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Feathers are one of evolution's cleverest inventions
- cushpush 3y agois a feather a discovery or an invention? (am actual philosophical inquisition)
- xandrius 3y agoDiscovery implies that it already existed before and it wasn't found yet. I'd say invention is closer but does seem to imply agency. I think feathers are the evolution here. Something evolved into a feather.
- CSMastermind 3y agoThere really needs to be a third term for something uncovered by a process that otherwise would not have existed but wasn't created with intent.
- aqfamnzc 3y agoEmergence?
- DoreenMichele 3y agoEvolution. "Survival of the fittest" doesn't mean "That gene was gorgeous like Mr. Universe, so he won!" It means "Life threw something at a wall and this is what stuck. It died less in the face of actual real world conditions." After you winnow away all the failed stuff, you have stuff that works. Do it for millions of years and amazingly complex and elegant stuff can emerge from the process.
- Reptur 3y ago"Discovery" fits since we're just uncovering what's already there, not creating it. "Invention" is for stuff we actually make. Unsure if just a mistake or creationist perspective in the article.
- npteljes 3y agoHappenstance, if you ask me. And if we're talking philosophy, I think the feather doesn't exist at all, so it's even harder for me to imagine that it's a product of conscious effort. I imagine that what we humans consider feathers have near-infinite, similar-looking predecessors, proto-feathers, which differ so slightly from actual feathers that it's hard to say where the non-feather featherlike skin protrusions end, and feathers begin. What we can do of course is agree on such a line, but that further proves to me that feather is just a human concept, and that non-humans don't actually consciously interact with whatever we happen to call feathers. So, feathers just kinda happened over time.
- matrix2596 3y agoarchive link plz
- xanny 3y agoJust append archive.is/ to the beginning of the url. Chances are, it is already archived. https://archive.is/https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-feathers-are-one-of-evolutions-cleverest-inventions/ https://archive.is/https://www.scientificamerican.com/articl...
- swores 3y agoOr save a bookmark in your browser and edit its destination to be this Javascript bookmarklet to let you load the archive.is version of any URL you're currently on without even needing to remember the domain or type anything: javascript:void(location.href='https://archive.is/?run=1&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)) Or version for IA's Wayback Machine instead: javascript:void(window.open('https://web.archive.org/web/*/'+location.href)) (The archive.is one takes you to it in the same tab, while the wayback machine one opens a new one - because personally I use the former when I can't load a page, so don't need that tab kept open, and use the W.M. for comparing current to old versions of the page. But it should be fairly self-explanatory how to swap one URL with the other if you prefer it differently.) Or this more complicated version of the Wayback Machine one, which if you click while on an empty tab will instead give you an alert with a text field in which to type or paste whatever URL you want to look up: javascript:(function()%7Bif(location.href.indexOf('http')!=0)%7Binput=prompt('URL:','https://');if(input!=null)%7Blocation.href='http://web.archive.org/web/*/'+input%7D%7Delse%7Blocation.href='http://web.archive.org/web/*/'+location.href;%7D%7D)();
- hubrix 3y agohttps://archive.is/20240416202627/https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-feathers-are-one-of-evolutions-cleverest-inventions/ https://archive.is/20240416202627/https://www.scientificamer...
- isolli 3y ago[flagged]
- rsynnott 3y agoWell, as somebody who likes complaining, I don’t like your new title either; evolution doesn’t ‘invent’ anything, and anthropomorphising it just confuses people (see also generative ai, grumble mutter).
- isolli 3y agoOh, I agree! But I did not want to make more than one change at a time ;)
- cies 3y ago> evolution doesn’t ‘invent’ anything Really? I think it kind of does invent. Trial and error. Back propagation. Mutation. Some randomness at conception. Sure it's a personification, but not a bad one.
- thfuran 3y agoEvolution doesn't do back propagation.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoThat's a great breakdown of feather technology. TIL...
- gumby 3y agoWow, what an interesting article, not all about feathers. There’s so many genetic mysteries about skin appendages still to be uncovered e.g. in humans, how do nails and hairs manage to grow only in one direction (and perhaps even more remarkable, always so). I was drawn to this side point though: the microraptor has four wings. Not like a dragon, of course, which has to be an insect, but an ordinary quadruped that used all four limbs to fly (compare that to mammals with a membrane between the forelimbs and hind limbs on each side). I imagine it must have looked like an F-35 when flying. Seems like it turned out to be optimal to stick to two, not just for terrestrial mobility, but due to the (bidirectional!) optimization of the wishbone and the chest musculature. It’s probably hard to get enough power into the dual-mode hind limbs. Sadly the Wikipedia article on the microraptor doesn’t explore this.
