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If legs evolved for walking why are they so useful for swimming? There is a set of genes that encodes for the behavior of walking or allows us to learn it and
by monochr 12y ago
If legs evolved for walking why are they so useful for swimming?
There is a set of genes that encodes for the behavior of walking or allows us to learn it and a whole other host of adaptations from our vestibular system to the angle at which our neck connects to our skull that taken together as a whole are adaptations for walking.
Each on its own has many, many other uses that have nothing to do with walking and provide benefits that have nothing to do with walking. So no, legs didn't evolve for anything. But in combination with a lot of other adaptations they make walking easier than would be the case without them.
- Peaker 12y agoI agree that legs didn't actually evolve for walking exclusively. They evolved for a myriad of purposes, including walking, running, jumping, swimming, and more. The fact other parts of the body also evolved to facilitate these features is not a contradiction. Evolution is like a parallel computation looking for a local optimum. When climbing the hills of the possibility landscape, various features that exist at the top of these hills can be described as the purpose of a particular search path.