Evolution is a hoax. Where are the Dats and Cogs?

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Tue Oct 2, 2012, 01:51 AM - Edit history (8)

One of the standard creationist arguments against evolution is the apparent lack of transitional forms. This devastating critique is, like all anti-evolution arguments, based on misunderstanding evolution and then debunking your erroneous version of it.

...the lack of a case for evolution is clear from the fact that no one has ever seen it happen. If it were a real process, evolution should still be occurring, and there should be many transitional forms that we could observe. What we see instead, of course, is an array of distinct kinds of plants and animals with many varieties within each kind, but with very clear and unbridgeable gaps between the kinds. For example, there are many varieties of dogs and many varieties of cats, but no “dats” or “cogs.” Such variation is often called microevolution, and these minor horizontal (or downward) changes occur fairly often, but such changes are not true vertical evolution.

http://www.icr.org/home/resources/resources_tracts_scientificcaseagainstevolution/

Indeed. Where are the transitional forms? Why don't we see creatures that are halfway to becoming a different species?

Ummm... actually, every species on Earth is halfway to something from some vantage point. A few million years from now the chimpanzees of today will be the fossil "missing link" between what chimpanzees were like a few million years ago and whatever chimpanzees will be like a few million years from now.

I am not even sure what this bozo wants or expects... if we did have "dats" we wouldn't say, "Look, that creature is halfway between a dog and a cat." We would probably say, "Look, a fox."



I am making a joke, of course. A fox looks to be about halfway between a dog and a cat, and some foxes climb trees like cats, but we know that it is not a link between dogs and cats. No more than the Japanese Racoon dog is a link between dogs and racoons... though they are awfully cute.



It is spectacularly silly to expect to see transitional forms between contemporary species because current species do not evolve into other current species. Foxes and dogs and cats are all equally "evolved" from a common ancestor, millions of years ago, who looked like this guy:



And there is an abundance of fossil transitional forms going back from a modern fox or dog or cat to that common ancestor. But not sideways from cats to dogs.

One might as well get agitated about the lack of contemporary transitional forms between people and tuna, or oak trees and salamanders.

Dogs will no more evolve into cats than apes will evolve into people. Chimpanzees are not our ancestors... we share a distant common ancestor with chimpanzees and we went our separate ways from that point. (And though evolution doesn't normally make everything smarter, it is cool to note that we and chimps are both vastly more intelligent than our common ancestor.)

When someone defiantly says he didn't evolve from a monkey, he's right. Monkeys and apes, including man, share a common ancestor who looked like this guy:

[GoneOffShore]

1. You will hurt your head if you go over there.

And the creationist nut jobs and their fellow travelers will move the goal posts every time you bring facts to the table.

[cthulu2016]

3. I have not and shall never argue with a creationist

But I do have an intellectual interest (from afar) in their system of beliefs

[immoderate]

2. Everything is a transition between its ancestors and its offspring.

The differences are very slight, but profund over a million years.

--imm

[mike_c]

4. denying evolution is just butt ignorant....

Religious nuts need to deny evolution because it negates their need for a creator to explain their world with magic. No amount of persuasion will change their minds, because they've already decided to ignore the overwhelming evidence for past evolution, observations of evolution in real time today, and they've chosen magic as their explanation for the world around them.

[Turborama]

74. These "Christians" are more concerned about the Old Tesament than the New

They ignore all of Jesus' teachings and instead focus on a literal translation of the Old Testament.

Evolution puts to bed:

The world being created in 6 days, something like 10 thousand years ago.

God creating "man in his own image out of mud.

Adam creating Eve by pulling out one of his ribs.

A talking snake.

Noah's Ark.

Moses riding on dinosaurs. (Ok, I made that one up, but I bet there are some people who believe it)

I can't remember what else is in there, but those are the main ones.

If they "believed" (I say accept) in evolution they'd have to give up their addiction to all of the myths they believe in above.

[mysuzuki2]

5. I was at a Primatology conference this weekend in Illinois and had a similar conversation with anoth

The ignorance of the anti-evolution crowd is astounding. They attempt to argue science without knowinga thing about it. Their arguments may seem convincing to those who already agree with them but seem laughable to those who actually know something about evolution. No intermediate forms? Ha! - there are hundreds. Cats changing to dogs? Why would anyone expect that? Evolution HAS been seen in operation, both in nature and in lab studies. The funny thing is, if these maroons would actually study biology and evolution, they could probably construct much more effective arguments. As it is, they seem like clowns to those of us who are even slightly knowledgeable on the subject.

