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Evolution has some very interesting ways to increase chances of survival. Still most of the species that ever lived are extinct today. Those alive have beaten
by sidcool 10y ago
Evolution has some very interesting ways to increase chances of survival. Still most of the species that ever lived are extinct today. Those alive have beaten great odds.
Viruses are the enigma of evolution. Are they just chemicals, or living?
- thaumasiotes 10y ago> Still most of the species that ever lived are extinct today. Depends on your view of the Ship of Theseus.
- lappa 10y agoWe wouldn't be able to mate with Nakalipithecus nakayamai, so they are indeed a distinct species despite being our ancestor.
- thaumasiotes 10y agoBy this criterion, there are very, very few bacterial species.
- Scarblac 10y agoOr rather, each bacterium is its own species?
- thaumasiotes 10y agoWhy? Bacteria exchange DNA with each other.
- manifestsilence 10y agoI seem to recall this being the reason the sexual reproduction definition of species is considered problematic. It's a convenient definition for animals but breaks down for most other things, and even the animal kingdom has some funky edge cases, like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebroid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebroid.
- pjscott 10y agoAre you sure that's a real question? The answer is probably just that the words you're using don't quite fit the underlying reality.
- whyenot 10y ago> Viruses are the enigma of evolution. Are they just chemicals, or living? Biology is full of edge cases like this. For a few more examples, google "species problem". Human beings often like to classify things into discrete groups, but that doesn't necessarily map onto the natural world all that well.
- laumars 10y agoindeed. This reminds me of the arguments about whether fungus is a plant or an animal.
- theparanoid 10y agoNatural selection mostly selects against change. Without selection the cockroach would have mutated. Viruses are not an enigma, another parasitic genetic element are Inteins - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intein.
- wwggggoi 10y agoViruses are not living, because they have no metabolism and they cannot self-replicate (they require the replication apparatus of the host) Viruses are not self-contained systems, they are more like organelles of cells, which transfer data between hosts. edit: sorry I didn't been organelles I meant vesicles in cells
- ArkyBeagle 10y agoThis seems to me like saying "wow, that frame of film on that movie sure is lucky to be up there right now" 24 times a second.