Why Do Living Things Evolve? │ Selfish Gene
Vložit
- čas přidán 24. 01. 2014
- Not literally selfish, but seemingly selfish. If a gene codes for that which allows it to continue is self reproduction... then it will reproduce. All the genes that don't help reproduction tend to go away.
For more information on stuff related to this video, check out the side notes:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nt2I...
Photo Credits
Jacobs Sheep
Ed Bierman (cropped)- www.flickr.com/photos/edbierma...
References
The selfish gene- Richard Dawkins
The extended phenotype- Richard Dawkins
Patreon patreon.com/user?u=849925 - Věda a technologie
1:58 and that kids is how babies are made.
I think this is the most underrated and underappreciated channel on youtube, or at least of the channels that I know.
I also think that some parts are hilarious and that the intro song should be made into a full song.
+Evananjunli It is a full song, and a great song. I actually cut it together from parts of this song: soundcloud.com/the-joy-drops/bernadette
I agree. Jesse is really informative, meanwhile being funny. These videos are great and should be used as means to captivate students' atention in classes - too bad I'm studying arts xD
+Fakeromon The reason why it is so is because he went for quality over quantity. The videos are very rare, but they are a gem. He robably does not have time and knowledge to do them faster. He's doing it alone and does not prioritise it above his life, so it takes longer to make. But he's making something beautiful. He will never get any considerable money out of it, but his selfish genes are helping the community in which those genes replicate. Or at least they did some time ago when communities were a lot smaller. :P
Evananjunli ik i just found it its good
BUT WHAT JEAN CODES FOR DENIM?
+Pikapetey Huh. Nice to see you here.
You are the last person i would expect to see here xD
omg wow i didn't think you were here :T
This channel should win some kind of education award, excellent videos.
and produce dumb students...
Dodo bird to whale in 6 seconds. Fastest evolution ever.
How do you guys have so few subscribers? The production quality is great, not to mention the content is really solid! I'm honestly shocked you don't have more.
I just found this channel and this is exactly what I thought. I think that it might be the narrator; no charm, or jokes and a really forgettable voice. Maybe they need other channels to advertise or a facebook page.
My PIKACHU IS EVOLVING!
+Brookie niggachu?
This is so high quality. Great production value and a very interesting topic. Good job!
I had very low expectations, and I was pleasantly surprised how informative and concise this video is. It is worth mentioning that the gene centered view of evolution isn't the only one, and the "selfish gene" view is even less widespread. Just to give one example, calling the living cell a "vessel" for genes is missing a lot. Even in sexual reproduction, the egg is a full fledged living organism budded off from the maternal unit, that comes from an unbroken line of living cells back to the first life. Calling THAT a vessel while making the "dead" DNA the central player is definitely missing the forest for the trees. I don't mean to say that there is anything "wrong" in your video, just that it should maybe be part 1, rather than the whole story.
This is all stuff I already -kind of- understood, but I can grasp the information a lot better now thanks to the visuals and the way it was explained in this video. Thanks.
Awesome video! One of the best I've seen to explain simply this concept.
Very nice and well worded video. Will definitely be sharing this with others who misunderstand or don't understand at all evolutionary biology.
Love your channel. Just found it yesterday,
and it's fun to be unemployed and devour CZcams content!
I like you and your videos, first video I've seen from you and already subscribed! Thank you
Is your display picture suppose to be the gamer gate girl? :D
Hey, yeah, it's Vivian James :3
:D
Glad you're not a hater
Nope. Pro gamer gate all the way. :D
Why is this not viral? This is the best!
"Why continually repeat this process? Simply to survive by avoiding the weakness of an unchanging system." - Project 2501
Why survive?
your videos are awesome! please don't stop!
great summary!
definitely sharing.
very nice video, well done!
Literally came back to watch this video because of the intro... and my bio test tmrw
Your videos have the best animations !
It's not you that survives. It's not even a record of you; rather, it's the idea of you--what you look like, how you think--that survives.
