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You got a very wrong idea of evolution. It is not said that it goes to build more complecated organisms, no, it goes in direction to build more adapted organism, so that quite often means more complecated organism, but it is not a rule, you can cosider that more as a guideline. Quite often organisms loose organs. Humans and apes do not have a tale, monkeys do, does that mean that monkeys are more developed then us human? Parasites got simpler then their ansenstors, Soliter does not have eyes, very primitive neuron system, while worms they involved from did have eyes and more comlecated central neuro system. There are a lot of samples like that. Dolfins do not have legs, they are more primitive then, let's say dogs?Originally Posted by saibot
You have a very good point Pioner. But, IMHO, building up a resistance to something is not evolution, but rather degeneration. Quite the opposite of evolution. I'm not sure about the exact way that bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics, but I can give another example.
A chemical compound called Warfarin was used to kill rats in England in the 1950's. But eventually, the rats devoloped a resistance to Warfarin.
Warfarin kills by inhibiting enzymes involved in the synthesis of Vitamin K. This, as you should know with your degree in biology, is essential to life.
The non-resistant rats exposed to warfarin, died. Duh!
But the resistant rats were found to have a mutated form of the enzyme that synthesizes Vitamin K. The active sites on the enzyme were not properly shaped to allow the binding of warfarin. Therefore, warfarin was not able to inhibit enzyme activity. On the outside, this may look like an "added" feature.
So, this is for SURE evolution. Or is it?
The mutated enzyme was found to be EXTREMELY inefficient in synthesizing Vitamin K. It required over 10 times the energy in the mutated enzyme to synthesize a single molecule of the vitamin.
So clearly you can see that the built up resistance was not evolution, but rather a degeneration of the working enzyme (quite the opposite). The enzyme became less functional, not more functional. This doesnt fit the description of evolution at all!
Great example! That is called selection! Natural, but in this case artificial selection. Organisms do not change because of the environment, that theory is wrong and called Lamarkism, not Darwinism. Neo-Darwinism (Darwinism + Genetics) speaks about selection. All of us got different variation of genes, which are quite stable, mutations are quite rare and they often useless or fatal, but some of them usefull. Anyhow, when cadmium did not exist, all worms were OK, but they some of them had genes of cadmium-resistence. Then environment changed and here we go, all useless (from evolution point of view) in current situation organisms died but those who had "right" genes survived. Look at Giraffes. Long ago they had normal necks. Let's say that 1% of them had slightly longer neck, guess what? They manage to get leaves better then other. They had higher chances to survive. So in several generations those with longer necks survived. Then it goes futher, out of them who had even longer necks survived. Etc. Looks simple, but it is complecated at the same time. Because long neck creates other comlecations for the organism. So out of longer neck giraffes survive those organism who had possibility to deal with high blood pressure etc. Evolution selects by many factors. Look at cars. Lets say there is an almost perfect car, powerful engine, great milage, great design, but horrible brakes? Who is going to buy that? Nobody. That car does not survive. People select cars which better value for a buck but with all needed stuff. Manufacturers of wrong cars do not survive, like many eastereropean manufacturers of cars disappeared.Another example.
In 1992, and experiment was done involving a species of aquatic worms and cadmium. Cadmium is a naturally occuring, toxic element.
The scientist was out to prove that animals can "evolve" and develop resistance to anything. He placed non-cadmium resistance worms in a cadmium free environment. Obviously, the worms survived. He then placed more non-cadmium resistant worms in an environment containing cadmium. After only 3 generations, all the worms in the tank were cadmium resistant. The scientist published a report declaring this as proof for evolution.
Upon, closer insepction, there was no evidence of mutation, or new structures that helped with the resistance to cadmium. But how can this be?
Easy. Some of the worms had to have already been resistant to cadmium, or all the worms would have died. If this was evolution, the worms would have had to instantly develop a resistance to cadmium, or they ALL would have immediately died! Even evolutionist say that evolution just does not happen that fast.
So the result we saw with all the worms becoming resistant was not evolution, because nothing was changed or added to the gene pool, but rather a disturbance in the frequency of appearance of the genes involved in the resistance to cadmium.
Wow, that drained my energy. Im gonna go drink a red bull.
once again. Darwinism is not about that organisms change because of change of environment, but some organisms survive (got selected) if they got better set of genes for changed environment.
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