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Asked by numskullz1000 to Carol, Ellie, John, Philip, Rebecca on 27 Jun 2012.
Question: When humans/animals evolve, is the change always beneficial?
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Philip Glasson answered on 27 Jun 2012:
The evolving bit of evolution is random
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( its the genes shaking the dice and swapping a small random bit of their code), sooo…..
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the chance of the change also being beneficial is also random. The structured bit happens when lots of animals, with lots of different changes, compete for the same food, or the same mate and
the one with the best combination of changes (for that situation)
Wins!!.
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As you could guess, to see any effects from this, takes a very…very long time. =)
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Carol White answered on 27 Jun 2012:
When it’s “survival of the fittest” – the evolved trait that an animal has can be very very beneficial! But sometimes the new features aren’t that useful, but then species with that feature tend to fade away from the gene pool – but not always!
A common example: some populations have an unusually high prevalence of the gene responsible for “Huntington’s disease” – which has evolved over time. Not a good thing though!
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John Welford answered on 27 Jun 2012:
Like the others have said, it’s almost always is beneficial, but not necessarily as it’s a random process.
What I find interesting is that some evolutionary things can “hang on” in an animal without being useful any more. These are called “vestigial” features. Some examples in humans are:
The appendix – that’s why people can have it removed without any problems
The coccyx or tailbone – thought to be once part of a tail that we evolved out of having
Auricular muscles – this is what some people can use to waggle their ears! It’s not very useful to us, but in other animals they are used to swivel the ears around in the direction of interesting sounds!It’s a shame really as sometimes a tail and swivelling ears would be quite good fun!
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