+This Place I got the feeling that you were insinuating that genes almost decide what to change in order to raise the chances of copying itself, which I believe to not be true, its just random changes that happen and the ones that are more fit to the environment in which its vessel is in are the ones that most likely will get copied. Correct me if I'm mistaken.
great video , i hope more will follow
yay more vids!~ was worth the wait! XD
the writing in this is an amazingly good explanation for evo, none of that survival of the fittest, things are for things and all that
btw are genes like symbiotic viruses of ours ? maaaan, i hadn't thought of it like that.
Zomg, I love you. Well, your videos. But still, love love love! I hope one of the larger channels mentions your vids. Or you could opt to having fan service for promotion. Either way- luvvvvv ^^
Only 2 dislikes? I don't think the Theists and/or Creationists have found this yet, let's hope it stays that way.
Quite the opposite would be better since this video is very well put together and will certainly clear up a few misconceptions. I still like to think/hope that if properly educated, people will naturally gravitate towards the obvious explanation.
nuckable You obviously don't know many religious people. 'Logic' is not a word in their dictionary.
"Us vs Them"-thinking is rarely ever useful even if you were just trying to make a silly joke. And while I agree to some extent that faith and logic don't mix, I don't think it's very productive to accuse religious people of being illogical.
nuckable I was only half-joking. What else can you call people who refuse to accept factual evidence in favor of blind faith, other than illogical? If I decided tomorrow that I don't believe in evolution, but instead believe that everything was created by a leprechaun, virtually everyone would call me illogical (and perhaps mentally ill as well). There is no real difference between belief in gods and belief in leprechauns: both are beliefs that rest entirely upon faith and not at all upon evidence. Yet we are quick to refer to belief in leprechauns as ludicrous, but much less quick to refer to religion in the same way. Why? When both are equally irrational, why is only one of them ridiculed as such?
Religious people can rarely be reasoned with using logic, as if they were logical people, they would not be religious in the first place. Logical people do not accept something without evidence.
***** belief in leprechauns is not a world view. Some people do have a world view of faeries and similar. A religion is a world view in which your life has a purpose given by a god and all in all it does make sense if you don't question it too much. Also religious people tend to only attribute positive things to their deities and discard the rest as sin or some other crap.
So it is not devoid of logic, it is just cherry picky. It is also a lot of make belief, people who struggle with their faith actively go out of their ways to look for signs of their detities and then get convinced by whatever they find. However, sometimes some arguments and challenges do cut through some of the facade and especially arguments against evolution and a young earth can be convincing enough to discard of the falacies. (at least that's my hope).
3:39
Best animation ever!
Lol, 1:58
ZionSquad omg, about to say that, I laughed so hard at that one moment, 3:09 aswell
great summary of the "selfish gene" theory. Anyway I subscribed :-P
Information must
That long-distance reproduction hip thrust though.
"What's being implicated [...]" Hmm...
What about some plant communities that when dealing with a pest, such as weeds, some of the plants will stop pulling resources out of the soil so other plants of their species can have them. Thus, sacrificing themselves. Studied that in college last semester
+Donnie E Weird, what species does that? That sounds awesome
Many plants create clones, maybe this is such a case? Or maybe the plants only leave offspring close to them, so a bunch of these plants are all closely related?
Thank you this gave me a idea with gave me i detailed thought that eventually gave me a theory thank you so much
this video gave me a new purpose in life
Ed Bierman's flickr link is cut off. There's a "..." in place of the "n" that should be at the end of the URL.
wish they'd shown videos like this when I was in high school. Biology would have seemed much more inviting.
3:10 I DIED FROM LAUGHTER (yes I'm a kid...)
KOOL
1:58 made my day!!! LOL
What's the mechanism that links mutations and environment? Is it COMPLETELY chance or does the environment affect the chances of mutating a new trait?
