Will our feet eventually evolve into hands?

Seachmall

smallBiscuit wrote: »

Survival of the fittest has nothing to do with how fit you are, how strong, how log you live [...] Survival of the fittest means, whoever is best at attracting a mate,having lots of kids and raring the most to the age to have their own.

How fit you are is a factor in how long you live which is a factor in mating.

People born with a disease that reduces their life expectancy to 15 years are far less likely to reproduce than an otherwise healthy person (they simply have less time to), as such that disease will plausibly disappear.

Strength may be less of a factor today as it was 20,000 years ago but I'm sure in some areas of the world it's still a factor in reproduction.

Kevin Duffy wrote:

fully evolved.

Doesn't exist, evolution has no endgame.

Wibbs

antodeco wrote: »

Bigger heads (intelligence) bigger eyes (to cope with less sunlight)

Neandertals had both bigger heads and bigger eyes and it didn't go so well for them Clearly head/brain size isn't everything. It's the organisation of that brain that seems to count. Einstein had quite a small brain. Even as modern humans if anything our heads have reduced in size and robustness in the last 40,000 years. I can't see our heads getting any bigger. Lots of problems there, especially concerning birth. Bigger heads mean wider hips in women. Even with women having much wider hips than other apes, the human baby is born undeveloped in the skull and brain and continues to develop outside the womb after birth(up to a year IIRC). Which made human babies far more reliant on parents and more vulnerable than other animals.

So any evolution from now on in is likely to be external. Technology and cultural. Much as it has been for humans for the last million years. People often miss that part of our evolution. We started to eat meat, but are not particularly built for it, but we made tools to slice it up, rather than evolve larger canines and carnassian teeth. We also cooked it to release more nutrients that our relatively weak stomach acid(compared to a carnivore) couldn't. We didn't grow extra hair to move into colder regions, we made clothes and fire. This is what really makes us very special and unique among all the life that has existed on this planet. Today we can "see" infrared and x rays and even "hear" the very sound the universe makes. Hell if you're reading this wearing glasses that's external evolution for you. Ditto for medicines that many reading out there would be long dead without. This will ramp up in the future. We're well on the way to cracking all the code of life and we've proved we can manipulate it. Add in external machinery and in a thousand years time a very different "human" will look back on this thread and others like it and smile. Or if they end up with IQ's in the 1000's it will bore them to tears.

44leto

"Survival of the fittest" that actually came from the Victorian economist and political scientist Herbert Spencer and not Darwin. He was actually referring to Laissez Fair. The survival of the most efficient businesses ETC and not evolution.

It is more the survival of the luckiest and the organism that can reproduce best within an environment. It doesn't have to be "fit" at all, just successfully reproduce and their offsprings also to reproduce.

Seachmall

44leto wrote: »

"Survival of the fittest" that actually came from the Victorian economist and political scientist Herbert Spencer and not Darwin. He was actually referring to Laissez Fair. The survival of the most efficient businesses ETC and not evolution.

It is more the survival of the luckiest and the organism that can reproduce best within an environment. It doesn't have to be "fit" at all, just successfully reproduce and their offsprings also to reproduce.

Dawkins did a program on evolution and said "Survival of the Kindest" is more apt for social animals as their survival is essentially dependent on their community and the evolutionary altruism that it, in turn, depends on. Although I'd imagine that can also be detrimental to a species survival as they care for peers that provide little to the community (e.g. the old and sick).

Fortunately we've evolved to a state where we can care for those in need without sacrificing our ability to survive.

We're evolving into elephants

stupidusername

Taking your glasses example wibbs,do you not think that's a case for us becoming less and less developed? I mean if we rely on external objects to make things better for us,surely it's likely our bodies will have no need to develop things like better eyesight?

44leto

stupidusername wrote: »

Taking your glasses example wibbs,do you not think that's a case for us becoming less and less developed? I mean if we rely on external objects to make things better for us,surely it's likely our bodies will have no need to develop things like better eyesight?

You are talking better eyesight, bad eyesight does not prevent us from reproducing. Humanities culture has lifted itself above the process. These days a lot of sick babies survive to reproduce. Therefore a lot of genetic illnesses will never be breath out. Simplistic I know.

There are a number of things that happened to the specie humanity in the last 100,000 years that is still evolving till the great leap forward which was when we start farming.

Lactose tolerance, sickle cell, white skin, Sherpa's natural ability to survive better in a low oxygen environment is also a biological advantage for their environment. These are just a few examples of evolution still in action.

BUT a person with lactose intolerance can now avoid lactose and be fit and healthy, a person without sickle cell can still survive with malaria, a person with dark skin can still survive in the cooler climes with diet, a man can still climb everest and survive in higher altitudes with technological intervention.

So culture has lifted us above the process, but not taken us out of it.

rich.d.berry

In short, no!