[Ikonoklast]

6. Our species is currently diverging.

The stupid ones that don't believe in science, reality, and learning will become an evolutionary cul-de-sac.

The rest of us will go to the stars.

[dawg]

10. Actually ...

they are outbreeding us fiercely.

[Ikonoklast]

14. That's why we need to step up our efforts to move off-planet.

In a closed system, unchecked growth is always terminal.

[Gormy Cuss]

7. I'll have to read this later. The dat's at the door asking to be let out.

Good Lord, that's an evolution theory rebuttal worthy of a fifth grader.

[oldhippydude]

8. Issac Asimov..famous for long winded puns

in the 80's when nissan was known as dastun.. explained inis conversational way.. about a shipment of gears via airship... when the airship met its demise it was raining "datsun cogs.."

just being helpfull. perhaps this is too much information

[monmouth]

22. Wish I could rec your post....hilarious...n/t

[MindPilot]

48. And when the old German guy was told how fast they needed those gears...

he exclaimed "datsoon?!"


I guess "Cog is man's best friend" is doubly true for us gear-heads.

[oldhippydude]

51. gave you something to sink your teeth into..

if you heard it before it's simply precognition

[TrogL]

81. a "long winded pun" is otherwise known as a "shaggy dog story" for which he was infamous

[wtmusic]

9. Um, maybe because each species occupied a specific (pun intended) ecological niche.

There are tanker trucks, and there are Honda Accords, but no "truckords".

Morons.

[lunatica]

11. I have a workmate who just a week ago literally said

"I don't believe in science. I believe in my faith." And she also said that she would know what to believe when her church told her what to believe. I was pretty astounded and asked her if she meant when Pope Benedict told her what to believe? And I followed it up by asking, "You mean that Ex-Nazi pedophile enabler?"

Needless to say she blew a gasket and complained to the manager that I had insulted her too much for her to work with me. We're now avoiding each other as much as possible.

LOL!

[Rozlee]

31. Hah! You shoulda asked her if that was the same faith

that wouldn't admit Galileo was right for 600 years. Actually, she's probably more of a Cathevangelist than a Catholic, sort of like Santorum. Santorum sneers at global climate change, not bothering to realize that Pope Benny the Rat has admitted to the truth of the catastrophic fate of the planet if nothing is done about stopping the use of fossil fuels (The Fate of Mountain Glaciers of the Anthropocene, Pontifical Academy of Sciences, curia, Vatican). The Church hasn't out and out embraced evolution as is, but they've learned from the Galileo debacle to be careful not to be on the wrong side of scientific history. In Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII stated that he hoped evolution was a passing fad, but that he was concerned about at what point in the link of evolution, man and God spiritually connected. John Paul II expanded saying he thought evolution wasn't contrary to Catholic belief, but was concerned about at what point evolving man was developed enough to become ensouled and also, at what point he had been cognizant enough to have been cast from Eden for committing Original Sin. Too many Catholics don't bother reading their church's encyclicals or paying attention to Vatican pronouncements. They've melded into the evangelical movement, whose members never read the bible and just get their views from their preachers. It's all a paean to ignorance, any way you slice it. I'm thoroughly convinced we'd have reached the stars by now if it wasn't for religion.

[Jim Lane]

64. You have defamed the Catholic Church. I demand that you apologize for your lie.

You write that the Church "wouldn't admit Galileo was right for 600 years."

The Inquisition, an arm of the Church, condemned Galileo (suppressing his work and subjecting him to house arrest, which lasted the rest of his life) in 1633.

In 1992, per Galileo's biography on Wikipedia, "Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and issued a declaration acknowledging the errors committed by the Catholic Church tribunal that judged the scientific positions of Galileo Galilei...."

Therefore, it took the Church only 359 years, not 600.

[Rozlee]

66. *Raspberry*

Okay, 359 years. They'd probably have held off for another 241 if it wasn't for Monty Python.

[hifiguy]

57. Better stop seeing the doctor then.

Them doctors is trained in all kinds of sciency stuff. Can't have none of that.

[TrogL]

82. Tell her owning a car is heresy. Its tires' circumference do not match the Bible's value for pi.

She also needs to take off all her clothes because they're made out of mixed fabric.