Amazing! Thank u
Hi there! I love your videos. Mainly because you usually give a lot of details and because you dont sell an idea straight away but you give refinements on the application of those ideas. (Im thinking as in this kind of remark/side comment.. czcams.com/video/USR-yHJAEGE/video.htmlm8s)
But in this video it surprises me that you have such a gene-centered view of evolution.. there are maany scholars working on other elements that affect evolution appart from genes.. Especially the niche construction theory (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niche_construction) as another force that drives evolution..
Its really cool and insteresting to look at.. (btw, it totally change paradigms in relation to new synthesis)
Regards!
Please do more vids!!! 😭
But still, why would nucleotides want to perfect and reproduce themselves?
Very, very funny video description
You are one awesome gene :)
now we just need to post this on every creationist forum out there
Question, if a gene is developed - like a bunny born with poisonous spikes - is it possible for that gene to just by mistake not get passed on and trashed , even though it took no energy and helped bunnies?
It is completely possible. That bunny could still die of anything else or just not find a mate. Or maybe the genetic combination for the spikes ends up getting lost in the rest. Individual genes can do different things when with different other genes. Plus there's the fact that that bunny is mating with another that probably doesn't have it, which means it is less likely for the offspring to carry the trait if there is some other thing killing off bunnies.
Because it's free to play now
Group selection!
Who created the original instructions?
This is exactly why i find the cuckoo bird so interesting. Cuckoo birds don't produce nests or care for their young because it hurts the individual, BUT what they do is leave their eggs in other nests to be taken care of by the foster bird. Cuckoo birds only survive by being dicks to other birds like raccoon's to mammals and mosquito's to life.
1:58 was not expecting that....
3:08 or that...
True
Laughed out loud at 2.23 hahahaha
I was curious if there's any birds that have actually horns. I Googled it.
Nope. Well sort of. There's stuff like the Cassowary, which has a bony... thing on its head. Pretty epic in its own right, but not at all "antlery". Doesn't seem horned birds exist, or ever have existed. Guess it's not streamlined enough. Anyone know of an extinct horned bird?
I have a bit of a fringe hypothesis. Consider that an ecosystem is analogous to the ecosystem of the single cells that make up our body. The survival of our organism depends on the balance of relationships between organisms with different roles. So analogously genes might end up encoding for behaviors that benefit not just the species it inhabits but the ecosystem it is part of and the habitat that ecosystem is a manifestation of. So if my hypothesis is correct you'd see animals sometimes exhibiting behavior that is contrary to its personal and familial survival in favor of behaviors which benefit the ecosystem as a whole. So Lion's might not attack Gazelle if there are few enough Gazelle that it would potentially endanger them. What if sleep is this exact kind of behavior. What if sleep is natures way of ensuring that animals are vulnerable enough to ensure that other species can prey upon them for the survival of the ecosystem at large? Consider that there was a point where sleep didn't happen and that ecosystem as a whole collapsed ending the genes of all the participating species.
A second fringe hypothesis. Maybe there is some truth to the "Intelligent Design" argument, but probably not how they would like there to be. What if not all mutations are random and that process of the gene being selfish over time has or potentially could capitalize on the processes responsible for mutation in ways which are beneficial to itself. All that is required for metacognition is layers of cognition, and if the protein coding process in DNA is Turing complete this seems plausible. If this hypothesis is correct you'd expect mutations encoding for longer Giraffe's necks more often than shorter necks, rather than only being equally randomly mutated then the more adapted variation being selected for. I would expect that similar to how our intelligence came in steps that so too would this intelligence. At first doing general things like mutating more frequently when the animal is stressed. Then sooner choosing genes which were beneficial in the evolutionary past, so if this is the 5th time this linage has entered a drought then I'd predict that it would sooner mutate adaptive traits than it did the previous time. Later resulting in what we now see with epigenetics, being able to interface with the memory and pass on genes related to it. In fact you could analyze the evolution of the brain as the intelligence of the evolutionary process attempting a self portrait. And now we are doing a similar self portrait with A.I. Of course the intelligence of the system is self contained and doesn't need to rely on "supernatural forces" so the "Intelligent design" brand wouldn't be suitable.
