Life Through Geologic Time

Alright, friends, let’s talk about evolution. FIRSTLY, I MUST SAY THIS, AND I MUST SAY IT IN BOLD AND CAPS LOCK, THE ABOVE PICTURE IS NOT EVOLUTION, IT IS AN ACCIDENT THAT LIKELY AROSE FROM THIS IMAGE:  Now that that’s said, let’s talk about evolution, and its process, natural selection.

Evolution:

Evolution is change with descent. Now what does that mean, “change with descent”? Well, change with descent is just how organisms change genetically with descent, that is, how organisms’ offspring change from the organisms which they arose from. IT IS NOT “PROGRESS,” AND IT IS FOOLISH TO THINK IT IS, EVOLUTION IS THE ADAPTATION TO A LOCAL AND CHANGING ENVIRONMENT, OR, MERELY, GENETIC CHANGE WITH DESCENT (as stated (repeatedly) above.)

Natural Selection:

Contrary to what many believe, Natural Selection is not the same as Evolution. Natural selection follows three relatively undeniable principles, which are as follows:

Variation: Life varies. Whop-dee-doo. I am different from every other Homo sapiens sapiens and there’s nothing you can do about it. Coincidentally, I am also different from every armadillo, but we’ll talk about that later if you’re good.

Heredity: When a mommy and a daddy get “it” on, and their genes cross and get together, they make a new sequence that probably never existed before then. This is, of course, true only for organisms that sexually reproduce. Occasionally asexual organisms will make babies with themselves, but this doesn’t usually yield any genetic change. When it does, however, whoop-dee-doo, we have a new organism that has a new DNA sequence

Superfecundity: I particularly like this principal because it’s fun to say and is, some might say, a bit morbid. Superfercundity is the principle that more offspring are produced than could ever possibly survive to adult hood and mate to make more little organisms. 

The Inference: The inference is that, on average, the organisms better suited for their local and changing environment will survive to pass on their traits, but not necessarily, as something may happen to an organism, it could fall off a cliff, be run over by a car, be attacked by a starving horde of flesh eating slugs, et cetera. If said organism does pass on its genetics, the offspring will, on average, look similar to the parents, yet different.