- cies 3y ago> in humans Nails are a much older "invention of evolution" than humans: so we have to investigate there... > how do nails and hairs manage to grow only in one direction Like all things evolution: nails that grow backwards to not have an advantage (prolly a disadvantage), where nails that grow forwards have an advantage (climbing, clawing, scratching).
- inglor_cz 3y ago"nails that grow backwards to not have an advantage (prolly a disadvantage), where nails that grow forwards have an advantage (climbing, clawing, scratching)." That still doesn't describe the underlying mechanism of the growth itself. Looking at the work of Dr. Michael Levin regarding electric communication of cells, I tend to believe him that the main factor in actually creating tissues in their intended, correct shape, is incessant electric chatter among individual cells. An interesting corollary would be that cancer = cells that don't cooperate/communicate with their neighboring cells anymore.
- pfdietz 3y agoAnother interesting question is how development distinguishes left and right. As I understand it, there's a small object that develops that has cilia in a tilted configuration. The rotation of the cilia causes a flow of fluid to one side that is determined by the sense (clockwise or counterclockwise) of the cilia's rotation. That flow is sensed and sets off signals that drive development. Where does the rotational sense of cilia come from? From the stereochemistry of proteins, and therefore from amino acids. The left-vs-right handedness of the base chemistry of life is exploited to get a macroscopic signal.
- andrelaszlo 3y ago> The flat, broad, flight-enabling feathers we see across most of the wings and much of the body surface of living birds are called pennaceous feathers. (Fun fact: these are the feathers people used to make into quills for writing, hence the word “pen.”) I get the author's point, I think, but the etymology of "pen" according to wiktionary.com: > From Middle English penne, from Anglo-Norman penne, from Old French penne, from Latin penna (“feather”), from Proto-Indo-European péth₂r̥ ~ pth₂én- (“feather, wing”), from peth₂- (“to rush, fly”) (from which petition). Proto-Indo-European base also root of *petra-, from which Ancient Greek πτερόν (pterón, “wing”) (whence pterodactyl), Sanskrit पत्रम् (patram, “wing, feather”), Old Church Slavonic перо (pero, “pen”), Old Norse fjǫðr, Old English feðer (Modern English feather);[1] note the /p/ → /f/ Germanic sound change. So pens aren't called pens because we used pennaceous feathers, but because they were made of feathers, period. At least that's how I get it. "Pennaceous feather" is a funny term too, then, meaning something like "featherlike feather"?
- 082349872349872 3y ago...and penknives were originally the small blades one used for trimming pennaceous feathers into writing-pens.
- gruez 3y agoThe article has another factual error as well: >covering 8,425 miles without taking a single break. For comparison, there is only one commercial aircraft that can fly that far nonstop, a Boeing 777 [...] The Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350 have ranges exceeding that, with ranges of up to 8,790 mi and 11,163 mi respectively, depending on the variant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner#Specifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner#Specific... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A350#Specifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A350#Specifications edit: Turns out there's even more aircrafts that exceed that range. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A330neo#Specifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A330neo#Specifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A380#Specifications_(A380-800,_Trent_engines) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A380#Specifications_(A3... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A340#Specifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A340#Specifications
- gsabbih 3y ago[flagged]
- jeremiahbuckley 3y agoExcited to anticipate next-gen airplanes with slotted wingtips and their vanes controlled by AI for optimal performance.
- nyc111 3y agoIt may be misleading to look at only to the design of the feather. Flight and such a long and sustained flight can only happen because of the sophisticated programming. Evolution must be a great programmer too.
- zelphirkalt 3y agoOne with lots and lots of time on their hand and countless trial and error, and parallel projects.
- umvi 3y ago> and countless trial and error Is it countless though? Earth is "only" 4.5 billion years old with life appearing "only" 800 million years later, which seems pretty short for something chaotic and unorganized to self-organize into the nearly unfathomable sophistication we have now. Of course, humans are bad at grokking large numbers, and I might be too biased as a God fearing man... to be clear I don't deny the realities of evolution, but I currently tend to believe that as far as abiogenesis/evolution goes, life was "seeded" in some way on the planet, i.e. given a head start vs arising spontaneously from primordial soup within 800M years. I realize that this belief doesn't really contribute anything to the scientific discussion, just musing that 800M years to create the initial life seed doesn't seem that long considering we use super computers to simulate trillion+ iterations of various models and have failed to observe similar phenomenon in terms of self-organization without outside influence.
- CSMastermind 3y ago> I currently tend to believe that as far as abiogenesis/evolution goes, life was "seeded" in some way on the planet, i.e. given a head start vs arising spontaneously from primordial soup within 800M years. It really depends on what you think the seed was. The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and we have pretty good records of life on it and the evolutionary steps that took place going about about 3 billion of those with reasonable evidence of life for another billion before that (the 800 million years later part that you reference). So, if life got seeded onto the planet, it happened before then and would have to have been in the form of small carbon-based molecules. There's some debate in the field if life evolved genetics first or metabolism first. But the 'seed' would be the same in both cases, it's just that the pathway to get to modern life would be different. The most compelling case that I'm aware of for these small carbon-based molecules to originate somewhere other than Earth is this paper: https://biologydirect.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1745-6150-1-17 https://biologydirect.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/174... Essentially they show that genomes have been doubling in size on average every 350 million years or so. If you project that math backward, you end with life starting, not at the beginning of Earth, but at the beginning of time, coinciding eerily with the Big Bang. That points to a theory that carbon, water, and other elements we thought developed later might have been created earlier in the universe than expected. That would then point to the building blocks for life being essentially 'seeded' everywhere in the universe. Waiting to wake up as soon as conditions were right.
- hammock 3y agoI first thought the headline was “Fathers are one of evolutions cleverest inventions”. To which I agree
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jcims 3y agoI'd say DNA is one of evolution's cleverest inventions, buuut. xD *ducks*
- wongarsu 3y agoTwo things can each be one of evolution's cleverest inventions
- SamBam 3y agoReally good article. I know some of the early evolutionists wondered about the evolution of the feather and wing, since it seems hard to evolve in a gradual way -- a little bit of a feathery flap doesn't offer any advantages if it's not enough to glide on. I know one of the leading theories is that they evolved to keep animals warm, since they're also good insulators. Is this still the main theory?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- swores 3y agoI have no knowledge in this area, this is purely a guess and so I am sharing it not to inform anyone but in the hope someone who does know can tell me if I'm wrong: When I thought about this in the past, I assumed they evolved in sea creatures first - where even very small flaps or mini wings/fins could improve hydrodynamics and/or swimming control, without needing to make a single jump from useless to being able to fly. But I've not looked into whether that is the case. Edit to add two quotes from a quick search: "Thus, early feathers functioned in thermal insulation, communication, or water repellency, but not in aerodynamics and flight." - https://www.britannica.com/animal/bird-animal/The-origin-of-feathers https://www.britannica.com/animal/bird-animal/The-origin-of-... "Two major rival published theories are based on the roles of feathers in insulating the body against heat loss and in providing an aerodynamic surface for flight. However, because of the lack of knowledge about the roles and ecological relationships of protofeathers and of the most primitive feathers, it is not possible to test strongly either of these theories, or others as proposed in this symposium, against objective empirical observations to determine which is falsified or is the most probable" - https://academic.oup.com/icb/article/40/4/478/101404# https://academic.oup.com/icb/article/40/4/478/101404#
- sampo 3y ago> it seems hard to evolve in a gradual way There seems to be 4 different hypotheses. So there is no consensus on this question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight#Hypotheses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight#Hypothe... A video about the "wing-assisted incline running" hypothesis: "The Origin of Flight--What Use is Half a Wing?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMuzlEQz3uo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMuzlEQz3uo
- theodorejb 3y ago[flagged]
- pfisch 3y agoSo you can't imagine how it evolved therefore you pick an even more unimaginable possibility with no evidence at all. I mean maybe an ancient alien wizard did it. Should we credit the alien magi instead?
- theodorejb 3y agoFrom my perspective God has given us an incredible amount of evidence for His work - it's all around us in nature if one is open to looking for it!
- pfisch 3y agoWhy isn't that the work of an ancient alien magi? Seems like the evidence for the alien magi is equal to the evidence of God.
- SonicScrub 3y agoThe natural world truely is beautiful, and it's no surprise that someone would ascribe the majesty around us to higher powers. In fact, many scientists throughout time have been inspired to pursue scientific endeavors as a way to view the mind of God (and/or God's, depending the religious beliefs of the individual). However, we do God(s) a disservice when we deny the intricacies of their creation of the universe in favour of overly simplistic shortcuts such as "feather good because God made it". The story of natural selection via evolution is marvelous, and I don't believe that the God that made this universe would want us to ignore the intricacies of this fascinating process in favour of thought-terminating explanations such "well, it was just made that way". I also don't believe that God has an interest in deceiving us. Which would be the only explanation to reconciling a Creation explanation with the overwhelming amount of evidence for natural selection.
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- Tphi 3y ago[flagged]
- standeven 3y ago[flagged]
- Tphi 3y agoIt is not, my account password did not work and I had to create a new one. DNA is a four state bits program. Can you tell us how random mutations on a computer program (DNA) can create new proteins and new functionnal organs. What happens if you do so on a Windows or Linux program ?
- appletrotter 3y agoIn response to your comment, it's important to clarify several misconceptions about evolutionary biology and the synthetic theory of evolution. This theory is not a scam nor inherently atheistic; rather, it's a scientific framework that integrates genetics with Darwin's theory of natural selection to explain biological diversity. First, evolution, through natural selection and genetic variation, is indeed capable of innovation. Complex structures and functions can arise incrementally over time. Features that provide a survival or reproductive advantage are more likely to be passed on to subsequent generations, gradually leading to complex adaptations. The analogy of DNA needing to be like a program, CDROM, reader, and printer all in one cell is an oversimplification that misunderstands molecular biology. DNA replication, transcription, and translation are complex processes facilitated by a variety of proteins and enzymes, which themselves evolved. Regarding Prof. Michael Behe's arguments in "Darwin's Black Box," while thought-provoking, they have been widely critiqued and refuted in the scientific community. Behe's concept of "irreducible complexity" has been shown not to preclude evolutionary origins, as numerous studies have demonstrated how complex biochemical systems can evolve from simpler precursors through natural processes. Lastly, it's critical to approach scientific topics with an understanding based on evidence and consensus among experts. While there are always unanswered questions in science, the theory of evolution remains one of the most robust and universally accepted scientific theories, based on overwhelming evidence across different fields including genetics, paleontology, and molecular biology.
- bluishgreen 3y agoI read it as "Fathers Are One of Evolution's Cleverest Inventions". It completely made sense. I heard some research where starting about 500K year ago humans started to pair bond as a way to prevent mom and child mortality during and after childbirth and indeed Fathers are a clever invention. So yea, feathers are cool - fathers too! (for more info/reading here is a book suggestion: Eve)
- Gravityloss 3y agoIf the world warms back to the saurian sauna for a few millions of years, maybe mammals will not be on top of the game anymore. Time to welcome our new avian overlords. Maybe they'll evolve from crows. They're more optimal in so many ways anyway. Too bad they won't have coal, oil or natural gas reserves to build an early industrial civilization on.
- holoduke 3y agoThey have microplastics. Enough to power the new society for 200 years.
- wongarsu 3y agoBut getting large amounts of copper, iron and aluminum will be so much easier with all the work we have already put into mining and refining it. At worst you have to invent the technology to turn wood into charcoal and charcoal into coke to get the fire hot enough to smelt iron. But aluminum is pretty rust resistant and can be smelted with a good wood fire, and avian species will likely prefer the lighter metal anyway.
- Intralexical 3y ago> If the world warms back to the saurian sauna for a few millions of years, maybe mammals will not be on top of the game anymore. Yes! I've been saying this. Global warming seems like a given at this point, so instead of stopping it we should try to increase oxygen levels too and then stick Bombardier Beetle fire-breathing genes in back-bred Hatzegopteryxes. Those beasts had wingspans over ten meters, were apex predators, and were built like it. May as well get some dragons to look at… > Time to welcome our new avian overlords. Not new. Birds are theropods, same as T-Rexes. It's just a return to form.
- L_226 3y agoExcuse me - they have ample amounts of complex long-chain hydrocarbons helpfully globally distributed on the surface by humans (plastics).