Some may ask, "But what is the PURPOSE of evolution? What is the PURPOSE of life?" Well, my answer is that life is there to weaken the force of dark energy and restart the stars, so the universe may life infinitely. Maybe the universe is older than we thought, but life has brought it along, and made it survive.
Thanks!
Side notes video won't play. At least, not on my phone. D:
what software do you use to animate these ingenious ideas?
+Charmonium Pentaquark I use the adobe suite. Voice in Audition, draw things in Photoshop, bring them into After Effects to animate and do motion. Then cut it together and add sound effects in Premiere.
This Place Thanks! Very high quality stuff you make. Keep up the great work!
+This Place Is it possible you could do a video on how you edit? Would be greatly appreciated :)
+Nathan Mørkeberg Reece Probably wouldn't. I don't do anything more than the very basics and the video wouldn't be anything there aren't videos for already. I looked at a couple of these tutorials before I started www.videocopilot.net/basic/#01
+This Place Thanks :)
I've heard somewhere that this "selfish gene" has connections to making sugar poisonous. Anyone know why?
Nooooo the badass horn birds were cool af
awesome video, just one little thing, there is no indication that all life evolved from a single organism
This is the type of shit that makes me wonder why life even exists in the first place. Why the hell do we keep evolving and adapting if it never takes us anywhere? What's so special about being at the top of the food chain if it limits your need to evolve, and makes you the most likely species to die in an extinction event? If it really doesn't make you more important than any other creature like this guy claimed, than what about the added benefit of nothing being able to eat you? Does it even matter when the happiness or lively hood of these creatures is irrelevant? Does it even matter when even if it could be relevant, it's nothing more than a survival method to make creatures want to live? Why should they? What is the final goal? Why is it so important that DNA lives on? Why is it all driven by incident? If it's all purely incidental, than how can it even create beings capable of knowing what the difference is between an incident and free will? What's the purpose of our own intelligence if it's driven by factors beyond our control, making free will nothing more than a chemical illusion, and our lives meaningless? Why can beings exist to be aware of and question all this if it really is meaningless? How can something so chaotic in a universe of pure chaos even create and define a creature of pure order? How can we want to kill ourselves if our minds are hard wired for us to fear death and strive for happiness? Have we somehow broken free of evolution by gaining our intellect and are no longer influenced by it? But evolution is what made us this way, so how could we break free of it if breaking free is the route it's already given us? Is sentience what all beings strive for by that logic? Than why has no other creature gained sentience in over 4 billion years? Are we a mistake? Are we just one of many mistakes? Can our minds even comprehend something devoid of comprehension? Is there even a God? Is this senselessness in the universe just a way of testing our faith? WHAT IS LIFE!? WHAT IS THE UNIVERSE!? WHAT IS EXISTENCE!? WHAT IS ANYTHING THATS ANYTHING!? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3:36 LOL
How do you align these extremely long dna strands to compare them? Is there a starting point?
How did the first RNA randomly form? What are the chances of that? Have you heard of irreducible complexity?
I don't know a lot about DNA sequencing and wouldn't be able to answer your first question. I suspect they use fancy machines that get fancier every year. I don't know how well DNA "keeps" or what's involved in that. But as far as I know, collecting dinosaur DNA from mosquitoes isn't a thing that's ever happened. The DNA from most of history is lost.
You can however look at current DNA and deduce our relatedness. Which I think is awesome because before DNA sequencing it was a game of looking at traits and assuming organisms were related. But again, don't know the specifics... I mostly studied soil in school... and have no interest in ever making a video about soil.
