Evolution in Action


You may say that, as a Christian ( what are you doing here? - put it away at once or you'll go blind) you don't believe in evolution. Be that as it may, evolution is the major agent for change in the biological world. The slight variations in offspring, whether brought about by gene damage ( mutation) or simply by natural variation produce a slight change in the ability to survive and reproduce ( there is no point in living if you don't have a fuck now and then ) Over many generations that differential survival rate leads to major changes.

Normally evolution operates on a time scale measured in millions of years but in certain circumstances acts much more quickly. Two major examples spring to mind. Firstly, over a fifty year period following the introduction of the first antibiotic, penicillin, many bacteria have become drug resistant. This is not because they have become smarter but because they have gradually evolved through thousands of generations and become resistant to a particular lines of attack. Alternatively, it could be that the devil is hard at work ("let's try putting a phosphorous atom into that sequence and see if that improves the sucker") but I don't think so.

The second example is the female breast. Fifty years ago they were small and came in various shades of grey. Nowadays, they are huge and available in all sorts of interesting colours ( during the same period women have developed genitals and pubic hair but that is outside the scope of this paper)

Small ... ... and grey originally ... ... but getting more ...

.... interesting ... ...and ... ...bigger ...

An early coloured version ... ...and a variation ...

Finally .. ..modern.. ..breasts arrived..


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