If evolution exists.....

[chaoschristian]

My lack of understanding of science will need an expanded answer to what you mean by your one word answer.

Cellulose is incredibly difficult to digest. It takes a long time, even if you are an animal, such as a cow, who is particularly developed to be able to digest the stuff. The longer you can keep the cellulose in an organ that functions as a grinder (the stomach) the more you can break down the cellulose and more you are able to prepare the food you've ingested for nutrient absorbtion in your small intestine. Cows subsist on grasses. Having four stomachs allows them to maximize the caloric output of their food source, as it allows them to break down the cellulose more thoroughly before the food passes into the small intestine.

Don't believe me? Go eat a can of corn. Humans are not particularly well adapted to breakdown and digest cellulose, a trade off for our capacity as omnivores I suppose. You will have your evidence of this soon enough

 

[chaoschristian]

He's joking.

Whether science can find an answer to this? Probably. Whether it has? I don't know. You'd have to read the technical journals. If it's well-enough accepted, it may also be in somebody's book.

No. I wasn't really. I was providing a possible environmental factor that would help expliann why an animal would develop more than one stomach, just as Extirpated Wildlife requested.

I am not a technical expert on this. I am open to being shown wrong. But from what I remember of my biology classes and readings cellulose is an important factor to examine in the development of herbivore and omnivore digestive systems.

 

[Willtor]

No. I wasn't really. I was providing a possible environmental factor that would help expliann why an animal would develop more than one stomach, just as Extirpated Wildlife requested.

I am not a technical expert on this. I am open to being shown wrong. But from what I remember of my biology classes and readings cellulose is an important factor to examine in the development of herbivore and omnivore digestive systems.

I stand corrected.

 

[chaoschristian]

I stand corrected.

Not to worry. I just hope I haven't made a fool of myself by spouting off on cellulose. Biology isn't my area of expertise, if I even have one to claim. But I was raised on a farm and I know what happens when cows eat.

 

[Willtor]

Not to worry. I just hope I haven't made a fool of myself by spouting off on cellulose. Biology isn't my area of expertise, if I even have one to claim. But I was raised on a farm and I know what happens when cows eat.

Well, that's fine. I'm just a Computer Scientist, and my only knowledge of evolution is from genetic algorithms and my own reading. I only took a couple of Biology courses, and we never got into evolution.

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

Why not? No, I don't understand what evolution is. That is why I am asking. They might not be able to jet a fox out of ooze, but they could start the sped up process and maybe the next generation of scientist can complete it. I'm not saying they know how to do that yet. I just want to know if you think they will be able to do that?

In laymens terms, it seems as though we are taught we come from the amoeba and developed to man in the evolution. It seems as though at some point Scientist should be able to replicate that in the lab in a sped up way. Maybe not now, but eventually.

Now I totally agree evolution exists because creatures adapt. Anyone would agree that adaptation happens, whether they call it evolution or not. We know that viruses adapt. The question is then will viruses in a billion years grow legs? Can we create viruses to do that.

Probably not on their own, since they would need to develop a cellular system while competing against highly developed cellular systems. However, it could acquire legs by fusing its DNA with the DNA of some legged organism.

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

Ok. They had to start from somewhere. I just figured that someone might understand what I was getting at. So wherever they started, can they develope a this first kingdom creature of animal lineage in the lab to a fox?

Why not try to do create evolution in the lab? Isn't this the purpose of any scientist? Why clone a mammoth? Because they want to. That's why. Don't tell me there isn't a scientist out there that wants to do this. They just can't yet. That is why it hasn't happened. Or because the splitting points of speciazation doesn't really exist.

Another question:

Are there any known examples of the species at the exact moment where speciation happened?

We do evolution in the lab with organisms with short lifespans, such as fruit flies. However, major changes tend to require a large number of generations, which is generally too expensive and time consuming to do for the sake of doing it. However, our crops and domesticated animals are more or less a several thousand year experiment in evolution.

We couldn't create a fox, but we could create something that looks and acts like a fox. However, since the psuedofox's DNA would have evolved seperately, it would be incompatible with a fox.

