The mosquito thing has gotten me thinking a bit about evolution in general. Now I believe that we evolved from something else, but there are a lot of questions that don't have easy answers. From my understanding we, along with every other species, are the most current version of what's come before. So how did we get here and where are we going?
The basic idea regarding evolution is that species adapt to their environment, either in a behavioral way or a physical one. It makes sense, until you start looking at specific examples. Take the giraffe for instance. It has a long neck so that it can reach leaves high on the tree. That's great for the giraffe, but why a long neck? Assuming the giraffe evolved from an antelope-like animal, why would they evolve into a gangly, easy to spot animal? How come it was the neck that changed? It could have just as easily been their digestive tract that changed, allowing them to eat a more varied selection of plants. Or they could have developed some other trait that allowed them to migrate away from their original location. Instead their necks became long and their legs grew to support the added structural changes. What was the determining factor for this?
That's not the only example. I could go into specifics all day, but it's more about why one animal evolved a certain way while another did something completely different. A tiger and a leopard are from the same genus of cats, however, they are drastically different looking and have varied behaviors. Ultimately they're both members of the cat family, they're just different species. One could wonder if at some point the leopard and the tiger were the same creature. If that's possible, then what caused the split so that one became an orange striped giant and the other a smaller spotted cat?
It's been theorized that evolution is caused by environmental factors. If it gets cold then a thicker coat of fur is grown. That seems like the logical process. What's dictating this logic though? Growing thicker fur is probably the simplest act that can be done, but why not move to warmer climates? Birds do it every year. Well some birds anyway. Rather than adapt to the environment, some species choose to relocate to where they're already suited. Granted a bird may have more choices when it comes to the ability to move from one place to another, still the same general concept should apply.
Essentially evolution is mutation. The mutation is an attempt to overcome something specific. If it works then the species will survive and its offspring will also have that mutation, at which point it becomes evolution. Not every mutation is beneficial though, which makes me wonder what genetic ideas were lost because in that time and place they didn't work. Maybe instead of growing thicker fur some creature increased its core temperature somehow, making it so that it wasn't affected by external cold as much, but in doing so it lost mobility, making it easier prey for predators. The mutation may have worked if the situation were slightly different. The peppered moth exists both in light and dark colors. During the industrial revolution the trees that they would rest on were blackened by soot, making it so that the darker colored moths had an advantage hiding from predators. This meant that more of the dark moths had a chance to reproduce, enough that after a few generations the majority of moths are dark now.
That process is simply natural selection at work. There is another cause of evolution that scientists have discovered that has nothing to do with adaptions to environment. Genetic drift produces completely random changes and seemingly has no direction. So it's entirely possible that the giraffe didn't evolve a long neck because of its environment, but instead it was a random mutation that just caught on because it was beneficial in that situation. I guess the question then becomes, what caused that random mutation to happen at the precise moment where it wouldn't cause more harm than good? Did it happen because a bunch of genes just happened to merge and change or was there something guiding that change? I suppose the same question can be asked about life on our planet. What caused life to suddenly occur? Was it bound to happen somewhere based on the theory of large numbers or was there some kind of force that intervened? That force could be called God or the Universe, but in the end it doesn't matter what we call it because if it exists and has the power to manipulate something like life, then we probably don't have any comprehension of what it truly is.
You have something like the shark, which has been using the same model and operating roughly the same way for hundreds of millions of years. Sure they've gotten smaller than the Megalodon for the simple reason that food supplies must have shrunk at some point making it so that a sixty foot shark wasn't going to last very long. Still a shark has been at the peak of evolution for a very long time, much longer than several other species, including humans. Obviously what they're doing works just fine and I guess the universe is going with "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude when it comes to sharks. Still if there is a thing as genetic drift, which generates random mutations, regardless of need, then shouldn't the shark be due for opposable thumbs or laser eyes?
In most cases evolution is a slow process that takes generations. Sometimes hundreds of generations before the change is permanent. Still one would have to imagine that sometimes it's not a slow process. It's a quick genetic leap to the next stage in evolution. We as humans can adapt to our environment, but we tend to adapt our environment to us. Instead of growing thicker fur we build a house with a furnace. Does that mean we're not allowing ourselves to the opportunity to evolve because we keep bypassing the need to adapt? Or is our evolution that we no longer need to physically overcome something, instead we mentally create an alternative? It makes me wonder what our next evolutionary step will be if we've removed the physical need to change.