The way that populations evolve is that those better suited to survive will reach the age to breed and pass on their superior genetics. Since there is currently no real threat to our ability to survive long enough to procreate, the human species has effectively stopped evolving. There is no single genetic trait that is being favoured over another.

Wibbs

rich.d.berry wrote: »

In short, no!

The way that populations evolve is that those better suited to survive will reach the age to breed and pass on their superior genetics. Since there is currently no real threat to our ability to survive long enough to procreate, the human species has effectively stopped evolving. There is no single genetic trait that is being favoured over another.

Not quite. Since we started farming we've evolved on a genetic level more in that 10,000 years than in the previous 60,000(if not more). As 44leto listed above these are adaptations, usually to novel food groups. Now someone who is gluten intolerant didn't die off back then. Ceoeliacs don't die now, but maybe they had a smaller number of kids than someone who had the gene that could process the food. It doesn't take much at all over time. Plus "superior genetics" is a very loaded term and is highly contextual. A physically weak asthmatic with social anxiety would be out of place on the plains of Africa, but might well be a professor of engineering in MIT.

seanogwalsh

I'd rather they developed into stumps...feet scare me

rich.d.berry

Wibbs wrote: »

Not quite. Since we started farming we've evolved on a genetic level more in that 10,000 years than in the previous 60,000(if not more). As 44leto listed above these are adaptations, usually to novel food groups. Now someone who is gluten intolerant didn't die off back then. Ceoeliacs don't die now, but maybe they had a smaller number of kids than someone who had the gene that could process the food. It doesn't take much at all over time. Plus "superior genetics" is a very loaded term and is highly contextual. A physically weak asthmatic with social anxiety would be out of place on the plains of Africa, but might well be a professor of engineering in MIT.

I'm not talking past evolution, I'm talking future. Will we evolve anything different if our society and technology remain unchanged. No.

If there is some huge disaster that has us all scrambling for survival again then yes, perhaps feet that double as hands could evolve. However, the ability to survive high doses of radiation may be the winner.

Seachmall

rich.d.berry wrote: »

I'm not talking past evolution, I'm talking future. Will we evolve anything different if our society and technology remain unchanged. No.

We probably will. The world isn't static, new viruses evolve everyday, species go extinct everyday, the climate is changing, etc. We may have peaked on the food chain but we still must adapt to the world should it change.

Wibbs

rich.d.berry wrote: »

I'm not talking past evolution, I'm talking future. Will we evolve anything different if our society and technology remain unchanged. No.

The past informs the future. Technology has changed more in the last century than in the previous thousand years and again so has society. Society continues changing as we speak. People living longer. People having more children with different partners. Arguably an increasing divide between the haves and the have nots, the latter having more children, even more exposure to novel foods(try getting soya milk in tesco 20 years ago). It's not always the big picture stuff that pushes evolution, the subtle stuff can make a huge difference.

Again ask a Neandertal. They probably didn't freak out about these new weird black skinny fecks from Africa at first. We actually lived side by side in the middle east for 10,000 years(enough to get jiggy too). We were subtly different, not a lot between us. Indeed if one was taking bets 100,000 years ago one might very well reckon on placing said bet on the highly sophisticated guys who had survived and thrived through multiple ice ages and high variable environments for at least quarter of a million years. Well compared to the weak newbies who had not been nearly so tested walking into the unknown.

Homosexuality in men may be another example. One would expect it would not reproductively select for obvious reasons. Yet it's still here. Clearly it proffers some advantage. It could be any number of things. Certainly it might be argued the arts(and science too) is quite weighted with gay chappies(Leo DaVinci and Michaelangelo being two). It might be even simpler. One study found that the sisters of gay men have slightly more children making it to adulthood(and others posit that if there is a "gay gene"* it's transmitted like baldness through the female line). If true the why is up for grabs, but it seems there is some advantage there. Tiny though it may be.



*personally I don't think it's any single gene, but a multifactoral thing. Either way it's "built in".

Chuck Stone

Our bodies will increasingly become a mere method transporting our brains around.

entropi

Two pages in and nobody threw in a Father Ted quote? :pac:

"Are those my feet"?

rich.d.berry

Wibbs wrote: »

The past informs the future.

No arguments there. We are what we are because of our genetic history.

Wibbs wrote: »

*personally I don't think it's any single gene, but a multifactoral thing. Either way it's "built in".

Sorry, I forgot that I was posting in the After Hours forum where personal opinion has more authority than science.

Sky King

IvaBigWun wrote: »

Has evolution got anything left to do with the human body?

Yeah it can make us evolve into people who eat fatty, sh!tty food all day yet have perfectly athletic physiques.

DannyKing

God I hope so. Imagine the possibilities. They're endless.

Stiffler2

I heard the fanny was re-evolving into the willy as I heard the fanny is a waste of time & effort not to mention the crap that comes with it

jester77

I think there is a a bigger chance of us regressing into hunchbacks than growing hands!

Although the amount of times I would have given my arm to have a third hand :pac: