4 ms·
Here's an explanation of how this works: All creatures are very complicated. Thus reproduction doesn't produce perfect clones, "mutations" take place. This is
by notRobot 2y ago
Here's an explanation of how this works:
All creatures are very complicated. Thus reproduction doesn't produce perfect clones, "mutations" take place. This is largely because there are so many different ways to derive one individual out of two individuals' complex genitic material. This is all a feature. This is why individuals have unique characteristics. Think about how different humans are from each other, even though we're all humans. This same thing applies to all creatures. Every individual is different. Those who have "disabilities" (disadvantages in their context) are less likely to survive. So those with advantageous traits survive and pass their traits on through reproduction, making those specific traits more prevalent.
The answer to "why didn't x evolve to do y?" is usually just that that specific mutation might have never occurred or caught on randomly. This is also why different species do different things differently. It's all random mutations. Some were beneficial in their context and environment so those who had them were more likely to survive and pass those traits along.
It's not that "the objective of life is to survive" in a spiritual sense, it's that life randomly happens and some of it survives and it makes more life like itself. In some ways, I suppose the purpose of life is to create more life. Systems that replicate themselves successfully survive. We call these "life". It's really a linguistics thing.
Hope some of this makes sense. I enjoyed thinking about this.
- _1tem 2y agoIf your answer is "it's a random mutation" then that settles the "why" question permanently. Why all this idle speculation about bee's stingers, then? It was a random mutation, and it survived, done.
- notRobot 2y agoIt was random, and it survived. Every single part of an organism goes through a recombination/mutation process countless times, the stinger evolved to be what it is today over a very long time and it's cool to study why it ended up the way it did. Tells us about their environment and history and evolutionary pressures, survival is a result of the random traits being successful in their context in specific ways.
- _1tem 2y agoStill doesn’t explain why other species in the same context survived without it or with an opposite trait.
- afavour 2y agoSure? Doesn’t mean the species-specific examination isn’t interesting.
- autoexec 2y agoWhy shouldn't different or even "opposite" traits also be successful? When faced with random inheritable differences across different species over long periods of time why wouldn't the result be a variety of them, every one of which just didn't prevent reproduction from passing those traits on to the next generation? Some traits might be seen as "better" or "worse" by comparison but as long as they get passed on, we'll see both. It isn't about being "best". It's about being "good enough"
- asdff 2y agoBecause the trait is not the end all be all. It's a random walk to an outcome that leads to enough offspring to survive for the species to be there at all. It's probably not even the most optimal solution whatever is there, just happens to be competitive among the rest of the ecology to not be snuffed out. You might be interested in this concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness_landscape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness_landscape