I don't think the formation of RNA is random at all. If it happened once it can happen again and is reproducible with the right ingredients in the right environment. I don't know a lot about it but I found this paper:
xxx.tau.ac.il/pdf/1305.5581.pdf
Primordial RNA Replication and Applications in PCR Technology
Stan Palasek
....that apparently demonstrates that RNA can be produced in the conditions of these deep ocean hydrothermal vents. I know when you take a bunch of "inorganic" ingredients and zap them with electricity or some sort of radiation or something it can form "organic" compounds that are otherwise only produced by life.
I had a soil teacher who was obsessed with the origin of life. He kept going on about how the simplest organic molecules fit so well into certain types of clay and that clay improved the creation of "organic" compounds from "inorganic" compounds (like thousands of times more organic compounds produced in these "zapping" experiments).
I haven't read that RNA paper though. Most things I read state "there is no standard model for the origin of life as of yet", which makes me less interested in looking into it. I suspect it's all very hypothesis driven right now. Which can be exciting but I'm perfectly content not learning about it until someone actually knows.
I have never heard the term "irreducible complexity" before the comments on this video but I've heard the idea before. Eyes are sometimes thought of as "irreducible", but their evolution is nothing ambiguous or magical. Wikipedia probably does it justice. Check it out if you are interested in that sort of a thing. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye
But convergent evolution of analogous structures is one of my favourite things. Eyes didn't just evolve once, they've actually evolved independently multiple times along different lines of reproduction.
You could take irreducible complexity again and say "Well what about the constituents of RNA? Surely they are too complicated to have come to be" but I think this is grasping at straws. As far as I'm aware "irreducible complexity" is an idea that came out of "hey that look's really complicated. most complicated things I see are made. thus it must have been made" and is not backed up with any observation.
"too long; didn't read"
- Jurassic park is a lie. I'm pretty sure DNA gets lost but you can deduce lineages from current DNA.
- RNA formation isn't random and it may already have been demonstrated to be formed
- "Irreducible complexity" is an idea not backed up with any observation as far as I know
there are start and stop codons (repeating dead coding sequences) which are usually conserved (less likely to mutate) which can be used to align sequences.
This Place question what software do you use to make your videos?
I use the adobe suite. Voice in Audacity, draw things in Photoshop, bring them into After Effects to animate. Then bring that into Premiere to cut it together and add sound effects.
If you can't afford Adobe, this article talks about the best free programs that you can use in their place.
lifehacker.com/5976725/build-your-own-adobe-creative-suite-with-free-and-cheap-software
+Handel Humphrey there are regions which are conserved as mrscruffser has mentioned but they are not the start/stop codons but sequences, the hox gene is an example of this
what do you mean HOW was it randomly formed? u answered it, randomly and eventually some things had a better chance of replicating and gets more complex. the chances of it happening is low, but there has been a lot of time for many low probability events to occur. newer models with probability of random events and such shows it is possible for this.
this was not asked but RNA can act as enzymes (ribozymes) which could facilitate many things in the beginning of life.
some proof against irreducible complexity is well... some intermediates shown in the fossil record
also, alot of dna is generated through duplications, large duplications and mutation of said duplication may explain the evolution of the bacterial flagellum which shares dna with the secretory pump
function shift also explain some, eg. the hands evolved from legs after their needs changed after becoming bipedal.
some of those example may not be complex enough for irreducible complexity but i believe the flagellum one is
Link to side notes doesn’t work :(((
Here you go czcams.com/video/1Nt2I--ey84/video.html
makes me wonder how hereditary diseases work since the information of those genes clearly doesn't aid in the survival of the vessel nor its genetic makeup, why would it be passed on?
Ariela Arangio
Human beings are not just instinctual animals.
We take care of each other and even breed with the sick.
I lost my shit at the bird projectile vomiting into its young...
like the intro song, what is it?
Harrson James Bernadette by the Joy Drops. soundcloud.com/the-joy-drops/bernadette
Nice choice!
SG is Wilson primes.
