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Originally Posted by CraigD
Organisms like bacteria do appear to confound our usual definitions of “species”, “offspring”, and “individual”.
They don’t reproduce sexually, but, as Michaelangelica notes, swap DNA nearly or perhaps even more effectively than organisms that do. |
Thanks for your comments on bacteria. they certainly don't fit the Natural Selection Hypothesis.
Please don't mis-understand me. i am not throwing Natural Selection out with the bathwater. It obviously has its place. what I am arguing is that it is not the only game in town given what we now know and our 20C experiences.
Bacteria, at 80% of the world's life, really have to be explained.
It is extraordinary, and quite wondrous, that the can swap genetic material at will (It almost approaches the incomprehensibility of Quantum Physics)
Some explanation as requested:-
In 1926, people in Europe and America began to come down with a strange sleeping sickness which became known as Encephalitis lethargica. Victims would go to sleep and not wake up. In ten years the disease kills some five million people then quietly went away
The 1918 bird/swine flu killed untold millions (Estimates vary from 20-100 million). It appeared in Madrid, Bombay and Philadelphia all in the same week (!?!) then it disappeared.
(my thanks to Bill Bryson)
The point is that some viral and bacteria epidemics (at least among humans -God knows what is happening with the rest of life on the planet) DIE.
This is not good "Survival of the Fittest" How does Darwin explain Death, extinction?
