Plant: Wait, so you’re going to replant me, in massive numbers, all across the planet? kk nm, go ahead.
One of reasons why some biologists suggest that one of the most evolutionarily successful animals on the planet is the farm chicken.
At an estimated global population of 35 billion, it’s definitely doing a lot better than our 8 billion.
And evolutionarily successful doesn’t mean you get to be the best, fastest, strongest and have the best most comfortable life … evolutionary success just means that there are more of your species creating more generations of your kind everywhere. The hope being that the more there are of your species, the more likely your kind will survive in the future.
I’ve heard archaeologists suggest that in far future times this will be known as the chicken age, because of the volume and likely preservation of chicken bones.
The Bacock age
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I mean that is true about a lot of things. Millions of insect plant pairs where one of the two requires the other to live.
Yes, this is often used as a way to criticize how our society assimilated the concept of evolutionary success, as if it’s a great thing by itself, or even the ultimate goal of a species, or whatever in those lines, when evolution actually “doesn’t care” at all about how bad the individuals live, but just about the fact that they’re reproducing, and that’s it.
wait, why cant they survive without us?
i mean, most of them would die without our protection and feeding, but yeah it’s very hyperbolical to say that the entire chicken species would die out if we got raptured
Yes, but, there are so many of them that we plant that, even if we suddenly popped out of existence, there would still be enough survivors for the species to continue.
i mean the same is true of many nectarivores and their partner plants, both species are wholly reliant upon each other to survive.
Twice that many chickens are killed a year. It’s not what I’d call a roaring success in terms of evolution.
The turnover in generations is all that evolutionary success is. It’s the mechanism that’s been driving life on earth for three billion years. It doesn’t mean that the individual life form is happy or comfortable … it just means it lived long enough to create another generation.
Can you describe where natural selection occurs in a battery farming process?
They never said natural selection. But that doesn’t matter. Evolution happens regardless of whether the selection is natural or artificial. All they were talking about was reproductive success and how that is the driver of selection. They even made it clear that evolution cares not for the quality of life just that the genes are passed down.
Spelling
Then call it reproductive success instead of dishonestly causing it evolutionary success. And I didn’t state that evolution requires or doesn’t require anything, you brought that up - we’re talking about whether it’s considered successful, which is a philosophical question.
Artificial selection is not a reflection of a species’ ability to survive in the natural world and to me that is not an example of success over the longer, think-billions-of-years, term.
Weirdly enough evolution doesn’t care about long term success. It only cares about short term success leading to local maximums. If evolution cared about long term success humans would have optic nerves that faced the right way and no cancer, but that was sacrificed during evolution.
Oh and all of animal evolution had happened in less than a billion years.
I can, it’s in the humans. Survival of the fittest, the humans are smart enough to allow a fuck ton of chickens
Er, yeah, I agree with that. Nothing to do with my point, but you are correct.
Is it really wheat that domesticated us?
Try not to think about it. Being able to grow food meant more people staying put which meant the violent were dealt with. We show the impacts of this process the way domesticated animals do, neoteny.
We’re also going to change your genes to benefit ourselves and you’ll be completely reliant on our own survival which is looking more and more dubious with each passing year.
Turns out life just fills niches. It cares not for the length of which it can do that.
wait what?
Selective evolution, most crops look nothing like the original plant that humans originally cultivated. We choose the breed of plants which benefit us most, and the majority probably wouldn’t survive in the wild if monoculture fertilized farms disappeared if humans went extinct.
Meanwhile humans spread those planets across the planet, cultivate it, and kill anything that tries to mess with it. Without us those plants would be living a sad little existence defeated by the next time a bug evolves slightly. Who played who?
Isn’t this because they have anti-bacterial properties? So that you can preserve food and especially in hot climates you don’t get food poisoning as easily?
Yup! I studied evolutionary psychology in college. Different seasonings helped make food safer to eat in hotter climates. My prof said “that’s why if you leave a really salty piece of jerky under your bed, it’s probably fine.”
Also explains why cultures up north typically didn’t adapt a preference for spicy food as the cold allowed them to preserve food that way
That doesn’t really make much sense since salted and pickled foods are eaten up north. The more logical explanation is that spicy food doesn’t grow up north.
Maybe in hotter climates you have more problems with bacteria vs fungus / rot in colder climates? Another explanation is that spicy / hot food is popular because it forces you to drink more water. But it’s all speculation on my part, never found any definitive answers.
Probably and was probably an accidental discovery. Someone noticed that spicy meat lasted longer.
What’s the first plant?
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Now I want a Bloody Mary.
I thought that plants benefited from having their fruits eaten. As animals (like humans) defecate the seeds in different places, with enough manure to grow.
In the case of peppers, birds are immune to the effect of capsaicin. It strikes me as an evolutionary way of ensuring your seeds get spread as far as possible, by something that flies.
Could just be chance, though, I’m no expert.
All of evolution is just chance, but it sure is interesting to see what random chance can do if given enough time
Depends on the plant. Some plants like to grow close together, they don’t need an animal to distribute their seeds. Other plants like to spread out, and they benefit if birds eat and distribute the seeds, but not mammals.
Evolution is purely a results driven process, all that matters is can the organism create offspring that are capable of creating offspring.
Some plants like to grow close together
Or maybe they grow well close together because they evolved to do so because their seeds weren’t being spread all that far away?
Sorry couldn’t help but nitpick there. But you’re right, things don’t evolve in any particular direction, it’s all about just being above the bar of “not dying before producing offspring.”
No offense taken. It’s a complex topic that can’t realistically be understood from a few comments on the Internet. Feel free to add detail or correct.
Yeah it’s hard to talk about evolution without injecting intent into it. Selection bias on natural selection as it were. Like a species had a good “evolution strategy,” But no, it just evolved that way because it survived. We just don’t talk about the ones that didn’t survive. Well, unless they were cool like dinosaurs.
Nightshade: Sup
Tomatoes and eggplant are nightshades.
