Quote:
Originally Posted by Seditious
evolution is the opposite of chance.
Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable is worth reading if you're interested in understanding this.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BlackMetalWhiteGuy
Everything in evolution is by chance. However...
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To avoid confusion about this, I want to point out that I'm stating that all
mutations occur by chance, while the factors determining which mutations survive are based on probability.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick R.
Humans did not evolve from chimpanzees…where on earth did you get this information from? Perhaps you meant to say we have common ancestry? Also, we aren’t even close to being “genetically identical”, we have a 2% difference between our genomes which is an enormous amount of genetic information. As far as a “missing chromosome”, this is related to an ancestral fusion, which created chromosome 2 in humans. This also answers “German asshole”.
http://www.evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm |
Yes, I caught this and stated correctly in another post that humans simply share an ancestor with chimps and didn't evolve from them. I didn't realize that I left such a glaring error in my other post though, so thank you for pointing it out, it's correct now
With regards to genetic identity, I'm aware of the 2% difference and my word choice "identical" is an over exaggeration that I used simply to explain to razoredge that chimps are our closest extant relatives.
Also, thanks for explaining the chromosome issue, I've been wondering about this for quite some time now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by razoredge
I was asked what was so important about flight ? I could ask what was so important about biped, but I know better. Same as the answer to flight would be mobility. Slithering on the ground seems to have some advantages as well but I was never jelous. However it surely appears that man has been intrigued by flight... no ? So obviously birds just never hit the lottery in the brain development department.
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Bipedalism has advantages other than those related to mobility, especially in a savannah. For starters, there are fewer trees to escape to, so being able to stand bipedally would allow us to see predators from much further away, enabling us to get a head start when escape is necessary. More limited food sources also means that bipedal walking would free our arms, allowing us to carry food with us as we migrated, rather than huddling around a dwindling resource.
With regard to bird intelligence, I believe I stated earlier that the type of intelligence that humans are primarily concerned with is an adaptation to social group size. In addition to primates, we can see the same correlation in canines, felines, other terrestrial predatory mammals and whales, which evolved from a terrestrial species. Even some bird species, particularly parrots and macaws, demonstrate this phenomenon. In fact, African Greys, which are considered to be the geniuses of the bird world have been estimated to possess the cognitive processing power of a five year old child, and the emotional equivalence of a three year old human.
Quote:
Originally Posted by razoredge
I am also wondering, there was once what was refered to as "the missing link". I realize this has possibly become a dated idea but has archaeology uncovered all the examples of homo sapien evolution yet?
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We discussed the "missing link" in my evolutionary psychology class a few years ago and the guy who made the discovery was ridiculed for it, because he admitted to sculpting the hips of the fossil into what he imagined an intermediary stage would look like.