Comment on Does alcohol speed up evolution?
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 5 days ago
No. Alcohol is not mutagenic, the issues it causes in fetus are not DNA related. On the other hand smoking or other carcinogens definitely do affect DNA so they could “speed” evolution. Unfortunately any species advanced enough to smoke will also be advanced enough to be able to control the environment around them to a certain extent, so besides the one good trait getting develop you would also have dozens if not hundreds of bed ones that get preserved because the species is somewhat above natural selection.