[BarackTheVote]

12. You forgot my personal favorite--

The Crocoduck

But seriously... my question for Creationists... if we were created, as-is, and not evolved, why do we have jaws too small for all of our teeth to come in, resulting in pain, infection, and other diseases if they're not extracted? Why do we have an appendix, a vestigial organ that seems to serve no modern purpose besides get horribly infected, explode and kill us? Whales with vestigial hip-bones... and if you want to see a transitional form, have a geneticist turn on some latent genes in a chicken.

[cthulu2016]

16. In pain shall you eat caramels...

All part of Adam and Eve's punishment, I'm sure.

[dawg]

17. I am very much looking forward to the chickenosaurus.

I think we'll get one in the next ten years.

[monmouth]

23. You are so right.."Wisdom" teeth...How many have had those good for nothing painful cretins

removed. What are they good for anyway? Much like war...LOL.

[backscatter712]

13. For a fun experiment, try breeding foxes to be sociable with humans.

There's evolution in action.

Actually, it's already been done in Russia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox

These foxes often have floppy ears, will lick you to death, and generally behave like puppies.

[Ikonoklast]

18. You beat me to it. I have been fascinated by that experiment.

I find it absolutely amazing that the color of their coats changed as they became even more domesticated.

"Who's a goood little Fox? You are!"

[Posteritatis]

25. The really odd thing is that that apparently works on all mammals

They tried it on a shorter term with a few other species, with similar results. I remember it being tried with mice and otters, at least (though I'm not sure we're ready for the awesomeness of domesticated otters). Sorta want to see it tried with something like bears.

Not only that, but there's a genetic disorder in humans that involves one of the same genes that gets triggered by that process, and has a similar result - people afflicted with it look slightly more childlike and are more gregarious.

[Odin2005]

30. And they look like little border collies!

[MineralMan]

15. I tried arguing and debating with creationists for a while.

It was a waste of my time. It's an impossible task to get a real creationist to look at evolution sensibly. It took me a few years to finally figure that out, for which I am ashamed of myself. I should have quit before I started.

[dawg]

20. Lots of us "religious" types do believe in evolution.

It's the crazies that you will never convince. Sadly, though, they are legion.

[MindPilot]

53. Please stop "believing" in evolution.

It is real, as real as gravity, light and magnetism. You don't get to believe in it or not; it simply is one of the normal process that keeps Life As We Know It (TM) humming along.

[dawg]

54. Okay.

I didn't come from no monkey!!!

[MindPilot]

62. Of course not! And neither of us came from a jar of peanut butter.

[GreenStormCloud]

65. Not always a waste. Sometimes it just takes a loooong time.

I used to be a Creationist about 30 something years ago. I decided that to effectively argue against evolution I needed to learn more about it, so I began to read and study actual evolution books. Then I learned about a new science that was a derivitive from evolution, sociobiology. sb was making testable predictions that were proving true. I had to admit that I had been wrong and accepted evolution as true.

The Selfish Gene was influential book, as was Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny.

[OriginalGeek]

19. The church I was raised in had a problem with the saying "God said it, I believe it, That settles it

Their position was that God said it and THAT settles it. Whether we believe or not. They were very fond of saying God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th. As far as they were concerned that is all we need to know about how species came to be. Needless to say, the science class in my fundamentalist christian high school was a pretty easy grade.


I'm more than a little ashamed it took me to my mid-late teens to reject their buffoonery.

[ck4829]

21. These people have never seen a platypus or a lungfish before

Even though the term 'transitional form' is bull, if a platypus could not be called one of those, then nothing could be. And that's the pseudo-argument of the creationists, nothing is a transitional form to them, and nothing could EVER be called a transitional form. It's a phrase they modified so they can redefine so they can never lose.

[BarackTheVote]

24. Let's just start calling the platypus

a Beaveduck

[JaneyVee]

26. Many species have already found their occupational niche. Which is what evolution is all about.

[mainer]

27. A must-see movie: "The Revisionaries" about Texas textbooks and creationists

It'll make your blood boil. It also demonstrates that you JUST CAN'T ARGUE with these people.

http://www.therevisionariesmovie.com/

[Lint Head]

28. If they were to look at "science" and "read" they would realize that the transitional forms in

biology are not the "successful" forms. The final product is what you see. The final product is actually not final considering how long it takes large biological forms to evolve. Bacteria and viruses can evolve very quickly.

[Xipe Totec]

29. Oh, here they are

Zorse



Cama



Lepon



Some species are still in the process of full differentiation and therefore still capable of interbreeding.


Though your main point is still quite valid.