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

The only way you could really speed it up is to speed up the rate of change between generations. But if you make the change too great, there will be too much difference between creatures at the same level in the tree. So you won't start with a jelly-fish and arrive at a salmon in one generation. Typically, when Scientists perform experiments, they use fruit flies and such since they go through so many generations so quickly.

The obvious problem is that if you wanted to evolve a creature with a longer life cycle, this would take much longer. It's also not necessarily clear how you would do it. You'd have to find a niche in which greater life-span was beneficial.

As for cows and stomachs, it was probably (like most evolutionary things) a very gradual change. I'm not an expert on the evolution of the cow, but I'd have to imagine that it didn't start out as 4 stomachs, but one stomach which gradually achieved divisions, which, in turn, gradually separated.

Creating longer lifespans is easy. Simply prevent breeding until middle age. Those with short lifespans die before they can reproduce.

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

The life span issue would be a problem, certainly.

But what enviromental issues would cause a stomach to go from 1 to 4 stomachs? Can scientist tell that?

Grass is an inefficient food source. A lot of the energy is in the form of cellulose, which is difficult to digest. A cow that has specialized areas in its stomach for different parts of the break down of cellulose and that regurgitates partially digested cellulose for additional chewing will get more energy from the same amount of grass.

 

[Extirpated Wildlife]

In evolution, doesn't the mammal start with a singled cell specie?

I think this question got lost in all the other discussions: Are there any known examples of the species at the exact moment where speciation happenened?

 

[chaoschristian]

In evolution, doesn't the mammal start with a singled cell specie?

How could a single celled creature have mammary glands?

BTW: do you understand now why cellulose could be an environmental explanation for animals with multi-chambered stomachs?

 

[Extirpated Wildlife]

How could a single celled creature have mammary glands?

I thought this was about an evolutionary process that took billions of years? That is fine.

Then what did the first creature start as, that latter became the first mammal?

 

[Extirpated Wildlife]

BTW: do you understand now why cellulose could be an environmental explanation for animals with multi-chambered stomachs?

I understand your explanation as to why a cow has 4 stomachs. What i don't understand is how in the evolutionary process a creature, which eventually would become the modern day cow, would think and realize that it needs 4 stomachs.

 

[notto]

I understand your explanation as to why a cow has 4 stomachs. What i don't understand is how in the evolutionary process a creature, which eventually would become the modern day cow, would think and realize that it needs 4 stomachs.

It doesn't. You have to remember that populations evolve, not individuals. An individual dies with the genes, features, and characteristics it is born with. However, in any population, there are variations. Shorter hair, longer hair, larger stomachs, smaller stomachs, more flexible intestines, less flexible intestines, etc.

Occassionally, one of these variations is going to provide an advantage over the other individuals in the population when there is competition for food (or in selection of breeding partners). This will cause the individual who has the beneficial characteristic to produce more individuals with the same characteristic due to breeding. Over time, the characteristic becomes more and more prevalent int he population (and the population in general has evolved this new characteristic) .

This is the theory of evolution. It never entails an organism thinking it needs to change and changing. Again, populations evolve, not individuals.

 

[chaoschristian]

I thought this was about an evolutionary process that took billions of years? That is fine.

Then what did the first creature start as, that latter became the first mammal?

I misunderstood you. I thought you were asking for an example of a single-celled mammal. Rather difficult that.

 

[gluadys]

I think this question got lost in all the other discussions: Are there any known examples of the species at the exact moment where speciation happenened?

In most cases there is no such moment. Have you ever looked up ring species? In ring species the two species at the ends of the ring have speciated. But in the middle of the ring are varieties which can interbreed with those on each side of it. So just where did the speciation occur?

Here is an analogy. After the break-up of the Roman empire, Latin changed into regional languages such as Italian, Spanish, French, etc. Was there ever an exact moment when Latin changed into French?

 

[Extirpated Wildlife]

Here is an analogy. After the break-up of the Roman empire, Latin changed into regional languages such as Italian, Spanish, French, etc. Was there ever an exact moment when Latin changed into French?

