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acroyearNot a bad show, though I personally disagree that the mammals will be extinct in 100 million years. Even as substantial a hit that killed the dinosaurs wasn't enough to eliminate ALL reptiles or birds, and the little ones certainly got big within 10 million years (crocs and gastornis, e.g.) as did mammals coming up from basic rodent-like things. Certainly, I can accept that some subsets will die out like many already have, but I don't forsee all of them going. If insects and fish will continue to thrive and get tougher, mammals will get tougher just like they always have.
The series seems to imply that organized societal creatures (jellyfish, spiders, like ants today) will be the big survivors and that individually-thinking creatures won't make it, and this desire to limit the effect and adaptability of the individual intelligence I feel is misdirected.
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Evolution requires mutation, and THAT's what's unpredictable (slashdot comment, rating 5)
That Darwin's theory explains why things are the way they are, with regards to survival, it doesn't explain the HOW, which is mutation. Mutations occur and natural selection drives the duplication of the mutated genes 'til a new species is differentiated from the old.
However, the nature of how mutations really happen, and how "good" ones that are "prefered" arrive (as we're very keyed in to hating anything "different" ourselves and often shun it in humans or kill it in animals) is what we as humans have not been able to truly see or test. Its hard to test, as mammals have too long a breeding period, and colonial insects (ants and bees) are usually dominated by the queen's genes. Most genes that change behaviours tended to have already been on the planet somewhere, and are only spreading now because we're accidentally spreading them (e.g., "africanized/killer" bees).
The show did a good job of suggesting what natural selection might do, given a set of mutations over X million years to produce said animals, but the fact is that the mutations themselves are what's utterly unpredictable...and truth be told, rather boring by comparison to the end-results we saw.
I consider evolution a fact, but not a law in the Newton/Einstein sense, because evolution can't be used to predict the future with any accuracy since evolution doesn't explain mutations; it only relies on them. It would be like trying to use Einstein to predict something in electrons without the use of calculus.
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Large Animals, Little Food, happened before...
The indricothere, of the Rhino family, managed to survive for a few cool million eating from rare trees in scrubbrush land, dealing with wet and dry seasons much like the current african savannah (only without the grass).
However, there are enough grass-eaters out there that I don't think evolution's going to produce new tree-eaters except ones that eat fruit as part of a omnivorous diet (like primates today).
Nature's produced grass-eaters (including ourselves, though we can only deal with cooking the seeds -- wheat and barley are grasses) in quite a few mammal and lizard & salamander families, and I don't see the grass-eaters giving up and tree leaves being the core of the future diet again. Tree leaves are a luxury item, like giving carrots and/or radishes to a rabbit, but more mammals still need a steady regimen of grains.
The series seems to imply that organized societal creatures (jellyfish, spiders, like ants today) will be the big survivors and that individually-thinking creatures won't make it, and this desire to limit the effect and adaptability of the individual intelligence I feel is misdirected.
--
Evolution requires mutation, and THAT's what's unpredictable (slashdot comment, rating 5)
That Darwin's theory explains why things are the way they are, with regards to survival, it doesn't explain the HOW, which is mutation. Mutations occur and natural selection drives the duplication of the mutated genes 'til a new species is differentiated from the old.
However, the nature of how mutations really happen, and how "good" ones that are "prefered" arrive (as we're very keyed in to hating anything "different" ourselves and often shun it in humans or kill it in animals) is what we as humans have not been able to truly see or test. Its hard to test, as mammals have too long a breeding period, and colonial insects (ants and bees) are usually dominated by the queen's genes. Most genes that change behaviours tended to have already been on the planet somewhere, and are only spreading now because we're accidentally spreading them (e.g., "africanized/killer" bees).
The show did a good job of suggesting what natural selection might do, given a set of mutations over X million years to produce said animals, but the fact is that the mutations themselves are what's utterly unpredictable...and truth be told, rather boring by comparison to the end-results we saw.
I consider evolution a fact, but not a law in the Newton/Einstein sense, because evolution can't be used to predict the future with any accuracy since evolution doesn't explain mutations; it only relies on them. It would be like trying to use Einstein to predict something in electrons without the use of calculus.
--
Large Animals, Little Food, happened before...
The indricothere, of the Rhino family, managed to survive for a few cool million eating from rare trees in scrubbrush land, dealing with wet and dry seasons much like the current african savannah (only without the grass).
However, there are enough grass-eaters out there that I don't think evolution's going to produce new tree-eaters except ones that eat fruit as part of a omnivorous diet (like primates today).
Nature's produced grass-eaters (including ourselves, though we can only deal with cooking the seeds -- wheat and barley are grasses) in quite a few mammal and lizard & salamander families, and I don't see the grass-eaters giving up and tree leaves being the core of the future diet again. Tree leaves are a luxury item, like giving carrots and/or radishes to a rabbit, but more mammals still need a steady regimen of grains.