[csziggy]

40. But the offspring of those interbreedings are not fertile

And you left out mules! Mules, although they are male or female, are not capable of reproducing mules. Same for zorses. In order to get more mules, you still have to breed donkeys to horses. More zorses, zebras to horses. I am not familiar with your other examples, but I believe it is likely true for them.

The species have differentiated enough to be distinct, not enough to not be capable of interbreeding, BUT enough that the offspring are sterile.

I'd seen pictures of zorses before but not camas or lepons. The lepon is really cool!

[Xipe Totec]

63. Here is the link

http://www.hemmy.net/2006/06/19/top-10-hybrid-animals/

Although it is generally true that interspecies crossbreeds are infertile, it is not universally true.

Beefalo are a fertile hybrid offspring of domestic cattle, Bos taurus, and the American bison, Bison bison (generally called buffalo in the US). The breed was created to combine the characteristics of both animals with a view towards beef production.


Fertile canid hybrids occur between coyotes, wolves, dingoes, jackals and domestic dogs.


Wholphin, a fertile but very rare cross between a false killer whale and a bottlenose dolphin.


Colubrid snakes of the tribe Lampropeltini have been shown to produce fertile hybrid offspring.



Life always finds a way...

[csziggy]

67. Yes, some hybrids are fertile. Mules almost never are

Though I think there have been some exceptions. I've never heard of a zorse being fertile but they are extremely rare. I don't know about the cama or the lepron - they are new to me.

Mule fertility:

Mules and hinnies have 63 chromosomes, a mixture of the horse's 64 and the donkey's 62. The different structure and number usually prevents the chromosomes from pairing up properly and creating successful embryos, rendering most mules infertile.

There are no recorded cases of fertile mule stallions. A few female mules have produced offspring when mated with a purebred horse or donkey.[9][10] Herodotus gives an account of such an event as an ill omen of Xerxes' conquest of Greece in 480 BC: "There happened also a portent of another kind while he was still at Sardis,—a mule brought forth young and gave birth to a mule" (Herodotus The Histories 7:57).

Since 1527 there have been more than 60 documented cases of foals born to female mules around the world.[9] There are reports that a mule in China produced a foal in 1984.[11][12] In Morocco, in early 2002, a mare mule produced a rare foal.[9] In 2007 a mule named Kate gave birth to a mule son in Colorado.[13][14] Blood and hair samples were tested verifying that the mother was a mule and the colt was indeed her offspring.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule#Fertility

Hinnies (or molly) are the cross between a female donkey and a male horse. Mules are the cross between a male donkey and female horse. FYI

[Xipe Totec]

68. Different species, different degrees of separation

If anything, I think interspecies and intergenus hybrids show that once upon a time these were the same species and are now in the path to becoming full species in their own right.

These are intermediates. One species in the process of becoming separate species, and even separate genus.

If anything, hybrids prove that new species are in the process of being created.

constantly.

[Xipe Totec]

87. Here is another one, closer to home - denisovans

A mysterious extinct branch of the human family tree that once interbred with ours apparently lived in a vast range from Siberia to Southeast Asia, mating with just as widely spread a group of modern humans, scientists find.

This new research also demonstrates that contrary to the findings of the largest previous genetic studies, modern humans apparently settled Asia in multiple waves of migration, investigators added.

http://www.livescience.com/16171-denisovans-humans-widespread-sex-asia.html

[csziggy]

88. Yes, the denisovians are a really interesting group

Or should I say, individual, though there is genetic evidence it was a large population that passed DNA on to some modern human groups.

I hope they can find more individuals of that group of humans - there is the possibility that there are already examples in the archeological record that have simply not been identified.

[Odin2005]

32. How do these idiots remember to breathe?

[dawg]

55. Their ancestors, millions of years ago, evolved an autonomic nervous system ...

to handle things like that.

[DreamGypsy]

33. Yup. We mammals are all here because of the blossoming of the shrews...

...or at least of our shrew-like ancestors.

From Richard Dawkins' The Ancestors Tale, Rendezvous 11, Laurasiatheres:

Eighty-five million years ago, in the hot-house world of the Upper Cretaceous,
we greet Concestor 11, approximately our 25-million-greats-grandparent. Here
we are joined by a much more diverse band of pilgrims than the rodents and
rabbits who swelled our party at Rendezvous 10. Zealous taxonomists recognize
their shared ancestry by giving them a name, Laurasiatheria, but it is seldom
used because, in truth, this is a miscellaneous bunch. The rodents are all built to
the same toothy design and have proliferated and diversified, presumably
because it works so well. 'Rodents' therefore really means something strong; it
unites animals that have much in common. 'Laurasiatheria' is as awkward as it
sounds. It unites highly disparate mammals which have only one thing in
common: their pilgrims all joined up with each other 'before' they join us. They
all hail, originally, from the old northern continent of Laurasia.

