Will our feet eventually evolve into hands?

hairybowsie · 11-12-2011 08:47PM

i'm down 4 adult teeth. Never appeared. Apparently i'm more highly evolved. Looks ridiculous though.

Irish Steve · 11-12-2011 09:00PM

There are some issues with eyesight, and the race in general seems to be doing it's best to destroy hearing. A genetic upgrade to include the equivalent of a WiFi or a USB port would make communication a LOT easier.

Evolution to enable mankind to deal better with Alcohol would be a big help,

Truth is, we don't know exactly what changes we need to survive, and some of the changes take longer than we care to think about, so why worry. We've got what we've got, so make the best of it.

bodhrandude · 11-12-2011 09:07PM

Maybe we will evolve into great big monoliths, now where did I hear that before :cool:

Kevin Duffy · 11-12-2011 09:10PM

Irish Steve wrote: »

There are some issues with eyesight, and the race in general seems to be doing it's best to destroy hearing. A genetic upgrade to include the equivalent of a WiFi or a USB port would make communication a LOT easier.

Evolution to enable mankind to deal better with Alcohol would be a big help,

Truth is, we don't know exactly what changes we need to survive, and some of the changes take longer than we care to think about, so why worry. We've got what we've got, so make the best of it.

This man is ahead of the curve

Kim_Il_Jong · 11-12-2011 09:10PM

Carverkid wrote: »

Women will eventually have the ability to asexually reproduce, (apparently) as the the x chromosome (woman) is stronger than the y chromosome (man).

Dear God they'll start making sandwiches......for themselves:eek:

11-12-2011 09:25PM

I can't see how having hands for feet would bestow any survival or reproductive advantage upon an individual.

Besides human evolution is not likely to progress at a rapid rate any time soon.

One of the key factors that was recognised by Darwin as being necessary for evolution to occur was competition for survival among individuals. This doesn't really happen anymore in the developed world. Also, it is pretty much impossible for the human lineage to branch into seperate species at this point as there is too much transfer of genetic material between different geographical regions.

marketty · 11-12-2011 09:42PM

Robdude wrote: »

It's been a long time, but I though evolution only worked when certain traits increase or decrease someone's ability to procreate. That means in just about any first-world country - evolution is halted.

I see where you're coming from but most people don't live in the first world and second/third world populations are booming

Kovu · 11-12-2011 09:43PM

IvaBigWun wrote: »

Has evolution got anything left to do with the human body?

Will our feet eventually evolve into hands?

Yes. Yes they will.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1Qut0Nrsiw

mconigol · 11-12-2011 09:54PM

Robdude wrote: »

I thought natural selection was at the foundation of evolution.

From Wikipedia:
The genetic variation within a population of organisms may cause some individuals to survive and reproduce more successfully than others. Factors that affect reproductive success are also important, an issue that Charles Darwin developed in his ideas on sexual selection.

But in a modern society, only the most extreme genetic variations cause someone to be unable to reproduce or to die before they can reproduce.

stupidusername wrote: »

what?! that's exactly what it's to do with.

I probably explained myself badly. The point I was trying to make is that evolution itself is inherently random. Our genes don't mutate to suit the environment, they just change randomly.

Natural selection then is the process where the more beneficial traits are passed from one generation to the next. What's considered beneficial is of course influenced by the environment at the time.

mconigol · 11-12-2011 09:57PM

Kevin Duffy wrote: »

This man is ahead of the curve

Chances are the next stage of evolution will be man made rather than the "traditional" natural way. Why wait for millions of years when we get the knowledge and technology to improve ourselves at whim.

Son Of A Vidic · 11-12-2011 10:12PM

IvaBigWun wrote: »

Will our feet eventually evolve into hands?

Has evolution got anything left to do with the human body?

What do you think OP? Have an opinion yourself by any chance?

im invisible · 11-12-2011 10:14PM

Archeron wrote: »

I can peel a banana with my feet, so yes.

are you a chick?

Ellis Dee · 11-12-2011 10:37PM

Carverkid wrote: »

Women will eventually have the ability to asexually reproduce ---

Does that mean they'll be able to fuck themselves?

Son Of A Vidic · 11-12-2011 10:40PM

MyKeyG wrote: »

Wouldn't that sort of be going backwards? We had hands for feet as primates.

