Science Forums 2

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by questor

There is no question that evolution exists. There are questions that have not been answered.

I agree we have lots of questions but so far all the answers are within the frame work of Evolution.

Did sea creatures NEED to move onto land and therefore develop legs? Why didn't the ones left in the sea have the same NEED? The environment was the same.
Did some species of dinosuar NEED to develop wings and become a bird? Why didn't they all develop wings in that environment?
Did an anteater see some delicious ant hills and decide he NEEDED a long, hard snout so he could get at the ants? What about all the other animals that
viewed these same ant hills?

No, many different environmental pressures allowed aquatic animals to slowly develop the ability to live on land, need didn't figure into it. Animals that could survive in low oxygen environments by gulping air and exploit those resources developed from animals that could not. From these animals developed animals that could survive short dry periods, from these animals developed animals that could move better when the water went away and maybe find another pool. All of these things in one or more combinations allowed fish to move onto land. Each incremental step allowed it's descendants to survive better. What i think is your problem is the idea that fish just climbed out of the ocean and walked around. the is far too simplistic and has no real bearing on the actual evolution of life. None of these changes was simply a "need" Nor where they simple one step and bang you have a reptile or a bird or an ant eater. Anteaters didn't develop in a vacuum. there were many other animals that ate ants, some were better at it than others the ones best at eating ants lived to have descendants, these tended to have longer stickier tongues. No one time boom you have an anteater, no need other than need to exploit an available resource and no motivation other than reproductive pressures and survival.

The human and the ape supposedly had the same ancestor. When the split occured 8m years or so ago, did the ape say ''I like to live in the trees and eat bananas and have a small brain, while the human said, ''I would like to develop a large brain, drive cars and live in cities".? They both had similar envirinment at the time of the spilt, and they both have had an equal number of years since. Why the difference? It looks like evolution on demand.

Again there was no need no conscious effort to be human or drive cars or anything else, at some point due to environmental pressures some populations of the ancestors of apes had to try and make due without the forests due to changing conditions. Many didn't and died out but a few did. These simply followed environmental pressures and reproductive pressures. At some point some of these may have become an almost positive feed back and allowed the traits like big brains to start to drive the gradual evolution of the human species. If at any point these pressured hadn't supported the big brains and tool use humans would have died out and we wouldn't be here to debate the question.