- Simplicitas 3y agoAnother feature that make birds really remarkable, if not mistaken, is that they take in oxygen when they inhale AND exhale. Feathers are great, but a creature such as B6 still needs a lot of energy to fly for 10 days straight.
- delecti 3y agoIt's more that their respiratory system is kinda circular. When we exhale, there's still a bit of gas in our lungs, and that reduces how efficiently we can extract oxygen. But the oxygen extracting parts of a bird's lungs are more like a heatsink, with air rushing past it in a consistent direction, rather than back and forth.
- xeonmc 3y agoSo human lungs are piston engines whereas bird lungs are turbojet engines.
- jessekv 3y agoIt's interesting that mammal lungs are inefficient for the same reason two-stroke piston engines are.
- KineticLensman 3y agoBird lungs have separate pipes for inflow and outflow, while mammals use the same pipe for both. Bird lungs are also relatively rigid, and they use separate air sacks to do the pumping
- luxuryballs 3y agoDinosaurs were actually Chocobo
- xandrius 3y agoChocobo -> Dinosaurs -> Chicken Checks out!
- Yeul 3y agoDoesn't clever imply a conscious designer? Not very scientific.
- willturman 3y ago> did not land, did not eat, did not drink and did not stop flapping My understanding is that these incredible distances are achievable less by "flapping" and more by leveraging small adjustments to harness the incredibly powerful forces found among and between air currents and waves as they traverse across the ocean. For example, here is an unpowered remote control glider achieving measured speeds of 548+! mph using nothing but natural energy harnessed from wind and gravity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eFD_Wj6dhk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eFD_Wj6dhk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_soaring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_soaring
- nonameiguess 3y agoYou see this even more in the ocean. There are sharks who, being cold-blooded, have the ability to slow their metabolism to very near zero and simply ride a current for thousands of kilometers to entirely different parts of the globe where feeding is better without expending any energy to do it. It's probably why sharks have been around so long. They can be extremely resistant to famine conditions.
- elliottkember 3y agoI met that guy at a glider meetup a few months after that record. That Transonic plane is huge. He managed to fit the 3m wingspan into a regular car, lengthwise. I never got out to Parker Mountain but those guys had great stories. 100G will find the weak point on your model, often explosively. Also fun is pelicans surfing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEFrSycTvRk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEFrSycTvRk
- willturman 3y agoThat pelicans surfing video is perfect - there's certainly not a whole lot of flapping going on. 100G will find the weak point on your model You know, just a casual glider built to withstand 10 times more gravitational force than an F-15 and 15 times more than a Formula 1 car. Wild.
- elliottkember 3y ago
- nyrulez 3y agoI love the science of evolution in that there's no need for an underlying model for such an invention to actually verify the science and the possibility of it, just that such an invention is possible. Basically anything and everything is possible with evolution and that doesn't really feel like science to me.
- prerok 3y agoTo me, it sounds like science at its finest. Only what works, survives, regardless of the politics, i.e. what others think of it.
- npteljes 3y agoIndeed, evolution is basically trial and error, where the trial is life, and the error is (untimely) death. I'd argue that it's not science at all, because what's missing is the coordination behind it. To me, evolution is not a product of conscious effort, but an emergent behavior or the individuals and systems that participate. Taking the "science" definition from Wikipedia: "Science is a rigorous, systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world". With evolution, testing definitely happens, but it's not a systematic endeavor, or at least I'm not convinced that it is.
- TheMagicHorsey 3y agoGreat article. But I hesitate to call feathers one of evolution's cleverest inventions. The natural world is chock full of amazing evolved engineering from the huge (the hearts of blue whales) to the intricate (the brains of hominids) to the diverse (the various forms of eyes from compound to pinhole, to lensed), to the tiny (white blood cells). Everywhere you look there are feats of engineering that would awe anyone.
- russdill 3y agoI'd like to imagine if there's thousands of other worlds out there where evolution of complex life has played out. If you brought intelligent life from those places to Earth, what would they find most surprising? I think feathers would be one of those things.
