3 ms·

The key problem with this line of reasoning is a lack of proportion. Evolution takes place over millions of years. Any intuitions you have are probably wrong

The key problem with this line of reasoning is a lack of proportion. Evolution takes place over millions of years. Any intuitions you have are probably wrong on this timescale. Nobody claims that a proto-bird one day woke up in a treetop, thought "oh heck, how am I going to get down?", and sprouted wings. Rather, over millions of generations of proto-birds, random variation and natural selection made winged birds more numerous and successful than wingless birds. The point about evolutionary theory isn't that it explains everything, but that it gives us a framework to produce and evaluate explanations (for, potentially, everything). The general pattern is to imagine a series of incremental changes between generations from (say) no-wings to viable wings, where each change could occur by random genetic variation or mutation, and where in order to be selected for, each change must confer a net reproductive advantage on its generation over the previous. From Wikipedia [1] it looks like we don't have a fully satisfactory evolutionary explanation of flight yet (any more than we have a fully satisfactory evolutionary explanation of True Blood), but there are several theories all of which are more plausible than waking up one day with wings. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight

maushu 16y ago
As a side note, wings worked so well for survival that most current insect species have them.
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  Dawkins points out that at insect scale, flight isn't particularly interesting: in many environments, tiny organisms would have difficulty not flying. Thus, it may be that wings started as little rudders to control how the wind is blowing you. From that point, it's easy to imagine a gradual evolution to self-powered flight. But I'm afraid this doesn't help us understand avian and mammalian evolution of flight. The example of the flying squirrel (that can't fly, but can direct his glide) may be a little instructive...

maushu 16y ago

As a side note, wings worked so well for survival that most current insect species have them.

CWuestefeld 16y ago
Dawkins points out that at insect scale, flight isn't particularly interesting: in many environments, tiny organisms would have difficulty not flying. Thus, it may be that wings started as little rudders to control how the wind is blowing you. From that point, it's easy to imagine a gradual evolution to self-powered flight. But I'm afraid this doesn't help us understand avian and mammalian evolution of flight. The example of the flying squirrel (that can't fly, but can direct his glide) may be a little instructive...