Will our feet eventually evolve into hands?

rich.d.berry · 12-12-2011 02:16PM

Wibbs wrote: »

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.

I'm not talking past evolution, I'm talking future. Will we evolve anything different if our society and technology remain unchanged. No.

If there is some huge disaster that has us all scrambling for survival again then yes, perhaps feet that double as hands could evolve. However, the ability to survive high doses of radiation may be the winner.

Seachmall · 12-12-2011 02:20PM

rich.d.berry wrote: »

I'm not talking past evolution, I'm talking future. Will we evolve anything different if our society and technology remain unchanged. No.

We probably will. The world isn't static, new viruses evolve everyday, species go extinct everyday, the climate is changing, etc. We may have peaked on the food chain but we still must adapt to the world should it change.

Wibbs · 12-12-2011 06:22PM

rich.d.berry wrote: »

I'm not talking past evolution, I'm talking future. Will we evolve anything different if our society and technology remain unchanged. No.

The past informs the future. Technology has changed more in the last century than in the previous thousand years and again so has society. Society continues changing as we speak. People living longer. People having more children with different partners. Arguably an increasing divide between the haves and the have nots, the latter having more children, even more exposure to novel foods(try getting soya milk in tesco 20 years ago). It's not always the big picture stuff that pushes evolution, the subtle stuff can make a huge difference.

Again ask a Neandertal. They probably didn't freak out about these new weird black skinny fecks from Africa at first. We actually lived side by side in the middle east for 10,000 years(enough to get jiggy too). We were subtly different, not a lot between us. Indeed if one was taking bets 100,000 years ago one might very well reckon on placing said bet on the highly sophisticated guys who had survived and thrived through multiple ice ages and high variable environments for at least quarter of a million years. Well compared to the weak newbies who had not been nearly so tested walking into the unknown.

Homosexuality in men may be another example. One would expect it would not reproductively select for obvious reasons. Yet it's still here. Clearly it proffers some advantage. It could be any number of things. Certainly it might be argued the arts(and science too) is quite weighted with gay chappies(Leo DaVinci and Michaelangelo being two). It might be even simpler. One study found that the sisters of gay men have slightly more children making it to adulthood(and others posit that if there is a "gay gene"* it's transmitted like baldness through the female line). If true the why is up for grabs, but it seems there is some advantage there. Tiny though it may be.

*personally I don't think it's any single gene, but a multifactoral thing. Either way it's "built in".

Chuck Stone · 12-12-2011 06:48PM

Our bodies will increasingly become a mere method transporting our brains around.

entropi · 12-12-2011 07:33PM

Two pages in and nobody threw in a Father Ted quote? :pac:

"Are those my feet"?

rich.d.berry · 12-12-2011 10:50PM

Wibbs wrote: »

The past informs the future.

No arguments there. We are what we are because of our genetic history.

Wibbs wrote: »

*personally I don't think it's any single gene, but a multifactoral thing. Either way it's "built in".

Sorry, I forgot that I was posting in the After Hours forum where personal opinion has more authority than science.

Sky King · 12-12-2011 11:02PM

IvaBigWun wrote: »

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

Yeah it can make us evolve into people who eat fatty, sh!tty food all day yet have perfectly athletic physiques.

DannyKing · 15-12-2011 12:47AM

God I hope so. Imagine the possibilities. They're endless.

Stiffler2 · 15-12-2011 01:38PM

I heard the fanny was re-evolving into the willy as I heard the fanny is a waste of time & effort not to mention the crap that comes with it

jester77 · 15-12-2011 01:48PM

I think there is a a bigger chance of us regressing into hunchbacks than growing hands!

Although the amount of times I would have given my arm to have a third hand :pac:

Will our feet eventually evolve into hands?

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