Gallery: New Animal (and Human) Evolutions

Hahaha! Subway dogs... that's nuts!

---

"Do not offer sympathy to the mentally ill.
Tell them firmly:
I am not paid to listen to this drivel.
You are a terminal boob." - William S. Burroughs

I agree, the dogs ability to incorporate multiple stops wow. Amazing. It's adaptation not sure if it's evolution at this time though

That's like saying that it's amazing that a dog would remember that it gets a treat everytime it goes to the neighbor's house...

It's unsurprising that a stray dog would find its way onto a subway and remember that at the first two stops it recieves food.

That's not evolution nor is it very novel.

Well dogs are much smarter than most people give them credit for. Youtube has some researchers showing a dog that knowns over 1000 nouns via identity, and has yet to reach a limit. Remembering 1000+ names in a language they do not naturally speak is pretty good. How many dog words do you know? I know about 20 or so, less than a fraction of the human words my dogs know.

number 5, cardiologists developing antioxidants is not evolution. its more like an athlete getting bigger muscles or a manual laborer getting callused hands

mwright29
What exactly is the driving force behind evolution?
1985—An Oxford biologist, Richard Dawkins released his book, The Blind Watchmaker.

“The only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics . .A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind’s eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, foresight, no sight at all . . It is the blind watchmaker.”—Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, p. 5 ].

Why continue to support evolution when it is such a poor substitute for intelligent design?

What I see here is just poor science fiction being substituted for science fact.

It isn't a substitute for intelligent design.

The theory of evolution can about based on unbiased observation of the world around us.

Intelligent design depends on a logical fallacy called "Affirmation of the Consequent".

This is an example of the logical fallacy of Affirmation of the Consequent:

"If the universe had been created by a supernatural being, we would see order and organization everywhere. And we do see order, not randomness--so it's clear that the universe had a creator."

Odd, sometimes things seem obvious to me.

If a dog barks maybe the early breads of dogs (or wolves) heard man speak to one another and developed the barking speech pattern to mimic what they heard (as best they could) to get their owner's attention and thus developed the ability to communicate, on a primative level, with man.

Like when one mimics their owner and mouths the noises similar to the words "I love you", the animal shows a willingness to mimic what it hears repeatedly. Perhaps the early versions of dog heard grunting from early man or yelling in today's version and just uses the bark to commincate back.

Same with the playful and alert version of their bark. They can sense a tone of urgency when we scold them and want their attention to stop or change their behaviour - the same could be said for the dog "listening in" to those cues in pitch and tone and developing the ability to mimic that as well.

So it goes to say that if they revert to the wild, sans human contact, why would they need the ability to bark? Because that's a mimic of human traits not natural canine comminication patterns.

Does that make sense? Does to me.

mwright29
My original question was "what exactly is the driving force behind evolution"

Richard Dawkins-who is an evolutionist-says that it is just the blind forces of physics. Yet the natural laws confirm that evolution is impossible-entropy, for example.

All I get, in answer to my question, is a lot of circular reasoning and personal belief instead of solid, scientific facts.

Maybe it is because you have none to offer!

mwright29 --

It seems you do not understand how entropy works on macro and micro scales.
Entropy does not increase in a linear fashion or at the same rate at all points in the universe simultaneously.

Entropy always increases in an isolated system. Entropy is increasing in the universe. Entropy is increasing in our solar system, except as that entropy may be slowed by outside energy imparted by the general neighborhood's entropy. Entropy is increasing on Earth, except as it may be slowed by its neighborhood's entropy.

But the Earth's biosphere is not an isolated system. It continues to receive vast amounts of usable energy from the sun as its entropy increases and from the release of primordial heat in the Earth as its entropy increases.

Since Earth's biosphere is not an isolated system taken by itself, it is not bound in a simplistic manner to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It is, in fact, benefiting from the fact that other bodies are -- and they are imparting useful energy to the biosphere in doing so. As such, entropy in the biosphere is free to actually decrease.

It can't go on forever, of course, since entropy will eventually increase in our neighborhood to the point that the biosphere will no longer be gaining useful energy and will merge into the general entropy of the objects that occupy the space around us.

Please be careful about throwing words like "entropy" around carelessly. You run the risk of sounding the fool when you think you are on to something. "Entropy, nya, nya, nya!" does not support any argument against the case for evolution.

By the way, mwright29 --

Check your refrigerator. It shouldn't be working.

Really now, evolution isn't that complicated people. A creature that has a trait that allows it to reproduce more produces more offspring. The offspring that share that trait produce more offspring of there own. Eventually the entire population of that species takes on that trait. Thats the super simplified version anyway.

Reproduction is the driving force behind evolution. DNA actually changes at a predictable rate, so it is not entirely chaotic either.

As for intelligent design, it simply isn't science. There is no way to prove or disprove the existence of a creator, that we know of. Therfore it has no merit as a scientific argument.

Just throwing this out there.... I wouldn't call taking on a predominant trait evolution. Take the flower in the first example - location dictates the length of the stalk. All the flowers have the same set of genes, but the ones with long/short stalks do better in their respective locations. If one were to transplant one group to the other's location, it would take on the same characteristics within a few generations. Move it back, and the group will return to its previous state. None of the genes are changing, some specific traits just allow for more efficient reproduction. Granted, after enough time, the unfavorable trait might be so repressed through selective breeding by the environment that it might not return to dominance. However, this is a LOSS of traits, not gaining a new trait.