Evolution of metamorphosis

[Fraggle Rocker]

I find that EXTREMELY hard to believe. It would make more sense that the deer cross the road when the cars stop instead of them using the cross walk signal.

I've seen it personally and it's become a regular feature of life in Washington--one of those little things that give a city its charm. The problem with your suggestion is that they don't have the math processor to calculate whether a car half a block away is going to stop--or is even capable of stopping. Vehicles are not as nimble as predatory animals, but they move, accelerate and decelerate much faster. The deer don't have the necessary intuition to base calculations on that. Even if there are no human pedestrians around, they understand that cars are far more likely to stop at a crosswalk than anywhere else, and even more likely to do that if the little green light is on.

Perhaps more to the point, waiting for cars to stop, even when the pedestrian light is on, can be a vain hope. If there's no foot traffic in the crosswalk cars from the cross street--who also have a green light--will make right and left turns across it. Even human pedestrians have to take the initiative and step off the curb before traffic making legal turns will stop for them.

There are a few major intersections in some cities where even turning traffic is held back by their own red arrow lights when it's the pedestrians' turn to walk. But most of them are not like that. In America it's our sacred god-given right to make a right turn.

I suspect that the behavior might be changing, but that that is learned. I doubt that there has been much genetic change in a few generations; how long did it take to domesticate wolves into dogs - many many generations, right?

I doubt that we'll ever have the answer to that question. The fact that it only happened once is a clue that it was a slow process. All dogs are descended from a group of a dozen or so in Mesopotamia right around the time of the Agricultural Revolution, when it would have made the most sense for them to be attracted to our new, much larger middens, and for us to appreciate the help in keeping the place clean. It was apparently much easier and faster for the people who already had domestic dogs to trade or otherwise bring them to nearby villages than it was for the people there to duplicate the domestication process.

The same is true of cats; they're all Felis silvestris libica, the subspecies that was welcomed into the granaries of Egypt to feast on rodents.

 

[billvon]

I've seen it personally and it's become a regular feature of life in Washington--one of those little things that give a city its charm. The problem with your suggestion is that they don't have the math processor to calculate whether a car half a block away is going to stop--or is even capable of stopping.

Neither do we - but we have no problems crossing streets. Dogs don't have math processors, but they can accurately calculate the parabolic trajectory of a thrown ball and start running towards where they know it will end up. Bears don't have math processors, but they can calculate trajectories well enough to snatch fish out of the air. Eagles don't have math processors, but they can go into a stoop and hit even a fast-moving animal by predicting where it will be when they land.

Vehicles are not as nimble as predatory animals, but they move, accelerate and decelerate much faster. The deer don't have the necessary intuition to base calculations on that.

No car can accelerate as fast as a cheetah, and most do not go faster than a cheetah at top speed - at least on surface streets.

Even if there are no human pedestrians around, they understand that cars are far more likely to stop at a crosswalk than anywhere else, and even more likely to do that if the little green light is on.

Deer are colorblind.

 

[Arioch]

I find that EXTREMELY hard to believe.

I don't. I once saw a pigeon get on a subway train(it was the 2 train for you New Yorkers out there) in Brooklyn and get off the train at the Central Park stop. Animals can truly have some odd behavioral traits when they're transported out of their natural habitat. Hell, I've even seen normally migratory birds refuse to migrate and take shelter in the subway system during the winter and they do just fine.

 

[chimpkin]

No, vegetation doesn't determine climate - grander scale phenomena, such as the earths rotation, tilt, the confuguration of the continests and of the oceanic circulation determine climate.

Climate is described by the sort of vegetation an area supports (desert, tundra, rain-forest, etc) but the vegetation is a result of the climate, not a cause of it.

Rich

Um, it's a feedback loop.
Vegetation alters climate right back, both on a micro and macro scale.

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

An urban heat island (UHI) is a metropolitan area which is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas....

Monthly rainfall is greater downwind of cities, partially due to the UHI. Increases in heat within urban centers increases the length of growing seasons, and decreases the occurrence of weak tornadoes.

http://rainforests.mongabay.com/0906.htm

Tropical rainforests play a vital role in the functioning of the planet's natural systems. The forests regulate local and global weather through their absorption and creation of rainfall and their exchange of atmospheric gases. For example, the Amazon alone creates 50-80 percent of its own rainfall through transpiration. Cutting the rainforests changes the reflectivity of the earth's surface, which affects global weather by altering wind and ocean current patterns, and changes rainfall distribution. If the forests continue to be destroyed, global weather patterns may become more unstable and extreme.

Edited to add: and wildlife is a part of that feedback loop:

Wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone causes aspen regrowth.

The most impressive aspen comeback has occurred near streams and gullies in the northern part of the park. In these areas, wolves easily sneak up on elk and the terrain makes it difficult for elk to escape. The research team suggests elk are now avoiding these areas, allowing aspen shoots there to grow into adulthood.

 

[Reiku]

Well I just took as if caterpillar and a butterfly are like different specie , are they not? we know they look different ?

No it is not a different species at all!!!!!

It is simply a biological transition into a new state or form.

 

[420Joey]

Why is it favourable for particles to bond together into more complex systems and complete tasks for a 'collective' system to work? Why dont they just work in fast-pace neuron gas cloud or something. Do you think human or high intelligence can be a frame work for something else like in the field of consciousness or manifestation? Why would evolution stop at this point given the fact that we no longer depend on our physical as a way of survival .. we have this vast arena of high intelligence and reality-states like dreams and imagination to explore to evolve into something greater?

