Hipparchia
Registered Senior Member
Hi root. Maybe the problem is that you are thinking of these mutations as being something bad in the short term. I don't think evolution is meant to work like that. A change would have to be neutral or give an advantage if it was going to stay around for long. It wont always be possible to see at this distance in time just what the small advantages for each small step may have been.root said:1. An animal with four legs (possibly walking upright on its hind legs) bears offspring with deformed front legs - the first step towards development of wings.
2. The first generation have a very slight deformation and there is absolutely no reason why these should have a better chance at survival than ones with healthy front legs.
Another thought. I think someone mentioned flying squirrels. I guess you've seen them on documentaries leaping out of trees and all.
The way I imagine it you have an ordinary squirrel, it lives in trees and it jumps around. Branch to branch and all that. Now suppose some of these squirrels have just a little bit more loose flesh, so that when they jump they can go a little further, or don't need to push off so hard, so they get by on one less nut in a winter. They are a tiny bit more successful than there pals, so they have fractionally more kids, and so on. A mutation gives some of those kids even looser flesh. They wind up more successful. And so on. Before long you have flying squirrels.
Doesn't that seem likely to you?