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Probably because limb regeneration wasn't a favored trait during our evolution. e.g: we managed to survive and be fertile without it. Rather than limb regenera

Probably because limb regeneration wasn't a favored trait during our evolution. e.g: we managed to survive and be fertile without it. Rather than limb regeneration we evolved pain and fear to prevent losing a limb in the first place. A similar question would be why aren't fruit toxic so animals stop eating them? Because they pass their genes anyways. Rather than that, animals that were too good at eating fruit, destroyed their own food source and died. Another interesting phenomenon are lemmings. Why lemmings kill themselves en-masse? Because they're too fertile. And as a population their own way to control their size is to mass suicide. The hawk and dove model game in game theory attempts to explain a bit of this.

jostmey 10y ago
You are spot on correct. And regenerating lost body parts will require far more than just flipping the activation of a few genes.
astrodust 10y ago
Don't think that just because natural selection tended to favor a particular thing that it's necessarily a good thing. Some sheep have the most ridiculous horns because of how they compete for mates. If, in some alternate world, those sheep became intelligent and lived in a civilized society where such a thing was no longer relevant the horns themselves might have little worth other than prestige. They serve no functional purpose. Humans have survived in spite of our relative weaknesses. We've got a seriously screwed up head, nothing in there is oriented correctly, and parts of our body are on the verge of self-destructing even at the best of times. We were never intended by nature to live more than twenty years, everything past that is actually quite unnatural, as everything in your body starts falling apart at that point because from the perspective of natural selection taking place fifty thousand years ago you've either bred and done your duty, or you're dead weight. There's a lot of mistakes in our DNA that time will correct, but we can always jump start that process by making a few tweaks today.
derekp7 10y ago
Fruit relies on being eating to assist in seed dispersal (notice how the seeds are usually cast aside?). Also, most of the fruit that you find in the supermarket are selectively bred to have quite a bit more flesh to them. Oh, and lemmings don't mass suicide. That's a myth that came about cause of Disney.
- dpark 10y ago
  The myth existed before Disney, but they did perpetuate it (and kill a bunch of lemmings). http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.asp http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.asp
dpark 10y ago
> Another interesting phenomenon are lemmings. Why lemmings kill themselves en-masse? Because they're too fertile. And as a population their own way to control their size is to mass suicide. Lemmings don't commit mass suicide. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming#Misconceptions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming#Misconceptions
- partycoder 10y ago
  OK, fine. Disregard the lemmings. They do die massively, but it's not intentional, I get it.

jostmey 10y ago

You are spot on correct. And regenerating lost body parts will require far more than just flipping the activation of a few genes.

astrodust 10y ago

Don't think that just because natural selection tended to favor a particular thing that it's necessarily a good thing. Some sheep have the most ridiculous horns because of how they compete for mates. If, in some alternate world, those sheep became intelligent and lived in a civilized society where such a thing was no longer relevant the horns themselves might have little worth other than prestige. They serve no functional purpose. Humans have survived in spite of our relative weaknesses. We've got a seriously screwed up head, nothing in there is oriented correctly, and parts of our body are on the verge of self-destructing even at the best of times. We were never intended by nature to live more than twenty years, everything past that is actually quite unnatural, as everything in your body starts falling apart at that point because from the perspective of natural selection taking place fifty thousand years ago you've either bred and done your duty, or you're dead weight. There's a lot of mistakes in our DNA that time will correct, but we can always jump start that process by making a few tweaks today.

derekp7 10y ago

Fruit relies on being eating to assist in seed dispersal (notice how the seeds are usually cast aside?). Also, most of the fruit that you find in the supermarket are selectively bred to have quite a bit more flesh to them. Oh, and lemmings don't mass suicide. That's a myth that came about cause of Disney.

dpark 10y ago
The myth existed before Disney, but they did perpetuate it (and kill a bunch of lemmings). http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.asp http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.asp

dpark 10y ago

> Another interesting phenomenon are lemmings. Why lemmings kill themselves en-masse? Because they're too fertile. And as a population their own way to control their size is to mass suicide. Lemmings don't commit mass suicide. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming#Misconceptions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming#Misconceptions

partycoder 10y ago
OK, fine. Disregard the lemmings. They do die massively, but it's not intentional, I get it.