Posted on 01/12/2016 7:13:53 PM PST by Up Yours Marxists
Humans may evolve bizarre features such as webbed feet and eyes like cats in response to changing environments, a scientist claims today.
Experts calculated how our physical appearance could change under a number of scenarios, including a 'water world' if melting ice caps cause rising sea levels.
They also considered what would happen in a second ice age which could be triggered by an asteroid strike, and if humans colonised other planets.
Dr Matthew Skinner, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Kent, examined the three scenarios and worked with artist Quentin Devine to help visualise how humans could look in the future.
Dr Skinner said some changes - such as webbed feet and hands becoming widespread - could take place very quickly as some humans already have a genetic mutation that produces webbing.
Other changes to allow humans to live in extreme conditions might only take place over hundreds of generations of natural selection, or require genetic engineering.
He said: 'We could genetically engineer ourselves if important enough to survive. Some of these things we might try to develop as a necessity rather than occurring over time naturally. Others could occur over tens of thousands of years.'
To adapt to a 'water world', Dr Skinner expects humans would develop webbed hands and eyes like those of cats to help us see in the poor lighting conditions underwater.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Webbed feet, cat's eyes and gills: How humans could evolve to have to deal with a 'water world' due to global warming or a second ice age
The most sincere and esteemed of British news outlets are so educational and enlightening.
[Familyop musters a deadpan expression]
But Al Gore said Global Warming would kill us all in 10 years maybe. And that was 10 years ago. We don't have tens of thousands of years. The seas will rise long before we get webbed feet. /s
This “science” brought to you courtesy of WaterWorld.
AGW meets exactly zero criteria for a Scientific Theory.
The “warmers” are pushing hard. Al Gore’s predictions are bombing, and the Democrats are going to lose their place in the Sun this year, so their BS is coming fast, and furious now.
Real humans modify their environment.
Such drastic structural changes would necessarily take place over generations of time. The only way this process could be sped up would be via capricous calamity, such as a dirty bomb, or if certain deliberate alterations to the body became fashionable and compulsive.
As my dear, departed Uncle Roy used to say, “If a bullfrog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his fanny when he hopped!”
And that, my fellow Freepers, makes more sense than all of these ‘scientific’ prognostications about possible events 50 or 100 years from now.
I’m hoping this prediction comes true. Always had the hots for redhead mermaids ever since I was a wee little tike.
Clearly they're ratcheting it up because they're losing...
Dr. Skinner has been watching a certain bad movie way too much.
Well, yes. I mean, why evolve wheels when you can buy them? No, if we are to be subject to natural selection, we will evolve those characteristics advantageous for breeding. I have a couple of improvements in mind...
[[Webbed Feet, Cat’s Eyes and Gills: How Humans Could Evolve [trunc](Global Warming)]]
Sounds to me like those pushing this nonsense are DEVOLVING into dumb as rocks troglodytes
I got to say it this sounds like a pretend scenario in a D@D like roleplaying game played by 12 and 13 year olds...
pretty unlikely, modern humans have handled much bigger changes without much modification.
Interesting, but based on a silly scenario.
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A ‘scientist’ said it, so it must be true.
/s
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