This article doesn’t address the point that modern society enables most individuals to live long enough to have children regardless of their genetic advantages or disadvantages. Sure people with light skin are not well suited to living in very hot climates, but in the modern world that isn’t going to make them less likely to procreate than people with dark skin in that environment.
Yes, but being an anti-social, shut-in can contribute to not procreating. There are definitely both physical and psychological characteristics in humans that have a better chance of procreation than others. Even if people aren’t dying from nature, Darwin will get his due.
I’m not saying that genetic changes aren’t happening at all, just that the article doesn’t address that modern society creates a very different environment for natural selection, compared to humans in subsistence level environments in the wild.
It’s so weird the appendix isn’t the go to example instead of whiteness and milk drinking…
Up until a few hundred years ago it was vital as a reserve for gut bacteria when everyone was always getting dysentery and diarrhea. It still burst occasionally but it was a net positive. People without one likely died before it would have burst.
Then we got indoor plumbing and food safety, we stopped needing it so much which changed the evolutionary pressure. People without one never had it burst, so it flipped.
Then we discovered how to do an appendectomy ~300 years ago, and removed all the evolutionary pressure.
So it’ll stay a random percent where some people do and some don’t.
But everybody always wants to talk about whiteness and milk drinking
Wow, back in my day the appendix was a mystery.
My brother was born without wisdom teeth, won’t affect him in the slightest 🤷
Listen, whiteness and milk drinking is all I have going for me ok? And the whiteness is questionable. 😥
It is happening now.
Shit just happens very slowly.
We’ve been figuring out that evolution can move fast, given pressure. I often point to African male elephants shortening or losing their tusks due to humans poaching the super tuskers.
I’ve heard several arguments that boil down to, “That’s not evolution.” But it is! The environment ramped up a selection pressure, the animals adjusted. Same as Atlantic fish (trout I think?) attaining maturity faster and smaller. We’ve been keeping the big ones for decades.
Take the “humans did that” out of the equation and imagine another factor, evolution still happened quickly.
tl;dr: Animals can evolve quite quickly, but such events are hard to observe as they were rare and weird, outside of human influence or history.
I feel like that’s more evidence that humans have some control over evolution not just among ourselves, but other animals also. The elephants with smaller tusks are just able to keep breeding since they aren’t being poached (or poached as much).
Dogs, cats, birds, even plants are all affected by human behaviour.
I spent the last ten minutes trying to fund an article I read years ago. It was about a tiny freshwater fish that, in the period of something like 50 years, doubled its armor scales coverage and density in response to a new predator. It was amazing, looking at the pictures over time. Basically evolution in real time.
It’s like time travel.
“What do you mean time travel isn’t real? We are traveling through time literally all the time! We just can only go forward… Slowly.”
Says you! I’m moving forward at a blistering 60 seconds per minute.
And modern medicine also slows it down further.
Nah that actually accelerates the genetic diversity. All the morons that would’ve died off or medical issues that would’ve been a death sentence now have a chance to go on and further… everything.
We’re always evolving. We are at this very moment evolving to adapt to an environment full of microplastics, to eating ultraprocessed foods, to look at screens for most of the day, etc.
It’s too bad that evolution has some sort of time delay and only makes the next generations more adapted to the current environment, instead of the future environment, so people won’t be adapted to a hotter climate, more intense climatic events, to deal with food and scarcity, more uv intensity, more conflicts, and so many other things until it’s too late.
Just informing that this post contains irony and is mostly a joke
Not only the next generation. There are many genes that activate or deactivate based on environmental factors.
There’s even a term for such genes… A term I forget, but it exists and experts are very aware. Of course they aren’t going to have as massive as an effect as generational drift, but they can still have significant impact.
Doubt any type of effect can keep up with humans trashing the planet for profit, but… …
Epigenetics :o
We are at this very moment evolving to adapt to an environment full of microplastics, to eating ultraprocessed foods, to look at screens for most of the day, etc.
That’s not how evolution works…
and only makes the next generations more adapted to the current environment
It’s random chance, there’s nothing I creasing the next generations odds, and most adaptions will have a negative effect
Just informing that this post contains irony and is mostly a joke
It’s not ironic…
You either fundamentally don’t know what you’re talking about, or are just repeating common misunderstandings as “just a joke bro”?
evolving to adapt to an environment full of microplastics, to eating ultraprocessed foods, to look at screens for most of the day, etc.
That’s not how evolution works…
Isn’t it? There are those who get will sick from micro plastics/ultra processed food or turn Hikikomori from computer entertainment which would reduce their reproduction.
Yeah…those with some genetic cocktail that allows them to survive the new “standard” better will continue to breed more, thereby pushing the species in a forward, yet very slightly different direction.
Thats evolution. Dunno what trip that other dudes on.
If we make it a few thousand years I’m sure our bodies are trying to evolve against plastics and cancer.
In s thousand years we will be perfectly evolved to consume nothing but raw unfiltered high fructose corn syrup.
A very insightful article.
We’re doin’ the genetic drift! Cha cha cha
Hol’up… I have a raft? 😱🫣🤩
