Evolutionary Level Question

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 3:03 am

Okay we use the term 'more evolved' to mean one of two things:

1) A species that underwent more changes in its gene over a period of time than another species that was around as long.

2) A species that is 'more advanced' by human standards.

So I was thinking about Threshold and how the intent of that episode was to show that evolution doesn't necessarily mean 2--which is why it's possible for people to evolve into brainless, tailed salamanders without hands.

But then I was also thinking, while things like eyes could be phased out by a species that was forced to live in a cave, are there any traits out there that provide such a huge generic advantage to survival that it would require a more extreme change in environment than other traits to render then superfluous or even disadvantageous?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 3:44 am

I don't think so... as far as I know, most traits have equal or greater drawbacks... such as the ability of certain microbes to live in environments without air, or in extreme heat.. the opposite condition frequently outright kills them. Or the ability of some life forms to regenerate, they are only capable of doing so, in many cases, because they are relatively simple life forms.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 5:13 am

Well, having a fucking huge mammalian brain seems to be objectively useful in all kinds of extreme environments. But that could be personal bias.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 5:26 am

Our huge mammalian brain is pretty fucking sweet. But remember that a trait doesn't have to be disadvantageous or even superfluous to go away. Mutation is random, and while Selection is not, it is completely binary. You either die before you have offspring or you do not. So long as you don't, your genes persist generation after generation no matter how awesome or shitty they happen to be.

Now, a lot of random culling happens every generation, so statistically you had probably better have some kind of genetic makeup that lets you (on average) have far more kids that survive to adulthood than your generation started with. Because you know, asteroids and sabertooth tiger attacks are bitches that way. But you know statistics - people roll 20s and shit.

-Username17

Quantumboost · Post by **Quantumboost** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 5:05 pm

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Well, having a fucking huge mammalian brain seems to be objectively useful in all kinds of extreme environments. But that could be personal bias.

Even without the "sometimes things just go away" argument...

Having a fucking huge mammalian brain also consumes a lot of calories (compared to say a reptile's brain). If all that mattered were the benefits, there'd be no reason not to have asbestos-like skin proteins and glands that oozed alcohol so that we were perpetually on fire. You have to eat more in order to keep those kind of things running, and having the trait is not an advantage if having it doesn't result in getting enough extra calories to make up for it. Like if you're up against the actual per-capita calories available in the environment.

It's totally useful in most situations, but it's not universally advantageous.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 6:16 pm

Certainly compared to the ability to digest cellulose, the mammalian brain is chump change. And of course, no animal in history has ever developed the gene for cellulase. It exists, but it's only in bacterial genomes, and it has never arisen on a multicellular animal. Selection is both random and non-random, but Mutation is wholly random. New capabilities are not designed, they just happen. Or not.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 6:31 pm

hm, so as not to derail another discussion...

Frank, why are mammals, specifically, it'd seem, unable to do the trapdoor spider thing?

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 7:43 pm

Spiders do it better than voles?

-Crissa

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 7:55 pm

I like how hemocyanin, while normally shitty compared to hemoglobin, is actually better for octopodes active in cold oxygen-poor environments. But, of course, hemoglobin would almost certainly be better for many octopodes (e.g. reef dwellers). Too bad, octopodes: biological legacy!

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 7:59 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:hm, so as not to derail another discussion...

Frank, why are mammals, specifically, it'd seem, unable to do the trapdoor spider thing?

Warm blood. Fixed location ambush hunting has a stupid high rate of success, but it doesn't catch food very often. Mammalian biology allows and requires constant activity, which costs a lot of energy and requires a lot of food. More importantly, it requires food very often. Spiders have a better capture percentage than cheetahs, but cheetahs make more attempts in a day. Cheetahs simply could not survive on the low frequency of meals that a spider gets.

The thing humans and ants do where we grow animals in closed areas and milk them for constant food is totally fucking crazy and most animals can't do that.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 8:09 pm

Okay, what about cooperation?

Cooperation is such an overwhelming advantage that it's really hard to imagine a species evolving out of such behavior. Cooperation is what enables ants, hominids, and lions to become total rockstars of the animal kingdom despite having some huge disadvantages in the competition for food.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 9:56 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Okay, what about cooperation?

Cooperation is such an overwhelming advantage that it's really hard to imagine a species evolving out of such behavior. Cooperation is what enables ants, hominids, and lions to become total rockstars of the animal kingdom despite having some huge disadvantages in the competition for food.

What about it? Selfish genes motherfucker!

Evolution is the change in genetic frequency over generations. And that means that genetic schema that are in aggregate useful are generally the ones that propagate. I don't have to pass on any genes because I'm contributing to a society of people who all have pretty much the same genetic makeup as myself. That makes me expendable and the society strong. The genes that are pretty much mine get passed on generation after generation and that works super well.

But imagine for the moment that one person had the "Douchebag Allele" - it's a dominant mutant gene that happens to make you a total douche. From the standpoint of that gene, success is not determined by the success of society, but of how many copies of itself it manages to pas on. So if by being a total dick it manages to propagate itself 10 times and in the process kills off a thousand instances of the wild type cooperators before they reproduce that's a win! Fighting and raping its way through the trusting and friendly populace could be a successful strategy for that gene.

The species as a whole will probably suffer greatly from that kind of behavioral shift, but it's entirely possibly that the Douchebags could drive out the cooperators. Especially if we're talking about some kind of marginal animal like wolves or lions.

