Must not respond…must resist temptation…mustn’t…! ….aw heck!
abcdefg:
- don’t play word games, won’t you? whether monkeys are hominids doesn’t affect the expression of the idea.
True and I’m sorry if I came off as pedantic. However you had established your definition of Apes and then proceeded to violate it.
Scientific dissusions usually involve precise terms with clear meanings
abcdefg:
- natural variance like skin becomes darker if often exposed to the sun doesn’t pass to future generation and doesn’t contribute to evolution.
That’s not what natural variance is. I was talking about natural variance in a population not an individual. Natural variance is the concept that most if not all natural characteristics have a range of values distributed around a norm
To use your skin color example, natural variance would be that even with the same amount of sun exposure some people would be lighter or darker.
abcdefg:
selective stress doesn’t encourage mutation! it accelerates “natural selection” at best.
are we under severe selective stress now? yes. we face losing jobs, traffic accidents etc which ancient apes doesn’t face. does that mean we evolve or mutate more often than apes?
Selective stress isn’t stress as in your boss wants the assignment done by the end of the week or the wife wants new furniture. Selective stress in evolutionary terms would be something like a cold winter, a drought, or a saber tooth that wants to have you over for dinner that also favors one set of traits over another. And it has to apply to a population not to an individual.
As to whether we are under severe selective stress right now…I doubt it. Never have there been so many humans (both in terms of absolute numbers and percentages) who have been so healthy and long-lived.
abcdefg:
only DNA affects offspring. your skin maybe darker than that of a black living in Europe if you live in Africa. but he produces black children, you produce white children.
I know that. But that wasn’t what I was questioning. You said “DNA can only change during mutations.” And I asked “why”
AFAIK there are other ways that DNA changes
abcdefg:
Simply because Lamarckism is wrong. (any contention?) you won’t develop wings just because you move your arms up and down every day.
Yes, but accumulated experience (and I was asking “why” in response to your sentence regarding life experience and DNA change) can lead to more successful breeding…which in turn leads to DNA change. And remember, when we talk about DNA change we are talking about the variance within the population NOT the individual. Individuals really don’t matter since you can’t have a species with 1 member.
abcdefg:
then why can’t you bear a few monkeys/apes? evolution is about passing acquired traits to offsprings. if it can’t be passed, then it’s not about evolution (like knowledge, no one is born to know some science)
Many creatures on the planet provide no parental care to their offspring. The offspring have to rely on instinct, chance, and accumulated experience (if that has any meaning in something like a tree or a guppy) to survive. Hard core, tooth and claw, survival of the fittest
HOWEVER, there are all sorts of examples in nature of parents passing on experiences to their offspring, particularly in the more intelligent animals. This is particularly true in humans since we have language and writing.
It is has an indirect affect on the genetic make up of a population rather than a direct one since you can just as easily pass on your experience to someone who isn’t directly related to you. Some scientists use the term “memes” to distinguish this effect from genes.
abcdefg:
Radiation damage contributes to DNA change most. chemical damage also have effects but much smaller.
by comparing the cost of taking plants into space and put them in some chemical solution, one can work out the approximate odds of mutation caused by radiation and chemicals.
There’s no DNA change by marrying one’s sister and bear idiotic children. some combination produce bad results. no new DNA/gene appears in the process.
You’re still fixating on damaging mutations (or mutations in general) as the driving force behind evolution. That is clearly wrong.
