What if?
 

What if threads can be fun and cerebral.

I'll start:


What if environmentalists saving whales by pushing them back into the ocean is actually preventing them from evolving?

Re: What if?
 

Hmm. I don't think evolution happens quite that fast. Besides, evolution is based upon survival of the "fittest" with fitness defined as having a greater number of progeny surviving to reproductive age.

Dying on the beach doesn't appear to help the cause.

Re: What if?
 

Here's evolution for you ...


http://cache.desktopnexus.com/thumbn...gthumbnail.jpg


https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/i...UiAN1pim5ZxHkF

Re: What if?
 

Its a "what if" scenario. However how do we know if they would all die if we keep pushing them back into the ocean? :-) We may be obstructing the one survivor.

Evolution has been ion place for approximately 3.6 billion years and I am not sure at this point that man has allowed it to function naturally in the last few hundred years.

Life forms dies out for a reason.

Re: What if?
 

My point, and I many not have made it well, was that the whales are not evolving by dying on the beach. If, in fact, whale beachings are an attempt by whales to become terrestrial mammals once again (because that is where they came from to begin with) environmentalists may actually be helping the evolutionary process by pushing them back in the water. There, they can continue to breed with each successive generation becoming better adapted. Kind of like a king-sized walking catfish.

I don't completely agree that man has disrupted evolution over the past few hundred years. In my opinion you need to stretch that back to maybe 10,000 years. Even primitive man did a number on quite a few species when he started showing up in new places. We have just become more proficient at it in the past 200 years.

It is amazing that environmentalists want the world to remain unchanged....as it exists today. They are against fossil fuels, GMO crops, vaccines, predator culls, etc. I'm not so sure that they would have had that opinion if they lived 500 years ago. It's hard to be an environmentalist when you're focussed on not freezing or starving to death, when half your family gets wiped out by disease or when the local bear or wolf pack considers you and your family to be slow moving appetizers.

Mankind in the 21st century is, to a large extent, a much better steward of the earth than at any time in history. That said, our population levels are stressing many ecosystems to the breaking point.

Re: What if?
 

Kind of like human overpopulation consuming the environment. I think sometimes about what happened to ancient civilizations like the Mayans, was there really an Atlantis, and if diggers keep digging up ancient ruins what kind of plague will mankind be faced with, a lot of what if. The earth will take back one day what it wants with us here or not, that's evolution.

Re: What if?
 

I think you hit on quite a few interesting facts/ideas. Numerous civilizations, some relatively advanced, have come and gone over the past 10,000 years. If the attached chart is reasonably accurate, modern man (Homo sapiens) has been around for at least 100,000 and possibly 500,000 years. Considering how far man has advanced in just the past 10,000 years, it would appear that there has been ample time for multiple advanced societies to rise and fall. Hence the opportunity for multiple Atlantises with remnants wiped away by time and the occasional meteorite.

As to your plague comment: I recently read that archeologists excavating graves from the Roman period came up with an interesting discovery. They were able to extract DNA from 19 sixth-century skeletal remains indicating that they had succumbed to "the plague". So, the Black Death of the 14th wasn't an isolated event. In fact, it may have been a major factor in the fall of the Roman Empire since a weakened population couldn't hold off the invading Huns.

Re: What if?
 

Good point ... I just wonder if Attila might have been a Saints fan. :bng:

Re: What if?
 

[quote=dam1953;510487]
If a herd of velociraptors and tyrannosaurus rexs were found to exist just outside of Detroit do ya think man would let them roam freely?

Probably not. We'd kill them I'm sure. What we OUGHT to do in such a case is relocate them...to D.C.

Re: What if?
 

[quote=TheOak;510504]Dude I think I obliterated your post. My apologies. I had the above clever comment and managed to push the wrong button. I should run for President...