Whether or not we can actually tell when that moment happened is certainly a mute point. But my brother's wife was a missionary in France and when should could not figure out how to say something in French, she would same it in spanish and they always understood her.

Maybe I am not understanding evolution still. I still have it in my mind that evolutionist think we were once a fish that turned into a cralling mammal that eventually turned into a monkey that dropped out of a tree and became man.

But what it seems to me from just a little reading is that evolutionist don't have any idea how each tree limb of life came to be. All they know is that all birds are from a limb, all amphibians are from a limb, and supposed man is from the monkey limb since they want to categorize man as non-unique.

 

[notto]

Maybe I am not understanding evolution still. I still have it in my mind that evolutionist think we were once a fish that turned into a cralling mammal that eventually turned into a monkey that dropped out of a tree and became man.

Well, lets start with the basics. Do you understand what we mean when we say that populations evolve, not individuals? No individual ever turned into anything else. The way you phrase this seems to indicate that you think evolution says that. It doesn't.

The theory of evolution never has anything giving birth to something that is not the same species as itself. It also never says that massive jumps like fish to mammal happened in a single jump or population.

Over time populations can speciate but it doesn't happen at the individual organism level.

Ring species were mentioned and that is a good way to demonstrate how speciation can happen.

In a ring species, a variation within a population happens along sort of a line. For instance, one population of bird that inhabits a particular evavation around a mountain top. Think of this ring of inhabitants in your head. It is a ring around the mountain at a certain elevation.

In this population of birds, there are gradual variations in the population as we go around the mountain. Lets take the population and simplify these variations by representing them as a line (take the ring and lay it out) that looks like this.

aaabbbcccdddeeefffggghhhiiijjj

Each letter represents a slight graduation of differences in the population.

Now, these differences are not enough to stop each adjacent group from mating with each other. a's mate with b's b's mate with c's and so on.

But what is found is that at some point, a's don't mate with e's. They are a different species. a's don't mate with j's where they meet together on the same side of the mountain (remember, the a's and j's are together because it is a ring around the mountain and the ends meet).

Now, let's say that something leads to a large section of this bird population to be wiped out. Lets say that the b's through the i's are wiped out.

All that is left are the a's and the j's. They do not breed together, they have speciated and will continue to diversify in different ways due to evolution.

Speciation has happened which is what evolution is all about. No fish giving birth to mammals. No individuals changing. Simple selective pressure and variation leading to speciation.

Does this make sense? Can you see how speciation can happen and why your description doesn't really represent what goes on?

Again, we are starting with some basics to make sure that what you are actually discussing is indeed what evolution actually states and not some misconception or bad information your received from an improper source.

 

[Extirpated Wildlife]

Let me ask it like this. Let's say fish are AAs. Birds a EAs. Monkeys are LAs and Humans are TAs. The first letter being the general specie and the second letter being a variation of that specie. So AA could be a goldfish and AT could be a shark. It is obvious that a goldfish isn't going to mate with a shark, if that is what you were refering to in your illustration.


But did monkeys(LAs) come from the fish (AAs), since the are seperated by a wide variety of variations of speciation? And does the human develope to something that isn't human anymore and thus becomes a species to itself like (ZA).

What I'm getting at is where did monkeys begin at? I don't care about refering to mammals or what not. Before the speciation of the monkey or even mammals, what were they?

 

[notto]

What I'm getting at is where did monkeys begin at? I don't care about refering to mammals or what not. Before the speciation of the monkey or even mammals, what were they?

Other species of animals. Mammal isn't a species, it is a label for an entire group of species, same with monkey. Goldfish and Sharks are not the same species. They are entirely different species because they do not mate.

Where did monkeys come from? They diversified from some other mammal species (because they were not the first mammals). Where did the first mammals come from? They diversified from some other species of animal that had some mammal like characteristics but where not true mammals.

I guess we just need to be clear that a fish didn't all of the sudden turn into a mammal or a monkey or a man. That is not how evolution works. It takes generations and separation events within populations to speciate, speciate, speciate. You seem to be looking for something that evolution neither predicts or requires. It is a strawman.

Let's get back to the basics.

Do you understand what we mean when we say that individuals don't evolve, populations do?