Answer: DNA changes. The rate of change is determined by the lifespan of the species. As well if something dies before doing the dirty, its DNA will not be passed on. This most often happens when a disability is spawned. The disability always will shorten its lifespan.
But also there could be a gene that works the best out of any but it is only in 1 creature that isn't born from a horrible gene
what gene makes me addicted to memes?
is there an upside liking memes?
if there is no upside then my genes will less likely to be pass on.
conclusion: people who like memes will less likely reproduce
but why did the very first single cell evolve? to me this is just a more in-depth explination to natural selection. that doesn't tell me why something would evolve if it doesn't have a reason to. like a the great white. it's only gotten smaller over time as it's good had gotten smaller. other than that it hasn't changed. can any one explain this? cause that's what I was hoping to find on this video but no luck.
Now I want to start a family in the future.
How many times did he say "Gene" in this video?
nice vid :)
The theory does not sufficiently account for genetic load, nor do all deleterious genes affect reproduction in the short term.
"the genes for sick ass horns on a bird"
Man those were some sick ass hornes.
Why do living things evolve? God got lazy and was like hey do it yourselves, guy!
+CaptBackwards Triggered
@4 Fake why are religious people so smug all the time?
did life begin as chemical cycles? just something I heard once.
Why do genes "evolve"? and why do Genes "adapt" are not the same thing. The very analogy the creator seems to mix. The video started with the pretext of answering "why" but gradually it drifted towards "how". Anyhow mutations are random and so any answer that tries to explain "why" while using the example of gene is like mixing philosophy with science!!! And we all know cocktails are awesome (some might disagree depending on the intended purpose of mixing things to begin with). :)
JEANS
3:03 lol......counterintuitive....COWnterintuitive ... there's a cow
or maybe it's "design by purpose from an Intelligent Designer" ?
+Carly
If it's designed, then it's designed to evolve
Creation and evolution are not mutually exclusive. Evolution is observable. If life was designed, the designer made it ever changing, not static. An intelligent designer could have set evolution in motion, overseen its every process, and guided it to the intended results.
@@math6844 you’re trying to extrapolate micro to macro
This isn’t “evolution “
why the fuck this video had only 100K views?
Ok answer this question pls.Why did we evolve from a Fish and not all fishes evolve to humans. i mean why did some fishes evolved to higher animals and other fished stayed that i way and why did gorillas exist when other species of that gene pool died and perished
Because we have a lot of different envirenments and niches, if all would evolve to one niche they would see a different niche which is not filled all would fill that and it would just be an endless loop.
I thought you will cover epigenetics :(
Hey, kick ass horns on a bird give you an evolutionary advantage. If your environment rewards being metal as fuck!
Fear the genes!
1:57 😂😂😂
selfish gene? I did not see anything about selfish gene... moreover, it is mentioned the opposite... feeding the offsprings! please clarify where is the "selfish gene" depicted here? thanks.
The idea of the selfish gene is that a gene will only be seen again if it can assist in its own survival and reproduction. If it does anything else it will go away. Most genes seem to directly help themselves survive.
But a gene that leads to or influences parental care can be passed on even though it hurts that creature (it's giving up time and food and whatever parents give). It's because it results in healthier children and eventually more/healthier grandchildren all of whom have the gene. So while directly hurting itself, it's helping copies of itself persist. And this is why this gene can be passed on. Hope that helps.
I never mentioned the term "selfish gene" because I find the name confuses what's going on. The gene doesn't think or care. It's not selfish. It passes on and is seen again if it helps it's own code survive or reproduce. Not necessarily just itself, but copies of itself.
This Place Thanks for the clarification. That explains it. There are some intepretations about the "selfish gene", trying to convey us that selfishness is indeed a hereditary trait.
SAMUEL PEREZ It is...
what´s the evidence?
everything we do benefits ourselves and our offspring. If we look after ourselves we have more chance of procreation and therefore our genes survive, every animal on earth wants to live and reproduce and any animal that didn't would/has become extinct... But it depends on your idea of selfish we protect our children beacuse they hold our genes, but other than that most of humans action are self benefiting.