The featured soloist in this rendezvous is the hippo; from The Hippo's Tale:

Most of the great orders of mammals (though not the subdivisions within them) — go a
long way back into the age of dinosaurs, as we saw in connection with the Great
Cretaceous Catastrophe. Rendezvous 10 (with the rodents and rabbits) and
Rendezvous 11 (the one we have just reached) both took place during the
Cretaceous Period at the height of the dinosaur regime. But mammals in
those days were all rather small, shrew-like creatures, whether their respective
descendants were destined to become mice or hippos. The real growth of
mammal diversity started suddenly after the dinosaurs went extinct 65.5
million years ago. It was then that the mammals were able to blossom into all
economic trades vacated by the dinosaurs. Large body size was just one thing
that became possible for mammals only when the dinosaurs were gone. The
process of divergent evolution was swift, and a huge range of mammals, of
all sizes and shapes, roamed the land within 5 million years of 'liberation'. Five
to ten million years later, in the late Palaeocene to early Eocene Epoch, there are
abundant fossils of even-toed ungulates.

The punchline to the story is that the Hippos' closest living relatives are whales.

This is fascinating stuff.

[HopeHoops]

34. I don't know. A sheltie's pretty close to a fox and a border collie to a wolf.

They're very different, but probably share ancestry. Most, if not all, of the transitional forms died out and are only available in archeological discoveries. If anything, that's sufficient proof of evolution.

[cthulu2016]

36. In those cases, the body is similar but the genes are very different

Thus a sheltie can breed with a border collie, but neither can breed with a fox or a wolf.

And that points up another problem with the "transitional forms" arguments. All we can see from fossils is shape. We can have two fossils that look the same, but one of them is a version of the creature that had developed an immunity to some virus. That immunity could have more to do with its survival than a longer claw, but we cannot see things like that.

[csziggy]

41. There are wolf - dog hybrids

A wolfdog (also called a wolf–dog hybrid or wolf hybrid) is a canid hybrid resulting from the mating of a wolf (various Canis lupus subspecies) and a dog (Canis lupus familiaris). The term "wolfdog" is preferred by most of the animals' proponents and breeders because the domestic dog was taxonomically recategorized in 1993 as a subspecies of the gray wolf. The American Veterinary Medical Association and the United States Department of Agriculture refer to the animals as wolf–dog hybrids.[1] Rescue organizations consider any dog with wolf heritage within the last five generations to be a wolfdog, including some established wolfdog breeds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfdog

Since dogs and wolves are of the same species, wolfdogs are not the same as hybrids such as mules, zorses, camas and lepons mentioned above.

[cthulu2016]

42. Yes, dogs are essentially domesticated wolves

And it is amazing how much shape can change while most of the gentic structure stays in place -- it is funny that a Chihuahua is a kind of wolf.

[wtmusic]

52. Also amazing that it's happened in only the last 15,000 years nt

[HopeHoops]

43. Agreed. DNA is quite different, but they've GOT to have similar ancestry.

I just don't buy the "missing link" as necessary evidence argument. Some things evolved (like us) while other things did not (horseshoe crabs and centipedes for example). And I wouldn't wish a border collie male on a sheltie female for ethical reasons, and also don't see the reverse being physically possible. On top of that, NOBODY can explain where the platypus came from!!!

[cthulu2016]

46. The Duck Bill is a wonderful example of something

Say an animal eats something that lives buried in mud under shallow water. It doesn't want to eat mud. It wants to be able to dig into mud, grab the mud-dwelling food, wash out the mud while holding onto the food and then swallow the food.

Ducks do that. Duck-billed platypuses do that. Duck-billed dinosaurs did that.

And those three creatures are not closely related.

The duckbill didn't come from the genes, it came from the mud. It happens to be the best design for the task so different creatures with the same eating habits independently evolved the same tool.

Bats and birds came up with light bones and two flapping wings independently because given the laws of physics it the easiest way to get from walking on limbs to flying.

Meanwhile, dolphins and bats came up with sonar, but birds did not. Probably because mammals had better ears to begin with.

[HopeHoops]

49. Same with spoon bill flamingo-looking things. Same principle at least.

I'm not sure about the bird thing. I think swallows use a form of echo-location too. Not sure, but they're definitely the inspiration for fighter jets - they ARE fighter jets.

