clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:

> ... or maybe like hippos?


Holy ... cow!  :O

I would never have suspected!
Thanks for THAT link.

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clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Am 29.11.2017 um 04:08 schrieb omniverse:
>
> > Or in other words, the way evolution seems to be mostly finished. You don't see
> > a creature becoming future whales or dolphins anymore. What happened to their
> > land-based counterparts? How could they only be 100% water-borne since they
> > began taking to the ocean, why not half and half, like seals and walruses?
>
> ... or maybe like hippos?
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whippomorpha
> (Spolier Alert!)
>
>
> The most common phenomenon in evolution is that you have some animal
> developing a trait that is of benefit in its natural environment, and
> such traits tend to get passed on until they are prevalent throughout
> the species' population. In such a manner, species may change as a whole
> in response to their environment.
>
> But now and again you have populations being separated, and one develops
> in another direction than the other (because their natural environments
> differ somewhat, or just because one beneficial mutation arises in one
> population but not the other). As each population undergoes its own
> changes from the original form, they become so different that if they
> ever meet again later they can't (or won't) interbreed anymore, and have
> thus become different species -- each differing from the original
> species in its own way. The original species isn't gone -- it has been
> absorbed into the two new species, each of which is better adapted to
> its respective habitat than the original form.

Yeah, yeah...  LOL Thanks for that, I just never seem to get the biology
reasoning about why there wouldn't be everything else in between continuing too.
Sure. It makes sense about the changes occurring, as in dog breeding and the
multitude of variations, but likewise it's the curious way it only goes on and
on ever changing yet nothing remains of all the others.

Well, unless you think of all primates as an example of "other" human relatives,
maybe. But there's always the far separation into unique varieties without the
many almost the same ones existing too.

I can figure it must be something I don't understand about life forms
"evolving", just that I get confused about the odd way such change takes place
so decisively with only a certain kind of outcome, leaving all else as failure
to exist.

It's interesting anyhow, either way.

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On 29-11-2017 16:19, clipka wrote:
> Am 29.11.2017 um 04:08 schrieb omniverse:
> 
>> Or in other words, the way evolution seems to be mostly finished. You don't see
>> a creature becoming future whales or dolphins anymore. What happened to their
>> land-based counterparts? How could they only be 100% water-borne since they
>> began taking to the ocean, why not half and half, like seals and walruses?
> 
> ... or maybe like hippos?
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whippomorpha
> (Spolier Alert!)
> 
> 
> The most common phenomenon in evolution is that you have some animal
> developing a trait that is of benefit in its natural environment, and
> such traits tend to get passed on until they are prevalent throughout
> the species' population. In such a manner, species may change as a whole
> in response to their environment.
> 
> But now and again you have populations being separated, and one develops
> in another direction than the other (because their natural environments
> differ somewhat, or just because one beneficial mutation arises in one
> population but not the other). As each population undergoes its own
> changes from the original form, they become so different that if they
> ever meet again later they can't (or won't) interbreed anymore, and have
> thus become different species -- each differing from the original
> species in its own way. The original species isn't gone -- it has been
> absorbed into the two new species, each of which is better adapted to
> its respective habitat than the original form.
> 

Exactly! Cladism in action ;-)

-- 
Thomas

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On 30-11-2017 5:26, omniverse wrote:
> 
> I can figure it must be something I don't understand about life forms
> "evolving", just that I get confused about the odd way such change takes place
> so decisively with only a certain kind of outcome, leaving all else as failure
> to exist.
> 
> It's interesting anyhow, either way.
> 

It isn't easy at all and even scientists are struggling with the concept 
in its details. However, see it as a kind of continuous ironing out of 
extremes. The dominant trait prevails and all the others (which are 
still present somehow) are gradually (re-)absorbed or just disappear 
because they are out-competed. There are as many ways in which this can 
happen as nature can imagine (and nature is imaginative) and most happen 
anyway at the molecular level through the gene flow.

-- 
Thomas

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On 29-11-2017 16:28, Stephen wrote:
> On 29/11/2017 15:22, clipka wrote:
>> Am 29.11.2017 um 15:57 schrieb Stephen:
>>> On 28/11/2017 17:56, omniverse wrote:
>>>> I'm definitely not a "flat-earther", unlike some:
>>>>
>>>> https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-hopes-prove-earth-flat-230622888.html
>>>
>>> Talking about head bangers. I just saw this. O_O
>>>
>>>
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-42167619/daredevils-jump-from-a-mountain-into-a-plane

>>>
>>
>> Folks, don't try this at home ;)
>>
> 
> For those that are rich enough to do it. Please do. ;-)
> 

Evolution in action ;-)

-- 
Thomas

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On 30/11/2017 07:57, Thomas de Groot wrote:
> On 29-11-2017 16:28, Stephen wrote:
>> On 29/11/2017 15:22, clipka wrote:
>>> Am 29.11.2017 um 15:57 schrieb Stephen:
>>>> On 28/11/2017 17:56, omniverse wrote:
>>>>> I'm definitely not a "flat-earther", unlike some:
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-hopes-prove-earth-flat-230622888.html
>>>>
>>>> Talking about head bangers. I just saw this. O_O
>>>>
>>>>
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-42167619/daredevils-jump-from-a-mountain-into-a-plane

>>>>
>>>
>>> Folks, don't try this at home ;)
>>>
>>
>> For those that are rich enough to do it. Please do. ;-)
>>
> 
> Evolution in action ;-)
> 

Got it in one. :-)

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Consider the degree of variation we have in the present day - everything from
pygmies to [the late] Andre the Giant.   And all of these 10 billion people are
considered to be "the same species".
Then consider that there's supposed to be only a 2% difference in genetic
sequencing between "us" and the orangutans.
And from a medical / anatomical / pharmacological view, pigs are supposed to be
the closest to humans.

