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Besides the fact that the title is yet another misleading piece of click optimization, I would have expected that the evolutional reason for this is that there
by elcapitan 11y ago
Besides the fact that the title is yet another misleading piece of click optimization, I would have expected that the evolutional reason for this is that there is a distant past in which snakes for example had way larger potential enemies than mice. As in "whale-sized sea predators". And then after those were gone, there was just no evolutional reason why the level of poison should go back, simply because it's not a disadvantage.
- qrendel 11y agoWhen an fitness advantage is removed from an allele, so that possessing it becomes completely neutral, the gene still tends to disappear slowly over time due to mutation and genetic drift. The formula for the average time to complete disappearance is given here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_drift#Time_to_fixation_or_loss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_drift#Time_to_fixation... So, in that case, you would still expect for the potency of the venom to have declined over a long period of time.
- abc_lisper 11y agoYou are right. This is the same reason, why island birds like dodo have lost their wings - there wasn't enough selection pressure for it.
- elcapitan 11y agoThat makes sense, thanks.
- aaron695 11y agoIf true this to me directly contradicts evolution. People seem to just be redefining evolution at will, without saying the original theory was wrong. That said, even the wiki articles says genetic drift is controversial.