And don't forget narwhals - FUCK YEAH!!!!!!!!!!1!

[GeorgeGist]

84. I don't think evolution has foresight.

[cthulu2016]

86. I would hope that nobody thinks so.

I doubt anything I have ever written could be reasonably construed to say it does, in any literal sense.

[ohheckyeah]

35. ..the lack of a case for evolution is clear from the fact that no one has ever seen it happen.

I saw a special on Natural Geographic or the Science Channel awhile back and it was all about this huge lake somewhere....I can't remember where. I didn't see the whole show but it talked about these fish that kept evolving quickly - the evolution has been documented over the last 50 years or so.

Did anyone else see it and have any information?

[cthulu2016]

37. The creationists use a circular definition

Anything we see happen in the world is defined as micro-evolution. They then complain that there is no macro-evolution going on... which it couldn't because they define anything that is going on as not being macro evolution.

[Warren DeMontague]

39. Exactly. No one sees evolution? Tell it to the antibiotic resistant bacteria.

[hifiguy]

59. First thing I thought of.

Why does there need to be a new flu vaccine every year? EVOLUTION.

[4_TN_TITANS]

38. The flu virus immediately comes to my mind...

It changes so fast that new vaccines are developed every year to combat the new strains.

I can find way more proof of evolution than I can find proof of that spirit in the sky.

[JoePhilly]

44. Ok ... show them these ....

Platypus ...


Frogs ...

[Fawke Em]

45. I thought dogs more closely tracked the same evolutional

thread as horses, not cats.

But, then again, we're all mammals. We all came from the same one thing somewhere down the line.

[retread]

47. It is impossible to wade through the stupid. With that in mind:

a miacid?

[MindPilot]

50. I once had a supervisor who simply changed the meaning of words.

He would proudly proclaim that he "didn't have enough faith for evolution."

And when something factual was pointed out, like moths changing their color to match soot-darkened tress so thy don't get eaten, he would announce "that's not evolution; that's adaptation."

And did I mention this guy's first name was "Professor"? Yep, as in College Professor. Fortunately he taught automotive technology and not biology.

[opiate69]

56. A dear friend of mine from another board used to tell anti-evolutionists:

"If I misunderstood evolution as profoundly as you do, I wouldn`t believe it either."

[stopwastingmymoney]

69. I like that

I'm going to use it if you don't mind.

[opiate69]

70. I don't mind.. Hell, I "borrowed" it too lol

[BlueStreak]

58. Actually, people *DO* observe evolution every day

Whenever a microorganism develops resistance to an antibiotic, that is evolution. It happens every day. It is exactly the same process that evolved Lucy the hominid into Lucy the "got some 'splainin' to do" actress.

[DreamGypsy]

72. Drug resistance is really artificial selection ...

Evolution is random mutation, followed by very non-random natural selection. The naturally static or changing environment of the mutant determines the viability of the mutation.

The development of drug resistance in pathogens or disease vectors is due to the presence of chemicals artificially introduced into the environment over evolutionarily short periods of time, selecting only those mutations which provide some improved survival in the presence of the chemicals.

Here is an article on development of resistance to malaria drugs from The University of Chicago Magazine. (I'm an alumnus, so they send me emails about these things...)

The most interesting quote from the researcher is at the very end of the article:

...the most science can hope for is to stay one step ahead of the bugs. “It’s like an arms race, or tit for tat, or thrust and repartee,” he says. “The organisms we’re dealing with, they almost seem to have a collective intelligence about them.” Sometimes, he says, in the fog of exhaustion at the end of his workday, “I almost imagine that they’re figuring out the way they’re going to deal with our latest efforts. They’re in their laboratories too.”

I envision a huge number of little microorganisms wandering around in white lab coats, experimenting with techniques to combat the latest drug.

In the case of malaria, the organism is a plasmodium , the current drug is chloroquine or artemisinin, and, in the case of chloroquine, the combat technique is to produce a 'pump' molecule that attaches to the cell wall of the infected blood cell and 'pumps' out the chloroquine molecules, if present (ie. transfers the molecules out of the cell). Pretty smart little lab techs, eh?

(pps: I am familiar with the process because my wife is CEO of a company developing drug variants that overcome resistance. She can explain the 'pump' adaptation much more graphically than I can.)