Ok, than I don't understand one thing. Why is "ginger" gene recesive, since it helps with reproduction (at least for females)
+AxelPLasg A recessive gene simply means that the gene can be present, but not manifest. If there was a brown hair gene present it would be shown instead of the ginger as it is dominant. This is very oversimplified but kind of okay.
Unless you're a squid.
I am not sure I support the "genes only" approach to biology. I mean the organism, the "shell" for the genes if you will, matters. You can't just implant a lion embryo into a human woman and have her give birth to a cub. IIRC even trying to implant a mammoth gene embryo into an elephant failed and that is about as close as it gets in terms of relatedness. Point is, there is a sort of biological inertia carried in our physical bodies. It takes a ready made uterus of exactly that species to produce viable offspring of that species, yes genes dictate how that uterus is created and operated but without it no embryo would come to term. Without a cell membrane all that fancy DNA would just be floating around aimlessly in single-cell organisms, indeed there would be no cell to begin with.
Bottom line is, genes can't do whatever they want. If the mutation they carry is too radical they will be incompatible with the species they are supposed to mature in, they embryo won't get to mature and the genes won't get a chance to reproduce. Yes they govern change but they are not the end all and be all of biology. The body and its biological inertia as I termed it, matters quite a bit.
Individual genes don't get that radical. A mammoth is a different species from the elephant. A species has been defined in different ways, but a mammoth is a different species from the elephant partially because it is not expected for them to be able to produce a child. This happens as a species evolves. At first, changes are small enough that it is still a part of that species. It takes a very long time, and often a species is classified as different from another once they have enough differences that they can no longer mate with eachother. Because mutations are very well, it is extremely unlikely for there to be enough mutations all at once to render that individual incapable of surviving. The genes only approach is what we have observed and what you have said is true, but it does not disprove it at all. If an individual does not survive with a mutation, which does happen, then that individual will die off before it gets the chance to reproduce, which is the entire concept of evolution. It is beneficial to have small amounts of changing, since they will be able to reproduce with those without the mutation. It would be very unlikely to be born from parents without this mutation and find a mate that has it. Therefore, it comes down to natural selection, which is in environment. But the environment does not affect mutations at all.
To sum that up since it is very long and some prefer the short version: This biological inertia is only existent because genetic mutations are rare and we are only made to carry children that are still of our species. Of course a human won't give birth to a lion cub. They are not genetically similar. A human with a mutation is still a human. It takes many generations of mutations to eventually reach something that cannot reproduce with the original species.
You know... I've always asked myself, why did humans evolve into being so intelligent? I mean, yes, because we wouldn't be on top of the food chain if we weren't so smart. Sure, that's fun. But the thing is, we could have stopped ages ago then! Why are we still reinforcing intelligence? Not saying it should stop. It's obviously working out for us. It just doesn't make a lot of sense from an evolutionary standpoint
this only reason humans are so smart is because early humans created tools that would allow them to hunt alot of food witch contains fat which lets the brain grow larger and larger eventually becoming the brains we have today. :)
It's important to consider that first of all, humans are extremely social creatures which means they are always working together. More importantly however, humans are extremely good at learning and passing that knowledge to future generations who will retain it. I think this is key for their success today. A man might eat some berries and then die. His peers him saw him do that and now assume that those berries are poisonous. They spread the word to the tribe who will tell the young children not to eat those berries and will remember that information for the rest of their lives. So another factor to take into account is that humans have an excellent memory. This is what makes them intelligent. This goes beyond evolution, because our LEARNED behavior allows them to survive and adapt to a variety of environments and situations. Hope my opinion helped. Or you know, you could always say "Because God".
zerg ling hahaha that's a great metaphor for human achievements XD a really tall pile of dirt
incredible how selfish evolution is ...