Humans Disrupt Evolution

[GarGleM0nster]

Please bare with me and my bad English it is not my first language, just understand the concept of this

I was thinking and as far as human evolution goes the way I see it the second something that we would consider a mutant comes along we would probably get rid of it correct? Or do you think due to random mating there will be no more drastic human evolution other than the fact that we are getting taller due to more favorable living conditions such as better nutrition etc.. than ancient humans

that may not make much sense but I was just thinking about how I have heard that humans (due to something to do with our level of intelligence), will evolve much slower than other species or not at all, anybody else's theories?

[sanddbox]

bear*

I don't think you understand evolution. Evolution is just organisms dying (naturally, not by some magical law called Evolution) when they can't survive in their environment.

We will evolve to survive in the environment we created, so evolution won't be "disrupted". Besides, any meaningful evolution takes millions of years - we won't survive that long.

tl;dr: No. Evolution isn't about surviving nature - its about surviving whatever environment you live in. Thus, the theory doesn't hold up.

[Goatboy]

Evolution is just organisms dying (naturally, not by some magical law called Evolution) when they can't survive in their environment.

Gonna have to disagree with you on this one. Maybe you intentionally oversimplified it, but there's much more to evolution than just dying. What you're talking about is closer to natural selection. And yes, there is a difference.

Evolution doesn't occur without some change in the genetic makeup. There needs to be some favorable mutation, no matter how big or small, that gives one organism a different chance at survival than another. If all a species is doing is losing its weaker members while the strong stay the same, that's natural selection. As soon as you have mutations, it's evolution. Evolution encompasses natural selection, but not vice versa.

Remember that evolution doesn't only work in favor of a species. On a grand scale it overwhelmingly tends towards aiding survival, but on small scales (relatively speaking) evolution works both ways.

[tremor77]

Deep stuff.. I've noticed that Evolution sometimes goes backwards... case in point, Windows Vista, but then it leaps forward and gets back on track, Windows 7. But if you actually talk about human genetic evolution, I think because of our technology we've probably stalled ourselves in terms of natural, physical evolution... perhaps intellectual evolution will continue to progress, but personally.. I think that the move Wall-E isn't too far from an accurate portrayal of what our potential, future evolved state may be. Disturbing, to say the least... for a cutesy little animated flick, left with in a state of somber horror.

[r-ID]

Will human DNA change? Yes. We all are mutants, there are many of new mutations in everyone of us. Medicine are trying to create new way of medicine, which "adapts" to the mutations to cure diseases.

[runninggee57]

What's interesting is that humans have done much of their evolution in the last 10,000 years. After we gained the ability to walk (homo erectus, million years ago) there wasn't a lot more evolution that went on. Our brains got bigger and we developed different shades of skin... But as soon as the agricultural revolution hit, humans went under massive amounts of natural selection. Diseases were everywhere and we started eating all these new starchy foods, hunting and eating meat, and drinking lots of milk. Human bodies had to adapt to these new types of nutrients (or lack there of) which took a lot of people dieing, and a lot of mothers having more kids. Average height dropped a little for a while because of our new terrible nutrition but slowly we developed ways to get all of the nutrients we needed and we started getting taller again. So our internal biology went through massive evolution that hadn't occurred on such a scale since organisms started eating plants. Interestingly enough, brain size is on the decline right now and has been for a couple hundred years. I don't think we're getting stupider but I think our bodies are realizing, "Hey, I don't use half of my brain anyways, why eat extra food to support it when it could just get smaller."

So I don't think we've stopped or even slowed in our evolution. We've only just become aware in the last 100 years that we evolved from monkeys! Everyone is just looking for big changes on the outside, when we really should be looking in. We're not gonna sprout wings anytime soon or grow gills or fins. But we are approaching food crises and obesity epidemics at the same time. It'll be interesting as to how these will play out and what the size of the human population will tend towards in the next 100 years.

[cilpolir]

I think latest evolution of humans is that we (europian) can break down alcohol,(maybe because we've drunk so much in the medieval). Some Asian people miss this gen and get wasted from just 1 bear

[Goatboy]

Interestingly enough, brain size is on the decline right now and has been for a couple hundred years. I don't think we're getting stupider but I think our bodies are realizing, "Hey, I don't use half of my brain anyways, why eat extra food to support it when it could just get smaller."

I'm not sure that's why.

Evolution almost always produces physical traits. This is because, in the animal kingdom, the strongest and fastest survive. Intelligence doesn't really have much to do with it. It can be argued that an ape with a sharp stick will win a fight with an ape without one, but on the grand scale, raw physical power wins.

Compare this with humans. Technology has done amazing things for us. We take in (on average) more information in a single day than most people 100 years ago took in each decade! Sure, this improves our quality of life (arguably), but evolution doesn't care. At the end of the day, the football star has a better chance of survival than most nerds/geeks.

So to sum it up, our brains are not shrinking due to "lack of use" necessarily, but rather because evolution favors strength.

Also, be advised that I totally bullshitted that 100 years thing. I forgot the actual numbers, but it's something close to that.

Also also, that whole thing about us using 10% of our brains is a joke psychologists play on their students to make us feel inferior so we study harder.

I think latest evolution of humans is that we (europian) can break down alcohol,(maybe because we've drunk so much in the medieval). Some Asian people miss this gen and get wasted from just 1 bear

All it takes is one bear to waste me. Bears are fucking powerful. Kinda proves my "raw power" point.

[sanddbox]

If the bear didn't have legs I think I could take it on.

[tremor77]

bears would rule the world if they had opposable thumbs... evolution.