Two questions, how old are you? Because you must be seriously old. Secondly, have you yourself discovered the missing link?

smallBiscuit · 11-12-2011 11:02PM

First There is so much wrong with so many responses to this thread
Second, I know, its after hours

Survival of the fittest has nothing to do with how fit you are, how strong, how log you live, whether you have 6 fingers or 2 dicks.
Survival of the fittest means, whoever is best at attracting a mate,having lots of kids and raring the most to the age to have their own.

So, It is possible (unlikely, but possible) that we could evolve hands where our feet are* If Women everywhere suddenly decided they only wanted to sleep with men with dexterous feet, then those men would have more kids, would be 'fitter'. Keep it up for couple of a million years and bobs your uncle

* Leaving us with the problem of which 'hand' to use when ****, It's no longer left/right it's now left/right, upper/lower. The indecision could kill you

antodeco · 11-12-2011 11:43PM

Bigger heads (intelligence) bigger eyes (to cope with less sunlight) lower body mass (as we protect ourselves more with other objects/less fighting). Think of aliens. That is what we are evolving into. Aliens are time travellers. Not the "how's your mammy for gates" travellers though.

44leto · 12-12-2011 12:12AM

A thread about the great misconception about evolution. Although one of the great world changing in ideas theories, its simple to understand yet so many get it wrong.

To evolve "To develop or achieve gradually" I took that from a dictionary. People think it is a forward verb, we evolve forward, we become better. But that is not what evolution is. Evolution is a process, there is no forward or backward development. There is just change and that change maybe successful in the organisms reproductive success.

Evolution is not about mortality, but reproductive success, that is something Darwin and the early theorists did not get. We don't evolve into xmen or a higher form of life. Our offsprings survive, that is success.

Take the Dolphin it came onto land and became a sort of dog, then it went back into the sea and remains there for now. Take us, our brains are the reason we are so successful, for now, but it is a very expensive piece of kit. It consumes about a third of our bodily resources. So imagine some cataclysmal event that reduced atmospheric oxygen to about half of what it is now.
Suppose after some birth defect a less intelligent smaller brained man survived. He may go on and have offsprings, then a branch of humanity would survive and replace us but be less intelligent and incapable of culture.

That would not be a "backward step" that would be survival, that is evolution. Evolution has no direction, it has no agenda. It is just a cold natural process.

hairybowsie · 12-12-2011 08:02AM

according to ray kurzweil, human evolution is almost over. We'll be downloading our brains to our ipods in 2045

Saila · 12-12-2011 08:20AM

our entire solar system will have been consumed by the sun long before evolution gets a chance to do anything majorly significant

tl,dr: it doesnt matter we are ****ed anyway

Coriolanus · 12-12-2011 08:24AM

seantorious wrote: »

Kevin Duffy wrote: »

Look on the bright side, your eyesight is fully evolved.

It won't be until I can see through the walls of the opposite sex bathroom.

I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me!

Seachmall · 12-12-2011 11:37AM

smallBiscuit wrote: »

Survival of the fittest has nothing to do with how fit you are, how strong, how log you live [...] Survival of the fittest means, whoever is best at attracting a mate,having lots of kids and raring the most to the age to have their own.

How fit you are is a factor in how long you live which is a factor in mating.

People born with a disease that reduces their life expectancy to 15 years are far less likely to reproduce than an otherwise healthy person (they simply have less time to), as such that disease will plausibly disappear.

Strength may be less of a factor today as it was 20,000 years ago but I'm sure in some areas of the world it's still a factor in reproduction.

Kevin Duffy wrote:

fully evolved.

Doesn't exist, evolution has no endgame.

Wibbs · 12-12-2011 11:45AM

antodeco wrote: »

Bigger heads (intelligence) bigger eyes (to cope with less sunlight)

Neandertals had both bigger heads and bigger eyes and it didn't go so well for them

Clearly head/brain size isn't everything. It's the organisation of that brain that seems to count. Einstein had quite a small brain. Even as modern humans if anything our heads have reduced in size and robustness in the last 40,000 years. I can't see our heads getting any bigger. Lots of problems there, especially concerning birth. Bigger heads mean wider hips in women. Even with women having much wider hips than other apes, the human baby is born undeveloped in the skull and brain and continues to develop outside the womb after birth(up to a year IIRC). Which made human babies far more reliant on parents and more vulnerable than other animals.

