• Question: will we evolve further

    Asked by 653evnb35 to Thad, Adam, Thomas on 12 Mar 2015. This question was also asked by The wise owl.
    • Photo: Thaddeus Aid

      Thaddeus Aid answered on 12 Mar 2015:

      Hi 653,

      That is a great question!

      The short answer is yes, we will. Evolution just means that how many people have a particular mutation changes over time. Every time a human is born that baby introduces between 75-150 new mutations that have never been seen before. Most of these mutations are called “neutral” because they don’t benefit or harm the baby, but occasionally (very rarely) a new mutation is beneficial to the baby. This mutation, once the baby is grown up with their own babies, will spread through the rest of the population over time until everyone has it.

      For example, did you know it is a mutation that some adults can drink milk without farting? There is a sugar in milk called Lactose, babies have a special enzyme in their stomach that breaks lactose in half which allows it to be digested. All mammals are like this, babies drink their mother’s milk when they are born, however since mammals stop drinking milk after being babies the body shuts off the enzyme and the mammal can no longer digest lactose. This causes the lactose to be passed into the rest of the digestive track (the intestines) where bacteria eat the lactose and give off gas as a response giving the adult smelly farts.

      But in Europe, one person 15,000 years ago or so mutated so that they continued to produce the enzyme as an adult and could digest lactose. This gave them an additional source of food during the winter which helped them to survive the cold winters of Europe before there were Tescos to buy food at. So from this one person now 95% of Northern and Western Europe all have this mutation. Pretty crazy, right? Everyone in Europe that can drink milk as an adult is descended from this one person!

      Going into the future other features that help humans will continue to spread through the population just like the ability to drink milk did. I personally think that most of our future evolution will revolve around fighting diseases.

      I hope that answers your question!

    • Photo: Thomas Clements

      Thomas Clements answered on 18 Mar 2015:

      As thad has said humans have small mutations all the time. The issue is that humans change the environment on us that there are very few actual physical pressures on human populations (with disease being the last major threat). Therefore humans will not evolve wings or gills, because we can adapt technology to help us.

Comments