-Username17

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 10:11 pm

It just so happens that the 'douchebag frequency' hovers at around 1/10 in humans, according to various game theory studies which I have no references or links to in order to back up what I'm saying. Which actually seems disturbingly high.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 10:14 pm

Well, then what happens if the douchebag animals win the war, but then they find themselves unable to compete because their physiology required cooperation?

So you take a portion of an animal that's woefully unprepared to live by itself, like a prarie dog, who manages to become king of the hill. Disregarding the fact that said douchebag survivor has a low chance of surviving against the other douchebag survivors, how long is it going to last before it finds out that it can't do jack shit to defend against predation from other animals?

You'd think that the douchebag animals would have to suddenly be able to support themselves very quickly (which is probably impossible to do with bees), or they die off and the cooperative animals reassert themselves.

This is assuming that the douchebag animals can even make their mark on the species, since every animals' response to a douchebag iconoclast is to... you know. Kill them with weight of numbers.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 9:09 pm

Extra parts supposedly vanish with each passing generation due to energy efficiency.

Nature is all about efficiency.

For instance, cave fish. No eyes = that much less energy spent to grow them.
The eyeless fish then have more energy to put towards hearing, muscle, egg-making, etc.

The gradual process (retaining vestigial limbs) helps creatures, but it's probably thanks to a gradual selective bias in favor of re-routing calories to reproduction, new sense focus, or other special traits rather than being a 'generalist'.

Deletion of parts could happen suddenly from freak mutations but from what I've read scientists can't agree yet on the proportion of Sudden Evolution vs. Gradual Evolution. Maybe it depends on species.

I think of it as CharOp in nature. The result sometimes looks weird, or functions only under specific conditions, but when it works.. it's fucking fantastic.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 11:12 pm

There is a squid that has a 3rd eye on the bottom of it's cylindrical body that is uses to create a light source to trick other animals by being hidden by the glow of false moonlight.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 1:41 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Well, then what happens if the douchebag animals win the war, but then they find themselves unable to compete because their physiology required cooperation?

So you take a portion of an animal that's woefully unprepared to live by itself, like a prarie dog, who manages to become king of the hill. Disregarding the fact that said douchebag survivor has a low chance of surviving against the other douchebag survivors, how long is it going to last before it finds out that it can't do jack shit to defend against predation from other animals?

You'd think that the douchebag animals would have to suddenly be able to support themselves very quickly (which is probably impossible to do with bees), or they die off and the cooperative animals reassert themselves.

This is assuming that the douchebag animals can even make their mark on the species, since every animals' response to a douchebag iconoclast is to... you know. Kill them with weight of numbers.

If that happens, the species dies. Short-term benifits can be like that.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 2:03 am

I'm just wondering about the odds of such a gene being able to take ahold, dominant or no.

Say someone had a dominant mutation which caused them to flip out and start killing as many men as possible while impregnating as many women as possible. How far could they get before they just got killed?

I guess I could sort of see how a gene like this could spread through, say, a timber wolf population. But would some asshole wolf actually live long enough to spread their gene?

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 2:22 am

Depends upon what the critter flips out against. A timber wolf would likely get wounded in any relatively even fight and wouldn't survive long without some additional advantage I reckon. Likewise a human flipping out won't last long and it is dubious that a simple genetic cause could be to blame.

Anywho for some tadpoles I believe they do cannibalize each other in some instances and benefit by being assholes in that way.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 4:58 am

Judging__Eagle wrote:There is a squid that has a 3rd eye on the bottom of it's cylindrical body that is uses to create a light source to trick other animals by being hidden by the glow of false moonlight.

Cool.
Common knowledge goes that we still have tails. Coccyx, etc.
In theory, such an 'appendage' could once again resurface in the gene pool as a vital trait (and does, called "coccygeal projection"... or just vestigial tail) and even develop to full lemur-size.

HOWEVER the following conditions need apply in order to make a mutation in to an evolution:
1. All chairs are destroyed and become a lost art, rendering humans that hang by their ass or prop up with their natural butt-kickstand more healthy. You'd still have the issue of floor pillows, but hey, nobody's perfect.
2. Coccygeal projections then place then-mutants above baldbutt-humans in pecking order, possible by saved calories due to easy reclining.

Oh... and all original tail-less humans would need to die off, otherwise it just becomes a speciation.

Rejakor · Post by **Rejakor** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 6:43 am

If you look at most species of animal, either they're aggressive/precarious enough that genetic assholes will be killed off/driven off before they manage to reproduce - a lot of species teeter back and forward on the very edge of that line with their males.

Either that or they're so mindless and societal that going nuts in a way that let you fuck the most/kill everyone else without repercussions would cause you/the newly impregnated 'other sex' to die off. And then the other communities of the same type /without/ the genetic asshole will breed and the genetic asshole gene disappears.

Genetic assholes that destroy societies to propagate have already done so, the species went extinct, and woo. Either that or there was a sudden shift from 'codependent society' to 'society of lone hunter/rapers', which actually exists in a large number of predatory species.

Either that or the society ones would /as a group/ beat up the lone hunter/rapers and eventually evolutionarily supplant them.

So psychotic hunt/raping is actually a negative trait since it causes you to succeed less over the long term.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 12:00 am

The thing humans and ants do where we grow animals in closed areas and milk them for constant food is totally fucking crazy

Well from a mammilian perspective, their livestock does some totally crazy fucking

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 1:18 am

And there are mammals where the male douchebag allele has pretty much won.