(ppps: If you don't think malaria is a significant problem: research, published in the British medical journal the Lancet, suggests 1.24 million people died from the mosquito-borne disease in 2010. This compares to a World Health Organization (WHO) estimate for 2010 of 655,000 deaths. Most of these deaths are children.)

Drug resistance is a big deal: Drug Resistant Gonorrhea, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and a post yesterday on DU about Romney-Ryan touting funding for chronic Lyme Disease.

..."long-term antibiotic treatment" just gets more and more tiny lab techs working on the problem. And they out-number us by 100 trillion to one.

[cthulu2016]

73. a tiny quibble

And I do mean tiny. I am just introducing a concept to the discussion, not actually contradicting you.

Our dispersing chemicals that drive the evolution of pathogens is both artificial and natural. Antibiotics are a phenotypic expression of the human genome, but since we use artificial to describe things we make that's how the word is used. Fair enough. But how far down the ladder do we carry artificiality?

Is hand-washing artificial selection for stickier germs? And if so, is a raccoon rinsing food equally artificial?

Beaver dams surely drive the evolution of some small water creatures. Is that selection artificial or natural?

Philosophically tricky.

[BlueStreak]

78. Come on folks. Those are distinctions without a difference

The basic process is mutation. Most mutations are unhelpful and the organisms die off or don't reproduce. A few mutations are beneficial and lead to a new variation of the organism.

Those are the essential elements of evolution whether you are talking about evolution of apes or microorganisms.

Anybody who believes that microorganisms can develop drug resistance therefore believes in evolution. Anybody who doesn't believe drug resistance can evolve is an idiot. There just isn't a lot of middle ground on evolution.

[DreamGypsy]

79. Thanks. A valid point for discussion and an interesting example.

Darwin introduced the term artificial selection to describe selective breeding. He, of course, didn't have the basis to understand the all the ways that we have today to manipulate the development of life.

When I was writing my comments on drug resistance, I considered qualifying my use of 'artificial selection'...as, uh, 'essentially artificial selection' or 'a form of artificial selection'. But then I asked myself, how do you selectively breed organisms that do not reproduce sexually? Well, you can only kill the ones you don't want and that's generally what antibiotics do. So I decided that qualifying the usage would be a somewhat obscure point. And as BlueStreak points out, if the goal is to highlight the absurdity of creationism, then quibbling over artificial/natural is useless.

However, your raccoon example seemed an interesting learning opportunity, so I searched. Here's the article: Why do raccoons wash their food?

First fact (new to me): The scientific name, Procyon lotor, literally means "washing bear."

The meat of the article (pun intended) is that raccoons probably rinse their food because of the structure of their paws, and that structure has interesting similarities and differences with primate hands:

.... raccoons have highly dexterous forepaws that resemble hands. Raccoons actually have the same nerve grouping on the hairless parts of their forepaws as primates have, including humans, making them very sensitive to touch. Like primates, they have similar slowly adapting nerves in those hairless, or glabrous, patches [source: Rasmusson and Turnbull]. Slowly adapting nerves are responsive for both moving and stationary skin displacement, communicating to the brain, via the central nervous system, information about the weight, size, texture and temperature of whatever's come into contact with the forepaws. There are also nerves attached to underfur and longer guard hairs.

In a study examining the slowly adapting nerves in the forepaws of 136 raccoons, researchers found that wetting the skin increases the nerve responsiveness [source: Rasmusson and Turnbull]. Think about what happens when you look through a pair of sunglasses and then quickly take them off. When you remove them, your optical nerve responsiveness will likely increase because more light is flooding into your retinas to illuminate what you're looking at. Likewise, when raccoons perform their dunking ritual, the water on their paws could excite the nerves in their forepaws. That, in turn, gives them a more vivid tactile experience and provides precise information about what they're about to eat. This is a beneficial trait since the raccoon's vision isn't its keenest sense.

Like primates, raccoons employ a combination of sight and touch to reach out and grasp an object (unless, of course, they're reaching into murky water). However, raccoons often use both hands, rather than one, to grasp, and they exhibit little independent movement of their digits [source: Pubols, Pubols and Munger].

One interesting difference in tactile sense between raccoons and primates is the raccoon's lack of papillary ridges. The ridges are microstructures in our skin that help us detect friction and create our fingerprints. In the hairless areas of human skin, namely our palms and soles, the ridges are packed with Meissner corpuscles. These are individual living cells that serve as specialized mechanoreceptors, responding to sensations like pressure or tension. With all of these factors combined, a study observing raccoons' eating behavior concluded that while their dexterity is specialized, it isn't as much of an anomaly as the washing behavior implied at first blush [source: ­Pubols, Pubols and Munger].

