If evolution is real, then why isn’t it happening now? An anthropologist explains that humans actually are still evolving

Comments

• otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Hol’up… I have a raft? 😱🫣🤩

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• SamuraiBeandog@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This article doesn’t address the point that modern society enables most individuals to live long enough to have children regardless of their genetic advantages or disadvantages. Sure people with light skin are not well suited to living in very hot climates, but in the modern world that isn’t going to make them less likely to procreate than people with dark skin in that environment.

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  • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yes, but being an anti-social, shut-in can contribute to not procreating. There are definitely both physical and psychological characteristics in humans that have a better chance of procreation than others. Even if people aren’t dying from nature, Darwin will get his due.

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    • SamuraiBeandog@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m not saying that genetic changes aren’t happening at all, just that the article doesn’t address that modern society creates a very different environment for natural selection, compared to humans in subsistence level environments in the wild.

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• givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s so weird the appendix isn’t the go to example instead of whiteness and milk drinking…

  Up until a few hundred years ago it was vital as a reserve for gut bacteria when everyone was always getting dysentery and diarrhea. It still burst occasionally but it was a net positive. People without one likely died before it would have burst.

  Then we got indoor plumbing and food safety, we stopped needing it so much which changed the evolutionary pressure. People without one never had it burst, so it flipped.

  Then we discovered how to do an appendectomy ~300 years ago, and removed all the evolutionary pressure.

  So it’ll stay a random percent where some people do and some don’t.

  But everybody always wants to talk about whiteness and milk drinking

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  • xorollo@leminal.space ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Wow, back in my day the appendix was a mystery.

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  • Noodle07@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    My brother was born without wisdom teeth, won’t affect him in the slightest 🤷

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  • Lemminary@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Listen, whiteness and milk drinking is all I have going for me ok? 😥

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• Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It is happening.

  Shit just happens very slowly.

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  • shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    We’ve been figuring out that evolution can move fast, given pressure. I often point to African male elephants shortening or losing their tusks due to humans poaching the super tuskers.

    I’ve heard several arguments that boil down to, “That’s not evolution.” But it is! The environment ramped up a selection pressure, the animals adjusted. Same as Atlantic fish (trout I think?) attaining maturity faster and smaller. We’ve been keeping the big ones for decades.

    Take the “humans did that” out of the equation and imagine another factor, evolution still happened quickly.

    tl;dr: Animals can evolve quite quickly, but such events are hard to observe they were rare and weird outside of human influence.

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    • Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I feel like that’s more evidence that humans have some control over evolution not just among ourselves, but other animals also. The elephants with smaller tusks are just able to keep breeding since they aren’t being poached.

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  • Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    And modern medicine also slows it down further.

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• lemmie689@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  We’re doin’ the genetic drift! Cha cha cha

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