[quote]jjoseph_x wrote:
[begin rant]
That’s not how evolution works. There’s no evolutionary reason why we aren’t as strong as chimps (like “well they’re smarter so we won’t make them any stronger”).
Genetically it just-so-happens that we aren’t. If any human was as strong as a chimp (and as smart as we are, for thousands of years might made right in human society), that person’s genes would be naturally selected (i.e. assume that they’re male, they beat the tar out of the rival males and shag all of the women rotten).
The thing that annoys the heck out of me when people talk about evolutions is that they act as though it’s an active process to advance a species; it isn’t. It’s a random mutation that’s naturally selected (i.e. it helps you to survive so that you can pass it on to your offspring)… it’s all about luck.
Saying that “species X evolved a feature so that they could…” is like saying “Jimmy grew another foot so that he could play basketball his senior year”… nothing Jimmy did caused him to grow, he lucked-out.
[/End Rant]
[/quote]
This wiki stub is food for thought.
I agree with some of what you’re saying here. Evolution doesn’t happen “so that” something else could occur, a random mutation happens and either it works or it doesn’t.
It’s basically the effect of the free market finding the most efficient business models.
Organisms are in the “business” of acquiring nutrients and reproducing. The most efficient businesses/organisms will find their niche and grow/reproduce.
If another business/organism comes by, fills the same niche, and is more effective at doing business, it wiped out the old business/genes.
A prehistoric hominid is born with a mutant MYH16 gene which leaves him/her with smaller, weaker jaw muscles. Males with the mutant weakness gene wouldn’t survive but females would as there are seldom any unmated females in primate & human societies.
If any of these offspring, generations later, are born with larger braincases and brains and also have the mutant MYH16 gene for weaker muscles, there’s room for their massive brains to pass through the birth canal without killing momma Lucy.
If one of them were born with the larger braincase but still had massive jaw musculature, they might’ve simply killed momma hominid in childbirth. This could be why no humans on earth have the “original” MYH16 gene. Babies’ heads are already large enough that without modern medicine a good 1/4 - 1/2 of women die in childbirth.
Imagine a woman trying to birth a baby with a normal head size PLUS massive masseters and their accompanying tuberosities? Chance of survival is not bloody likely.
However… if we could genetically alter future generations of women to have even more massive birth canals (although this would probably cause huge problems with patellofemoral pain disorder, which could be why we haven’t evolved larger birth canals… a woman who can’t walk or run would have been a liability to survival of the group and eventually be abandoned…).
The best we could do is possibly have the original MYH16 gene become “activated” as a secondary sexual characteristic at puberty… but then the new muscles would simply tear off our weak human tuberosities right off the bone…
Hmm…
– ElbowStrike
