Submitted by Koning_Health t3_ynky8r in askscience
Training_Ad_2086 t1_ivbx8j5 wrote
Reply to comment by Jertob in Insects get stuck in a spider's web, why doesn't a spider get stuck in its own web? by Koning_Health
That's basically a billion year of trial and error before we arrived to the first spider.
All of life and evolution is basically trial and error by nature until something sticks. It happens on all sides, the predator , the prey and environment.
It's still happening right now.
A few hundred millions of years from now we'll have humans that unrecognizable from what we consider humans today
tetrapod3d t1_ivden0b wrote
Hilarious that you think humans will survive for a few hundred million years, I wouldn’t be surprised if we went extinct in a couple thousand.
RandomFungi t1_ivdjuum wrote
Outside of truly exceptional events, there's not much that could actually extinguish human life on that time scale. You and I might not survive a nuclear war, but it wouldn't come close to killing every human, nor would global warming or a super volcano. Assuming we spread to orbital space and other solar objects almost nothing could kill all of us.
[deleted] t1_ivdiflr wrote
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jml5791 t1_ivcoggp wrote
With humans, it will be artificial selection going forward rather than natural selection.
WeirdMemoryGuy t1_ivd03i9 wrote
The distinction between artificial and natural selection is itself artificial. We just kinda decided we didn't want to consider ourself part of nature. The selection process might be based on unique factors for us, but it isn't fundamentally different from natural selection.
Al_Rascala t1_ivdjgaj wrote
Would the difference not be based on the mechanisms by which selection is carried out? Natural being the genome mixing via sexual reproduction that is common to most multicellular animals, artificial being direct manipulation of the genome via various tools?
Training_Ad_2086 t1_ive7p42 wrote
The human beings (us) that are doing genome manipulation are also created by evolution , hence this genome editing is something we evolved to do.
There are aquatic animals that can change their biological sex while alive, it's the evolution taking its course.
jqbr t1_iveidr0 wrote
No, it's not something we evolved to do ... that we can do it is a side effect of adaptations, it's not an adaptation itself.
[deleted] t1_ivd82h3 wrote
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FireFight t1_ivc8nyg wrote
Is there anything to read about how humans far in the future will be compared to now? ☺️
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