Fun Stuff > CHATTER
Happy Darwin Day!
Nodaisho:
--- Quote from: Astaldo on 13 Feb 2008, 06:00 ---I would wager that the future evolution of cats would be along the attracting a mate line...pretty patterns or smellier scents.
--- End quote ---
What about being smart enough not to get your balls chopped off by a vet?
tania:
i've read arguments about how humans will probably evolve in the far future to have more than 10 fingers because of the fact that polydactylism is a dominant gene but in all honestly i find this extremely unlikely simply because of how incredibly completely rare it is. there's lots of comparisons - blonde hair and blue or green eyes are recessive traits while brown eyes and brown hair are dominant, yet people with blonde hair and blue or green eyes are still everywhere because it's just an extremely common gene regardless. but maybe time will tell on this, so who knows?
i don't remember if it's dawkins' 'the selfish gene' that discusses this but i recall reading this really interesting piece of writing about how most animal and bird species that are completely dependent on their parents when young inevitably evolve different mechanisms that allow the parent and child to sort of communicate with each other. like, how when a baby bird chirps the parent has to somehow understand that this means the baby bird is hungry and vice versa. in humans, what very likely has happened is that people have somehow evolved to think little kids are cute. they aren't really, it's completely subjective. people just think they're cute. as a result people who think babies are cute are more likely to want to have kids and pay attention to kids and then they'll have kids who like kids and the whole thing is just a big circle. this makes me extremely happy because it is such an elegant and perfect solution for me to the people who claim women who don't have children are selfish. i don't want or like kids, therefore i'm the exact type of person who shouldn't have kids. hooray!
Ozymandias:
Cam and Khar are dead on. Genetic diversity is one of humanity's greatest form of evolution. Given any conditions, there's probably a group of humans out there that can survive it. There are people who are immune to AIDS. There are people immune to different forms of cancer. There's a dude in Vietnam who hasn't slept in three decades and is perfectly healthy.
calenlass:
Eph: actually, I think polydactylism will be "bred out", so to speak, because people get grossed or weirded out by it to the point that I could see it being a deal-breaker for relationships.
Then again, it might not, because everyone I know who is polydactyl had the extra digits removed at birth and I would not have know had they not told me.
KharBevNor:
People get grossed out easy if that's the case. One of my exes only had one joint on one thumb. I didn't even notice for a couple of weeks.
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