rickheit@ulowell.UUCP (Erich Rickheit) (12/14/86)
<Did line-eaters evolve, or were they created by an all-powerful god?> In several articles mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) and dts@gitpyr.UUCP (Danny Sharpe) write: >Yes, this is a good example of selection. > >> These are all examples of natural selection at work. > >Neither of these is natural selection, in that the selection pressures are >being applied by man. Of course, I may be being slow here, but how do 'selection pressures applied by man' differ from 'natural' selection pressures? The only field that man surpasses other creatures/forces in is sheer destruction. And, of course, he is not alone there. Elephants have been known to destroy forests over a few seasons. locusts can do the same in the coure of a few months. Beavers have been known to turn woods into lakes and swamplands. The American bison, before it was wiped out by American and European hunters, left paths of destroyed, barren land miles wide and hundreds of miles long. This doesn't even mention what diseases, solar flares, falling meteors, and so forth can do. The very delicacy of an ecology suggests that selection (and, by extension, evolution) is occuring all the time. If it was not, then, (even were the earth only a few thousand tears old, as I have heard some people seriously suggest), the very action of life upon it woulkd have rendered it barren by now. Only by creatures adapting, and changing by means of natural selection, could a relatively stable ecology even appear to exist. -- a lesser Power of Darkness UUCP: ...!wanginst!ulowell!rickheit : USnail: Erich Rickheit "Don't take life too serious--It ain't : 85 Gershom Ave, #2 nohow _permanent_"--Walt Kelly : Lowell, MA 01854