 

[Dywyddyr]

Why is it favourable for particles to bond together into more complex systems and complete tasks for a 'collective' system to work? Why dont they just work in fast-pace neuron gas cloud or something.

What stops the cloud dispersing? How would the elements of a dispersed cloud communicate?

Do you think human or high intelligence can be a frame work for something else like in the field of consciousness or manifestation?

What?

Why would evolution stop at this point given the fact that we no longer depend on our physical as a way of survival

Stop eating for a year then come back and tell me we no longer depend on the physical for survival.

we have this vast arena of high intelligence and reality-states like dreams and imagination to explore to evolve into something greater?

Right...

 

[Arioch]

@Joey --

Why would evolution stop at this point...

Who said it's stopped? We're still evolving just like every other species is. We've found that many things, including our brain size, have increased in the past fifty thousand years. And vestigial organs like the appendix are also signs that we're evolving, they're organs that used to have a function but have lost their purpose in the human body.

given the fact that we no longer depend on our physical as a way of survival ..

But we do still depend on the physical for our survival, especially in the harsher climates. You try living through a Minnesota winter without proper shelter while telling me this. Of course you really couldn't tell me anything because you'd be dead, but that's just details.

we have this vast arena of high intelligence and reality-states like dreams and imagination to explore to evolve into something greater?

1. Species don't evolve into "something greater" they become better adapted to their environment(which includes things like predators) because those that are more fit for the environment tend to survive while those that are less fit tend to become something's lunch.

2. What the hell do dreams and altered mental states have to do with evolution?

 

[spidergoat]

Why is it favourable for particles to bond together into more complex systems and complete tasks for a 'collective' system to work? Why dont they just work in fast-pace neuron gas cloud or something. Do you think human or high intelligence can be a frame work for something else like in the field of consciousness or manifestation? Why would evolution stop at this point given the fact that we no longer depend on our physical as a way of survival .. we have this vast arena of high intelligence and reality-states like dreams and imagination to explore to evolve into something greater?

There has to be an avenue of gradual improvement. Evolution cannot make leaps of insight and change to something entirely new just because it might work.

 

[Arioch]

It's also important to note that natural selection is not very far sighted. It doesn't plan on evolving something which might be beneficial in a few generations, it's only concerns are what is beneficial now.

 

[RichW9090]

The best evidence indicates that wolves gave rise to dogs at least three different times, in different parts of the world. The wolf to dog change was not a one-off.

Rich

 

[RichW9090]

Vegetation does not determine climate. Your examples of the interdependency of animals and plants doesn't speak to determining climate at all.

All photosynthesizing plants add oxygen to the atmosphere. It is not the kind of vegeation - the species - that matter, it is the total biomass of O2 producing plants.

One can take the "earth as organism" analogy a bit too far.

Rich

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

All photosynthesizing plants add oxygen to the atmosphere. It is not the kind of vegeation - the species - that matter, it is the total biomass of O2 producing plants.

People always seem to forget that 50% of Earth’s oxygen is produced by photosynthetic marine protists. It’s not all about land plants!

 

[Dywyddyr]

Green whales with placards and banners cause oxygen?

 

[420Joey]

Do you think we will eventually evolve into realizing more than 3-1 dimensions? When I said dream-like states consider what happens when we dream.

We can take on other perspectives, can take on more than one focal point, subconsciously create alternative or similar enviorments, etc. to the point of perfect simulations.

No other animals as far as we know have this type of intelligence and brain power available to them. Evolution doesent work at an exponential rate? I just find it to be amazing that we were made randomly through bacteria and we are now high complex beings and that it would end there in lieu of the possibilities. Conscious beings reduce entropy in the system. We seem to be the universe trying to organize it.

 

[Dywyddyr]

Do you think we will eventually evolve into realizing more than 3-1 dimensions?

What do you mean "realising"?
Why would we?

to the point of perfect simulations.

Nope.

No other animals as far as we know have this type of intelligence and brain power available to them.

So what?

Evolution doesent work at an exponential rate?

No.

I just find it to be amazing that we were made randomly through bacteria and we are now high complex beings and that it would end there in lieu of the possibilities.

What makes you think it's ended?

 

[Pincho Paxton]

Humans have evolved....... into me!

 

[billvon]

Evolution doesent work at an exponential rate?

No.

In many ways I think it does. The development of sexual reproduction greatly accelerated the pace of evolution because it became possible to retain traits that might be harmful in the absence of a second trait, but massively beneficial in the presence of a second trait or in an alternative environment. (Sickle cell anemia would be an example here.) The development of the HOX complex allowed simple mutations to produce very divergent functional phenotypes. The implementation of nursing allowed much more diversity in mammals; removing the requirement for the organism to fend for itself right out of the womb allowed a much greater flexibility in the evolution of higher mental functions (less hardwired circuitry required; more room for mutations that increase the ability to learn.)

 

[leopold]

I stress “scientific” sources because, as with most evolutionary topics, idiot creationists have bastardized and corrupted the topic to fit their pre-determined non-scientistic viewpoint. Be wary of where you get your information from.

how is that any different than idiot evolutionists that have bastardized and corrupted the topic to fit their pre-conceived non-scientific viewpoint?

 

[spidergoat]

how is that any different than idiot evolutionists that have bastardized and corrupted the topic to fit their pre-conceived non-scientific viewpoint?

Because they aren't idiots, they have not corrupted the topic, and their standpoint is scientific.