- DoreenMichele 3y agoOctober 2022 a bird with the code name B6 set a new world record that few people outside the field of ornithology noticed. Over the course of 11 days, B6, a young Bar-tailed Godwit, flew from its hatching ground in Alaska to its wintering ground in Tasmania, covering 8,425 miles without taking a single break... Many factors contributed to this astonishing feat of athleticism—muscle power, a high metabolic rate and a physiological tolerance for elevated cortisol levels, among other things. Additional fun fact the article doesn't mention: Birds sleep with only half their brain at a time when making these long distance flights. That's why they don't doze off and fall out of the sky.
- iamwil 3y agoHow did scientists figure this out? Did they attach a flying bird to an MRI machine?
- npteljes 3y agoEEG for one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sleep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sleep
- Intralexical 3y agoDolphins too. Half of their brain keeps them swimming while the other half sleeps. Other fun fact: Humans making long car drives also do what's called "microsleeping". Your eyes remain open and your hands stay on the wheel, but your brain goes unconscious for a couple seconds at a time. Usually, you don't even notice…
- dadjoker 3y agoWow, they are so incredibly intricate, it's almost like they were designed....
- cubefox 3y agoRemaining question: Are feathers better than fur?
- sharpshadow 3y agoGreat article, I like owls even more now. Didn’t know they are that silent.
- jononomo 3y agoCracks me up how everyone seems to think this is the result of randomness and not of intelligent design.
- russdill 3y agoYou make me sad
- _gabe_ 3y agoFor real. I love how they can even call feathers the greatest invention without ever wondering who the inventor was. You can’t claim evolution is the inventor. Evolution is a description of a process, and anthropomorphizing it doesn’t make it possible of inventing anything. It’s similarly funny to me looking through these comments and seeing people marvel about the engineering and design of things like hearts and cells. Does nobody ever think to ask, who designed this? Who engineered this? It would be like finding a watch someone had dropped on the ground and being like, “Wow what an amazing invention! It must have evolved over several thousands of years until it was able to accurately track the time!”. Or thinking that a chaotic natural process like a tornado could somehow assemble a car if it blew through a junkyard. Both of these are ridiculous arguments, but that’s what people claim evolution is like. After all, given enough time anything is possible? Right?
- russdill 3y agoInvention is searching a problem space to find novel solutions to problems. Can you explain why such a search would require agency?
- _gabe_ 3y agoThat’s not the definition of invention. > a: something invented: such as (1): a device, contrivance, or process originated after study and experiment (2): a product of the imagination especially : a false conception[0] Studying, experimenting, and imagining all require agency. [0]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/invention https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/invention
- tibbydudeza 3y agoMy wife has an African Gray parrot, it amazing sometimes to just watch him and see something that can be traced back all the way to the dinosaurs. Pretty smart too - the recognize people and objects and uses association of the words - like when my one black cat (got two but he has white feet) enters the kitchen to check for food scraps he says "Get out" like I would. He has no oil gland to lube his feathers since they are a tree dwelling species from the tropics but down feathers which break down into a fine dust when he grooms.
- jbuzbee 3y agoOne interesting fact that I recall, and that I didn't see in the article, is that evolution in some Owls traded off silent flight for the inability to fly when their feathers are wet. When there's an extended period of wet weather, owl fledglings may starve because their parents can't hunt.
- JackSlateur 3y agoI still cannot compute evolution Take chimps to humans : 6 millions years. 10 years to produce some offspring : that's only 600000 generations To be a success, a mutation would be transmitted to an offspring, replace a large number of the existing population, and only then be followed by the next "worthy" mutation I do not know how many mutations are required to transform a chimp into a humain I guess the number are not working
- concernedParty 3y agoAn organic "feature" like flight or gills, or the ability to blink requires both hardware and software (to both create the hardware, and to run the new hardware.) This, we're discovering, takes quite a lot of information. Organised, specific information in the correct order to harness maths, physics and chemistry to create a working feature. To get such a feature off the ground by random point mutations using evolution by natural selection, each and every mutation needs to provide selective advantage, or it is discarded. Any progress to such a feature must start again from scratch. There is a theory about how this can happen, it's well understood, but now we know much much more about how Biology actually works at the lower levels. So regarding the theory, people know that something needs to give, and it's not going to be maths, physics or chemistry, lets put it that way.
- diedyesterday 3y agoYeah, but evolution's most "clever" invention is consciousness, human brain and its highest state philosophy. It's all the work of evolution. Evolution's most "clever" turn and invention is it achieving self-consciousness (we are its "self consciousness")