger than creatures that exist now

I agree there are too many clueless people around anymore.

Naww....they've always been there.

Are Vegans a part of this equation?

Less and less of what?

More of what once, species?

Isn't more like the survival of the most well adapted? Survival of the "fittest" was more of a social Darwinism thing IIRC

Natural selection is heavily influence the environment/ecosystem that a species is living in, and the changes of that environment/ecosystem. For example today pollution the destruction of habitats and climate change is cause many species go extinct because they can't adapt fast enough. The Dinosaurs went extinct because the asteroid that hit 65 million years ago destroyed the food chain as they knew it for several years, but there where some animals that could survive and adapt. Also some environment seem to support more diverse animals then others (a rain forest has a more diversity then a desert) but I'm off topic now.

No one really knows if we have more or less species on the planet scene we are always discovering a new species every day. But considering that when on species of a certain niche goes extinct then another species will replace it. So probably not? Then again for most of life's history it was bacterial and sometime doing the Precambrian the diversity of life increase greatly. It probably just fluctuates throughout history depending on the environment and conditions at that time.

I agree.

At one time there were no species, i guess at one point there was just one. The number grew and eventually there would have become a natural balance within the ecosystems and environments. Species become extinct and new ones develop.

There is a cyclical nature to everything. Survival of the fittest is an element that fits into the context of the time period within which it inhabitates.

Dawin was the first to recognize the possibilty of evolution. Clearly we should not expect a single man to have worked out on the details in his early work. Mordern scientists have taken this idea lightyears forward since that time.

In truth it's not "survival of the fittest", in many cases it was simply "survival of the luckiest".

There are fossil records of many very well-adapted speices that have become extinct, probably due to weather changes and things like that.

After all, if a species is doing very well, and the weather changes dramatically (say an area that used to be quite temperate or tropic suddendly become a winter wonderland, many speices will die off.

Just a matter of bad luck.

They were only 'fit' for a particular environment that simply wasn't stable over time.

We see this happening today as we kill off species due to polution and other environmental changes.

In fact, in many cases one species may have killed off another. Many anthropologists believe that we (Cro Magnon) killed off all the Neanderthals and contributed to (or were even the direct cause) of their extinction.

This was believed to have occured because we could think better and therefore outsmart them in warfare.

Was that survival of the the fittest? Or just bad luck for the Neanderthal?

The other thing to keep in mind also is that evolution for humans, and many animal (because of humans) today is no longer driven by 'natural selection'.

Evolution by natural selection is over.

Now we control our environment (by building houses, wearing clothe in cold climates, etc.). We also clearly have modern medicine too, much of which is used to help people have childern who could not naturally have children.

So evolution by natural selection is no longer in force. We are actually driving evolution now by the decisions we make. Even if our decisions aren't based on what we might evolve into. We are still driving our own evolution by our very control over natural processes such as keeping people alive who would have naturally died, etc.

Everytime we cure a disease or create a vaccine we interrupt the process of evolution by 'natural selection'.

I make no judgments on this. I'm not saying that it's good or bad. I'm simply pointing out the fact that evolution by 'natural selection' is no longer in affect. We are overriding that process.

We are in the driver's seat of evolution now. Whether or not we are looking out the windshield is another question.

I'm fairly certain most biologists would say that on the whole, over long periods of time, there is a tendency for the number of distinct species to increase - though there have been periods of time in which the number of distinct species decrease (I think we are in one of those times).

The mechanism of darwinian evolution would operate just fine on local levels whether the total number of species is increasing or decreasing.

We are many times driving evolution by the decisions of those other than our self and our own decisions...this is where ethics would come into play or perhaps power...who has the most power gets to make the most decisions?

Technically, there is an ability to keep the body of a human alive for quite some time via artificial means...I am sure it can be done with other species as well...

cloning? stem cells? who decides?

should this decision process start to do this with the "brightest" and the "strongest"...would the weaker and less capable become fewer and fewer over time...

who decides who gets the pills that make someone better...or who does NOT get those pills....

it also reminds me of Zager and Evans...

According to:


http://park.org/Canada/Museum/extinction/permass.html


The Permian mass extinction occurred about 248 million years ago and was the greatest mass extinction ever recorded in earth history; even larger than the previously discussed Ordovician and Devonian crises and the better known End Cretaceous extinction that felled the dinosaurs. Ninety to ninety-five percent of marine species were eliminated as a result of this Permian event. The primary marine and terrestrial victims included the fusulinid foraminifera, trilobites,rugose and tabulate corals, blastoids, acanthodians, placoderms, and pelycosaurs, which did not survive beyond the Permian boundary. Other groups that were substantially reduced included the bryozoans, brachiopods, ammonoids, sharks, bony fish, crinoids, eurypterids, ostracodes, and echinoderms.

Biologists struggle with these questions concerning which endangered species to try to save. Should we go for the pretty cuddly animals because we like those? Or should we pay more attention to animals we might not like so much because their activity is more beneficial to the environment in general?

I wonder what future is in store for planet Earth.

I can't say that I'm optimistic. I just don't see it. There's a lot of talk about evironmental issues, etc. But in the end I just don't see it being put into action quick enough.

From my point of view we'd truly need to take two major steps real quick, neither of which are even on the table.

I personally believe that we need to start right now to begin to work back to lifestyle that is closer to 'living off the land' and not being so dependent on large industry. But we're not even remotely preparing to do that.

The other thing I believe we need to do is to reduce the population. Not by killing people off, but by slowing down our rate of reproduction. Again, this is something that isn't even on the table, and to even attempt to put it on the table would only cause an uproar anyway.

So from my point of view we're basically out of control and by the time we realize it's too late, it will be.

No optimism here.

Fortunately I have no kids so I don't need to worry about them or their offspring.

I've aleady done my part toward not reproducing.

And that was no accident. That was a choice. Even if I had married I was determined to adopt rather than create new life. Or just go without children altogether. I wasn't about to bring new life into this world the way it is. And I made that decision when I was still a teenager (almost a half a century ago). I could already see that the world was way over populated even back then why before all this Global warming and polution crisis stuff.

I am not even positive that the "natural selection" exists anymore..at least in a good part of the human race...

with all the medications and pesticides and pollution and excess...

It does and as long as reproduction with variation continues it will continue to do so.

Its true that technology and medicine ect have altered the equation, but regardless of what attributes are involved reproduction with variation plus any kind of environmental pressure is natural selection at work.

Now if we cloned ourselves exclusively and where able to eliminate variation then yes we could stop evolving as such . . . it raises all kinds of interesting yet for some reason viscerally repulsive concepts of technological unnatural selection by the robot empire . . yet interesting never the less . .

huh?

I think some people trip, understandably, on the word 'natural'.

A common view of evolution is that the selective force originates exclusively in predator/prey relationships, pathogens/disease and similar. In those areas, I think we have severely reduced the 'natural' selection.

I'm curious if you agree, and your point is that we've reduced those kinds of 'natural' selection, but not to zero?

Or if you are focused on the more subtle forms of selection (not often recognized by lay people as 'natural' selection) which still operate? The greatest influence on the change of allele frequencies in our species, I'd say, is human culture.