Even small changes in genetic makeup can have profound changes on morphology.
There are cascades of biochemical processes that amplify basic chemical signals.
 That's why tiny amounts of hormones can do what they do - and over such a long
period of time.   Anabolics, thyroid, etc.

Real life isn't a bunch of male Sprague-Dawley rats - it's a rich interplay
between genes and environment, and intellectual capability, and spiritual drive
to achieve.

Talk to anyone who's designed and helped administer a drug study, or taught
students, or trained people, or studied twins....

And look at what they're doing with green fluorescent protein and knocking out
chlorophyll in plants, and growing human tissue structures....

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"Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> Consider the degree of variation we have in the present day - everything from
> pygmies to [the late] Andre the Giant.   And all of these 10 billion people are
> considered to be "the same species".
> Then consider that there's supposed to be only a 2% difference in genetic
> sequencing between "us" and the orangutans.
> And from a medical / anatomical / pharmacological view, pigs are supposed to be
> the closest to humans.

Yep. When you put it that way... just always boggles my mind when I think of
things like the Darwinian mankind evolving drawing. Makes me wonder about why
everything that ever occurs can't somehow continue. But it's really the other
things like alligators and sharks that haven't changed much where it gets
weirder still, if evolving takes place. That's what I mean by sometimes there's
an end product, or so it seems, yet not the other multitude of steps along the
way.

This gets into my more elaborate thoughts about how "designed" life is,
nevermind the billions of years time scale involved-- or not, depending on your
outlook.
Either life is actually simple what form it takes, that meaning it's not like
creatures have special powers as imaginations by people can conjure up, since
everything exists within a niche of their environment. Just like if you were to
stir up a shovel full of ground into a bucket of water and let it settle, it
makes a layered sediment with a kind of form too.

Predestined, I guess is the word. Or is it something else? You see what I'm
saying, it gets complicated. Or is that only because people can think
differently than any other lifeform? Sometimes I wonder which it is.

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"omniverse" <omn### [at] charternet> wrote:
Makes me wonder about why
> everything that ever occurs can't somehow continue. But it's really the other
> things like alligators and sharks that haven't changed much where it gets
> weirder still, if evolving takes place. That's what I mean by sometimes there's
> an end product, or so it seems, yet not the other multitude of steps along the
> way.

Well, with things like alligators, crocodiles, coelacanths, frilled sharks,
white sturgeon, alligator gar, paddlefish, etc. - there must not be any
environmental pressure to induce change.  Evolution is survival of the fit -
which means there will be variation, but if that species is already optimized
for the environment that it inhabits, than any other mutation is a detriment - a
"devolution" of sorts.

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Am 30.11.2017 um 21:04 schrieb Bald Eagle:
> "omniverse" <omn### [at] charternet> wrote:
> Makes me wonder about why
>> everything that ever occurs can't somehow continue. But it's really the other
>> things like alligators and sharks that haven't changed much where it gets
>> weirder still, if evolving takes place. That's what I mean by sometimes there's
>> an end product, or so it seems, yet not the other multitude of steps along the
>> way.
> 
> Well, with things like alligators, crocodiles, coelacanths, frilled sharks,
> white sturgeon, alligator gar, paddlefish, etc. - there must not be any
> environmental pressure to induce change.  Evolution is survival of the fit -
> which means there will be variation, but if that species is already optimized
> for the environment that it inhabits, than any other mutation is a detriment - a
> "devolution" of sorts.

Also, the fact that a species hasn't changed much in appearance doesn't
mean it didn't evolve. We can't see properties like immune system or
metabolism in the fossil records.

And then there seem to be "winning body plans", which keep coming up
again and again in different species, such as the "sabre toothed cat"
pattern, which was developed by different species (including some
distinctively non-feline ones) at different times.

For some reason none of the occupants of that ecological niche managed
to get a permanent foothold there; maybe that niche has a natural
tendency to collapse from time to time. But if such recurring niches for
particular body plans exist, it is reasonable there are other niches
that remain open virtually indefinitely; and in such cases, once a
species has established itself in that niche, it is reasonable to assume
that it will be able to continue to assert that niche -- not because it
remains unchanged, but because to the very contrary it continues to
change, namely by optimizing even more for that niche (with the body
plan being pretty much finalized comparatively quickly), thus staying
ahead of any other species that might happen to enter that niche.

The crocodiles' niche appears to be just such a permanent one.

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