From a public relations standpoint, that probably isn't such a good thing for the raccoon. Previously, the rabies-carrying, food-stealing animal had the distinction of at least washing its food. Now, it looks like those sticky fingers could use a thorough rinsing.

Cool, huh? Maybe the answer to your question about human/raccoon washing behavior both selecting stickier germs is YES.

[cthulu2016]

83. Perhaps artificial should be reserved for intentional artifice

Darwin's dog breeders were aware they were modifying dogs to desired ends.

On the other hand, 90% of the domestication of dogs happened naturally, but only due to human social behavior. If we didn't have tribes and camps then wolves wouldn't have become camp followers.

Our general social behavior is innate, as is our pack-hunting, an a hierarchical structure somewhat similar that that of wolves, so the self-domesticating wolf can be seen as a naturally arising symbiosis like a ramora clinging to sharks for their leavings.

But some of the process is conscious. After a point we were feeding the nicest wolf/dogs and probably eating the least nice ones.

Same thing with domesticating plants. We go out and pick the plants with the biggest edible seeds intending only to eat them, but the average seed in our zone is larger because we are bringing larger ones in from outside. A differentiation by size is happening no different from what a bird might do, but at some point we reason that the bigger seeds beget bigger seeded plants and the process becomes "artificial" because we are seeking to manipulate the off-spring.

Since our reasoning capacity is part of our genetic make-up it's tricky... so perhaps intent is the best marker of artificial selection.

Scientifically, this all means little. A germ is just as antibiotic resistant whether we meant to do that or not.

But the philosophical question of whether anything we do with our naturally evolved brains is un-natural is intriguing.

[lastlib]

60. My standard response: We ARE the transitional species.

It's that simple. Evolution is driven by genetics. Every living creature is a transition between its parents and its offspring.

[sakabatou]

75. Genectics AND the environment

[PD Turk]

61. Dumbasses

Pure dumbasses.Dats and cogs don't exist, yet. They can't even figure out what they themselves have already predicted. The rise of the dats and cogs can't occur until we fully legalize same sex marriage. The resulting breakdown in the natural order due to "cats and dogs living together and people marrying box turtles and oh the humanity!!!" ....that's the precipitating event, which will also give rise to the "murtle" and many other such hybrids

Actually, I think the Murtle may have gotten a head start:

[geckosfeet]

76. Good example - of a de-evolving transitional form.

[DreamGypsy]

71. DCOAGTSS: The most recent common ancestor of dogs and cats...

From: http://greenanswers.com/q/95599/animals-wildlife/pets/what-common-ancestor-cats-and-dogs#ixzz286rAbpqi

The exact MRCA (Most Recent Common Ancestor) may never be known. Not that it really matters to that degree of precision.

But what is known is that not long after the emergence of the Order Carnivora appeared it split off into two suborders:

Feliformia ("Cat like&quot and,

Caniformia ("Dog like&quot

This occurred around 42 million years ago in the Eocene period.

From here the Feliformia produced the families:

Felidae (Domestic Cats, Tiger, Lion, Ocelot, etc.)

Eupleridae ("Malagasy carnivores&quot Fossa, Falanouc, Malagasy Civet and Malagasy mongooses etc. All from Madagascar.

Hyaenidae (hyenas and Aardwolf)

Herpestidae (the Mongooses, kusimanses, Meerkat, etc.)

Nandiniidae (African Palm Civet)

Viverridae (the Binturong, civets, genets, Asiatic and African linsang)



And the Caniformia produced:

Canidae (canids; dogs and wolves)

Ursidae (bears)

Ailuridae (red panda)

Mephitidae (skunks)

Mustelidae (weasels and otters)

Procyonidae (raccoons, coatis, etc.)

Pinnipedia (seals, sea lions, walruses.)

Citations:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feliformia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivora

[left on green only]

77. Oh Yeah!?

Well I grew up on the beach in Southern California where there was a seemingly endless supply of foxy chicks. Just sayin.

[TrogL]

80. My cat is an honourary dog

When he comes in, the dogs greet him dog-style (I'll leave that to your imagination) and lick his face.

The cat being bigger than they are probably has something to do with it.

[Viking12]

85. ..and a fake expert to with faulty logic

Henry M. Morris, Ph.D. (in hydraulic engineering, circa 1950). Yeah, that makes him an expert on evolution.