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Obvious: There is more food per individual. Why? Increased productivity of farming. Have you ever seen a modern farm? They are just as impressive as any modern

Obvious: There is more food per individual. Why? Increased productivity of farming. Have you ever seen a modern farm? They are just as impressive as any modern sky scraper or any other engineering accomplishment, probably more so for logical reasons. Once you throw in the logistical side, even more. The technology being used for traveling salesman problem is fascinating and cutting edge. In fact, it's well known that there is plenty of food for everyone on Earth, but the logistics aren't quite up to snuff.. The result is lots of wasted food. Logistics is not a popular science for career-minded scientists to get into, because the costs need to stay low, thus they aren't making a lot of money. But they are well funded and working with the same type of stuff you'd see in the Oil Industry. They're supporting an entire society with their contributions. This is part of the reason I hate Monsanto so much, but that topic is for another thread. Humans get all the food they need, so they stop forging, same for our pets, so they stop hunting. So do the rats, so they stop competing. Etc, etc, cascading down to many species.

streptomycin 13y ago
"Among mice in control groups in the National Toxicology Programme (NTP), there was a 11.8 per cent increase in body weight per decade from 1982 to 2003 in females coupled with a nearly twofold increase in the odds of obesity. In males there was a 10.5 per cent increase per decade." Control mice are typically allowed to feed at will from a controlled diet that has not varied much over the decades, making obvious explanations less plausible.
- AsymetricCom 13y ago
  Even the bacteria are full. Seriously though, chimps probably have similar intestinal flora as we, and they're the fattest of the fattening animals. See the original paper, they're an order of a magnitude fatter than any other species. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3081766/pdf/rspb20101890.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3081766/pdf/rspb... I propose that the increased population and access to food is accelerating the evolution of intestinal flora, causing it to become more efficient at digesting, sometimes even exceeding the hosts capacity leading to obesity, leaky gut syndrome and IBS.
- gus_massa 13y ago
  How do they select the parents of the next generation? At random? Pick the more healthier (i.e. 0.1% more weight)? It's possible to do artificial selection by accident. The only idea I have to solve this problem is to froze some mice embryos and defrost some of them in 20 years and compare (and some of them in 50 and 100 years).
- eCa 13y ago
  11.8% body weight increase per decade means a doubling of body weight in 60 years. That can not be a healthy speed of evolution.
- notahacker 13y ago
  In the comments of the source article (linked from Marginal Revolution) people working in labs claimed the ingredients in commercial food mixes had changed dramatically since the 80s, even where the supplier remained unchanged and the calories were approximately the same.
hristov 13y ago
That explanation may work for pets, but it does not work for wild animals in human environments. In these cases, the wild animal population simply rises to meet the food supply.
Someone 13y ago
Rats stop competing? Evolution theory would predict more rats/faster rats/more muscular rats/larger brains/improved disease resistance/earlier maturity/etc, not rats that look more like couch potatoes. That could only happen in areas with colder winters or with random long periods of lack of food. And yes, the time period is not long enough for evolution in rats, but it is more than long enough for natural selection to have a marked influence.

streptomycin 13y ago

"Among mice in control groups in the National Toxicology Programme (NTP), there was a 11.8 per cent increase in body weight per decade from 1982 to 2003 in females coupled with a nearly twofold increase in the odds of obesity. In males there was a 10.5 per cent increase per decade." Control mice are typically allowed to feed at will from a controlled diet that has not varied much over the decades, making obvious explanations less plausible.

AsymetricCom 13y ago
Even the bacteria are full. Seriously though, chimps probably have similar intestinal flora as we, and they're the fattest of the fattening animals. See the original paper, they're an order of a magnitude fatter than any other species. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3081766/pdf/rspb20101890.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3081766/pdf/rspb... I propose that the increased population and access to food is accelerating the evolution of intestinal flora, causing it to become more efficient at digesting, sometimes even exceeding the hosts capacity leading to obesity, leaky gut syndrome and IBS.
gus_massa 13y ago
How do they select the parents of the next generation? At random? Pick the more healthier (i.e. 0.1% more weight)? It's possible to do artificial selection by accident. The only idea I have to solve this problem is to froze some mice embryos and defrost some of them in 20 years and compare (and some of them in 50 and 100 years).
eCa 13y ago
11.8% body weight increase per decade means a doubling of body weight in 60 years. That can not be a healthy speed of evolution.
notahacker 13y ago
In the comments of the source article (linked from Marginal Revolution) people working in labs claimed the ingredients in commercial food mixes had changed dramatically since the 80s, even where the supplier remained unchanged and the calories were approximately the same.

hristov 13y ago

That explanation may work for pets, but it does not work for wild animals in human environments. In these cases, the wild animal population simply rises to meet the food supply.

Someone 13y ago

Rats stop competing? Evolution theory would predict more rats/faster rats/more muscular rats/larger brains/improved disease resistance/earlier maturity/etc, not rats that look more like couch potatoes. That could only happen in areas with colder winters or with random long periods of lack of food. And yes, the time period is not long enough for evolution in rats, but it is more than long enough for natural selection to have a marked influence.