So any evolution from now on in is likely to be external. Technology and cultural. Much as it has been for humans for the last million years. People often miss that part of our evolution. We started to eat meat, but are not particularly built for it, but we made tools to slice it up, rather than evolve larger canines and carnassian teeth. We also cooked it to release more nutrients that our relatively weak stomach acid(compared to a carnivore) couldn't. We didn't grow extra hair to move into colder regions, we made clothes and fire. This is what really makes us very special and unique among all the life that has existed on this planet. Today we can "see" infrared and x rays and even "hear" the very sound the universe makes. Hell if you're reading this wearing glasses that's external evolution for you. Ditto for medicines that many reading out there would be long dead without. This will ramp up in the future. We're well on the way to cracking all the code of life and we've proved we can manipulate it. Add in external machinery and in a thousand years time a very different "human" will look back on this thread and others like it and smile. Or if they end up with IQ's in the 1000's it will bore them to tears.

44leto · 12-12-2011 12:17PM

"Survival of the fittest" that actually came from the Victorian economist and political scientist Herbert Spencer and not Darwin. He was actually referring to Laissez Fair. The survival of the most efficient businesses ETC and not evolution.

It is more the survival of the luckiest and the organism that can reproduce best within an environment. It doesn't have to be "fit" at all, just successfully reproduce and their offsprings also to reproduce.

Seachmall · 12-12-2011 12:25PM

44leto wrote: »

"Survival of the fittest" that actually came from the Victorian economist and political scientist Herbert Spencer and not Darwin. He was actually referring to Laissez Fair. The survival of the most efficient businesses ETC and not evolution.

It is more the survival of the luckiest and the organism that can reproduce best within an environment. It doesn't have to be "fit" at all, just successfully reproduce and their offsprings also to reproduce.

Dawkins did a program on evolution and said "Survival of the Kindest" is more apt for social animals as their survival is essentially dependent on their community and the evolutionary altruism that it, in turn, depends on. Although I'd imagine that can also be detrimental to a species survival as they care for peers that provide little to the community (e.g. the old and sick).

Fortunately we've evolved to a state where we can care for those in need without sacrificing our ability to survive.

12-12-2011 12:27PM

We're evolving into elephants

stupidusername · 12-12-2011 12:44PM

Taking your glasses example wibbs,do you not think that's a case for us becoming less and less developed? I mean if we rely on external objects to make things better for us,surely it's likely our bodies will have no need to develop things like better eyesight?

44leto · 12-12-2011 12:58PM

stupidusername wrote: »

Taking your glasses example wibbs,do you not think that's a case for us becoming less and less developed? I mean if we rely on external objects to make things better for us,surely it's likely our bodies will have no need to develop things like better eyesight?

You are talking better eyesight, bad eyesight does not prevent us from reproducing. Humanities culture has lifted itself above the process. These days a lot of sick babies survive to reproduce. Therefore a lot of genetic illnesses will never be breath out. Simplistic I know.

There are a number of things that happened to the specie humanity in the last 100,000 years that is still evolving till the great leap forward which was when we start farming.

Lactose tolerance, sickle cell, white skin, Sherpa's natural ability to survive better in a low oxygen environment is also a biological advantage for their environment. These are just a few examples of evolution still in action.

BUT a person with lactose intolerance can now avoid lactose and be fit and healthy, a person without sickle cell can still survive with malaria, a person with dark skin can still survive in the cooler climes with diet, a man can still climb everest and survive in higher altitudes with technological intervention.

So culture has lifted us above the process, but not taken us out of it.

rich.d.berry · 12-12-2011 01:47PM

In short, no!

The way that populations evolve is that those better suited to survive will reach the age to breed and pass on their superior genetics. Since there is currently no real threat to our ability to survive long enough to procreate, the human species has effectively stopped evolving. There is no single genetic trait that is being favoured over another.

Wibbs · 12-12-2011 01:59PM

rich.d.berry wrote: »

In short, no!

The way that populations evolve is that those better suited to survive will reach the age to breed and pass on their superior genetics. Since there is currently no real threat to our ability to survive long enough to procreate, the human species has effectively stopped evolving. There is no single genetic trait that is being favoured over another.

Not quite. Since we started farming we've evolved on a genetic level more in that 10,000 years than in the previous 60,000(if not more). As 44leto listed above these are adaptations, usually to novel food groups. Now someone who is gluten intolerant didn't die off back then. Ceoeliacs don't die now, but maybe they had a smaller number of kids than someone who had the gene that could process the food. It doesn't take much at all over time. Plus "superior genetics" is a very loaded term and is highly contextual. A physically weak asthmatic with social anxiety would be out of place on the plains of Africa, but might well be a professor of engineering in MIT.

seanogwalsh · 12-12-2011 02:05PM

I'd rather they developed into stumps...feet scare me

Will our feet eventually evolve into hands?

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