Ok then, that i can understand. If there were certain selections of our ancestors who were able to eat other foods through a mutation and survived better then the rest when they dropped down from trees. It's when people argue that 'we adapted to the surrounding environment' which i do not believe to be a valid argument.

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The Genes definitely have to change when a plant eater truly adapts to eating meat (or both). The skull and teeth have to change among many other things. Thats no anomaly, its a precondition.

That's not what i am saying, though i agree with what you just said. What i am arguing though is that the genes do not change in order to adapt, they have to have changed before we started eating the different foods. Sorry, i may not have worded it clearly before.

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Lamarckism has been refuted. So what? We dont need individuals to pass changes they acquired during their life time on to their children in order to see evolution working. DNA recombination and mutation together with not yet fully understood genetic mechanisms that "guide" mutation processes are mostly enough for evolution to take place, and there is enough evidence that confirms that it is taking place.

I have not used above the word "adapt" in regards to behavior either, but in terms of the Genes (and not in the Lamarckistic way either). During evolution the genetic code of the species adapts to the demands in order to grant the survival of it. Maybe I have not used the correct terminology though.

I really have problems to understand what you are meaning. But if you mean that Lamarcks concept was flawed, yes it was. I never intended to claim anything different.

As you have said, survival of the fittest, together with the natural variation of genes and maybe mutation etc. That might be a good guess.

Well, I would not completely agree. The point is that in the fields of genetics we currently are on the way of finding out mechanisms that control mutation of the genetic code in a certain way, at least in higher organisms (animals or plants for example). The Introns seem to play a certain role here for example to name one example. Introns have been called DNA-Junk for a long time, junk without a function or sense. It increasingly looks like this might have been a wrong evaluation.

While Introns really dont seem to be much of a benefit for the individual itself, they seem to be of a worth when it comes to the recombination of DNA and also when it comes to mutation. I think the research is still in progress on this issue, but when I remember correctly its also favoring those mutations that make at least in the very basic genetic vocabulary sense.

The point is, in the scientific community the idea is rising that evolution is not a pure random process, but that its a combination out of random and guiding systems that increase the likability of positive mutation, or maybe conserve important genetic information while allowing more often mutation in other regions where it is more promising. Even though there is still much speculation on this, one should be principally open for those concepts.

After all, evolution do not favor the fittest individual but the fittest species, and species who develop methods to improve their own evolutionary score have an advantage. Species which do not trust on pure mutation random alone have an advantage.


Back to your very point again...
The genes don't have to change before habits change, for example if vegetable only eating humans discover meat as rare dish in times of food shortage for example and accept paying the price for bad efficiency in eating and digesting it, you will easily realise how an evolutionary pressure possibly could build up, which favors those who are better adapted to eat meat, beneath plants as major food source.

Of course thats just a guess from my side, but thats a way evolution can work for sure. The point is species do not always do what they can do best, but often are flexible and do also things they are not specialized towards if it is opportune even if its inefficient.

It's a semantic issue. When you say "giraffes adapted to their environment by developing longer necks" - of course no one means that in the Lamarcist sense anymore. No individual animal ever made its neck longer by stretching and then passed that on to its offspring. But, especially in animals which reproduce sexually, there has always been variation in all inheritable traits. Think of any litter of puppies. They had the same mom and dad, but no two of them are identical. I'm sure that proto-giraffes varied a bit in the length of their necks. In harsh times when food was hard to get, the taller ones lived longer and begat more offspring. If harsh times continued, after a lot of generations, they would look different. It's not a matter (usually) of change in a gene. Everybody knows that genes can be changed by mutation. That is usually fatal. What is not so widely known is that changes can occur in the ways genes are used and that a lot of our genetic material is no longer used at all - it was long ago, but as we evolved, so much became useless - same with all other life-forms. Usually, a trait like neck length or height is governed by the interplay of numerous genes. It is in DNA's nature to change as much as it is in the nature of water to run downhill.
Think of how we speed up evolution in dog breeding. I had an Italian greyhound once. This breed was developed from the older version of regular sized greyhounds, and in conformation they look just like a full-sized greyhound. Yet Italian greyhounds only weigh 8 - 12 pounds full grown. When breeders decided they wanted tiny greyhounds, they started with normal sized greyhounds and simply disallowed any except the smallest individuals to reproduce. Sort of an artificial harsh environment for that breed. Natural environments, given enough time, do the same thing, albeit without any plan or intent.

I can't understand if we evolved why is there nothing out there that is remotely as intelligent as us, not even close. If we are the smartes creature and at top of the food chain, why is it what we evolved from died out, it must've been intelligent too. There is nothing living that is remotely as intelligent as us, or that even has a close resemblence to our appearence.

yes indeed, nothing that is remotely intelligent to us. how is it a problem?

we see some resemblence in apes, never seen this?

For many reasons, partly because evolution does not mean that species will get more intelligent, that it is likely a very rare accident, and because our species killed off any other intelligent competetors. At one point in time Cro-Magnon man (us) and Neanderthals existed in the same places at the same time. Our ancestors out survived, and likely killed off many of the Neanderthals, or drove them out.

Besides that, we are not so much more intelligent than many other species including Wolves, Dolphins, and Apes. We are merely one step ahead of them. Given a very specific environment, one of those could make the leap to human intelligence over a few million years.

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I'm sorry, it never crossed my mind that it was purely a semantic issue but i was always instructed never to say adapt when talking of Darwinist Evolution.

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