3 ms·

I'm sorry, I really can't follow your line of reasoning here. Could you elucidate?

• Retric 9y ago
  Sure, a fox is not the size of a wolf because both are useful sizes to be. If you follow the evolution of foxes getting slightly larger or slightly smaller both provide advantages so it's really a balance which may change over time that determines what happens. AKA, fox sizes might drift up and down some over time, the average is going to stay near their current size unless say wolves died out. At which point they may quickly get larger and replace wolves, but they would not keep growing indefinitely and end up the size of great whales as they are now constrained by the 'wolf' niche. Further, foxes may end up spiting, you have foxes that look about the same, and foxes that look a lot like wolves. Now if you chart sizes as say 10,11,12,11,10,9 then the transition between those stages is a 'fast' + or - 1, but the net result is only -1 over 6 steps or -1/6th. The same thing is likely going on with less obvious features, but they are less intuitive.