Posted on 05/08/2006 1:17:07 PM PDT by mlc9852
Human interaction with animals could be causing evolution to go into reverse, says a report by the Royal Society, Britain's science academy.
A study of finches on the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific finches are the same birds that were said to have inspired Charles Darwin's groundbreaking work on evolution - has shown that some could be losing their distinctive beaks in response to living near humans.
Finches on the islands have developed different sizes of beak - but when people live in close proximity to the birds, their beaks revert to an intermediate size, the report says.
Andrew Hendry, a professor at McGill University in Montreal who led the study, told the Independent newspaper that the evolutionary split within the species was being reversed.
(Excerpt) Read more at english.aljazeera.net ...
Not that I didn't trust the story. I figured they had probably pulled the story from elsewhere anyhow, as they most likely don't have the means to do the research... or the credibility to print their findings if they did.
Altruism?
Ping.
img src=http://www.shorefire.com/artists/devo/images/devo2_cover.jpg height=300 width=300>
Did someone call?
Whip it. Whip it good!
What would an example of "reverse evolution" be?
Here's the Scientists' site explaining, minus the al Jazeera hype/interpretation:
http://www.biology.mcgill.ca/faculty/hendry/finch.html
Okay. Sounds good to me.
You go first. ;)
Micro-evolution, though. Change within a species or type that leaves that species the same cannot be reasonably extrapolated to prove that the species could change to a different type. Otherwise we would be able to observe Macro-evolution.
Besides, the moths are a poor example of micro-evolution anyways, just survivability of certain inherent camouflage abilities. The parent moths have the genetic ability to give birth to both black and white speckled moths. To say that this is micro-evolution is to say that blonde hair and blue eyes in Germany during the reign of the Third Reich is proof of micro-evolution because it was beneficial to survivability.
Yeah, right.
Bush's fault.
With BUSH not securing the borders these so-called "birds" with smaller beaks will be crossing the RIO GRANDE in no time ready to eat the bread crumbs that American birds will not eat...
Total sarcasm...
This was a fake study. The moths were pinned on the trees for the photos taken and did NOT rest on either light or dark areas per se. Just another fake evolution theory that was totally rigged, and this is a fact you can check if you want to. Most evos know it was fake by now and like to sweep it under the rug, it is embarassing for them to mention it.
But I wanted an actual example of that happening if you know of any.
No, since it is a phenomenon that the theory of evolution does not predict happening.
LOL!
Does the GOP count?
Which is NOT happening here.
The environment is changing, with the addition of human-introduced food sources. The specialization of the birds toward different food sources is not so important anymore, thus the traits which HAD been selected for no longer are causing the divergence of the two beak types. This was a single species to begin with; it hadn't diverged as yet into two distinct species.
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