David Attenborough warns that humans have stopped evolving

Britain's most popular naturalist has warned in an interview that humans have become the first species to effectively halt the influence of natural selection. He also says, however, that it's not the end of the world, thanks to modern technology. "I think that we've stopped evolving. Because if natural selection, as proposed …

[AndrueC]

So we're moving from a primarily Darwinian evolutionary model to one that's more Lamarckian - with us in control. Well that could be either very good or very bad.

We really could do with a 'Careful now' icon.

[Anonymous Coward]

"with us in control"

...seen the news recently?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "with us in control"

Frankly a visit to an average local is depressing enough on that score.

[Wzrd1]

Apparently, Sir David Attenborough failed to fully read up on evolution. It never was, nor ever was proposed as a purely linear process, with incremental changes in any species.

There would be no observable changes in an evolutionary sense in any species that would be identifiable in the time since evolution was first thought of.

That said, we have altered our own course, largely due to sanitation, modern medicine and significantly improved living conditions, as our current longevity and caesarian birth rate increases can attest to.

[Martin Budden]

I reckon this Dave Attic-thingy bloke is spot on. Someone should give him a knighthood, or at the very least a telly show.

[Jim 59]

Statement from the Department of the Very Obviouis

This is not a shock statement from Attenborough. Put people in hospital instead of leaving them to snuff it, and you have interfered with evolution, obviously. Fortunately the NHS is doing an excellent job of snuffing out the old and weak, so with their help it will be survival of the fittest again. And if you are not weak you soon will be when you haven't has a drink of water for 7 days.

[Grave]

Re: Statement from the Department of the Very Obviouis

"survival of the fittest"

thats not correct and taken quite out of context, let me quote about evolution:

1) more offspring are produced than can possibly survive

2) traits vary among individuals, leading to different rates of survival and reproduction

3) trait differences are heritable

Thus, when members of a population die they are replaced by the progeny of parents that were better adapted to survive and reproduce in the environment in which natural selection took place. This process creates and preserves traits that are seemingly fitted for the functional roles they perform. Natural selection is the only known cause of adaptation, but not the only known cause of evolution. Other, nonadaptive causes of evolution include mutation and genetic drift.

environment part is really important, i can imagine a number of environments where these "fittest" (commonly used as in "physically" fit) individuals might be actually at a disadvantage and they would not survive.

[NomNomNom]

There's no selective pressure for better eyesight and hearing anymore. People with degraded senses can get them augmented with technology. So over generations our bodies will biologically degrade and we'll become dependent on technology.

Until a point where technology can actually engineer our bodies in the first place. But through the period of degeneration if we suddenly lose technology, eg mass world war, we might face extinction.

[ecofeco]

Stopped evolving?

Nothing that the 4 Horsemen won't eventually fix one way or another... as they always do.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if I entirely agree with him.

Although a lot of our evolutionary pressures have vanished by shaping our environment to suit our current evolutionary preferences, we do have other artificial pressures. Stress, a preference for gregariousness within cities, the kinds of thought processes required for a modern life often lived in the office. Those that can better fit into that environment are likely to prosper.

However, I take his point that since our environment allows all to breed regardless of their "fitness" so-to-speak means that progress is likely to slow or stop.

The other, probably unspoken, implication of his piece is that because of the advances of medical science, those with genetic issues are "treated", thus perpetuating the genetic trait in a way that wouldn't happen in days gone by. That might be great for the individual, but not so for the race.

[Anonymous Coward]

@skelband

Relative fertility still applies to people with treatable genetic disorders. In the developed world effective fertility is quite low - at or even below replacement. So long as people with better fitness have more than the average number of children, evolution continues.

The problem is that Nature is blind. If a single parent in a sink housing estate has more children than average, her genetic makeup is fitter. Attenborough may not like the idea that evolution might favour physically robust, promiscuous people of only average IQ, but if that's the way the cards are stacked, it's still evolution.

Tennyson understood this in the 19th century and wrote of the fossil record:

From scared cliff or quarried stone

She cries, 'a thousand types are gone

I care for nothing, no not one'

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: @skelband

Idiocracy explained that model quite well.

[Thorne]

Re: @skelband

"that evolution might favour physically robust, promiscuous people of only average IQ, but if that's the way the cards are stacked, it's still evolution."

Average IQ??? Have you seen the breeders?

Here's a joke to explain the situation to you

Shazza is down at the dole office........

Dole Officer: "And how many children do you have?"

Shazza: "Ten"

Dole Officer "And what are their names?"

Shazza:"Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne and Wayne,"

Dole Officer: "Isn't that confusing?"

Shazza: "Na it's great. When it's tea time, I just yell 'Wayne yours dinner is ready' and they all come and when I get sick of them I yell 'Wayne, get ta bed' and they all go to bed."

Dole Officer: "But what if you want to call just one of them?"

Shazza: "That's easy. I just use their surname........"

[BongoJoe]

Re: @skelband

For a very obvious reason; I shouldn't tell that joke to the professional semi-permanent pregant doleite in the next cottage further down the lane...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: @skelband

Precisely, I am pretty uncomfortable with the "sink estate dead end" argument, many people in earlier years grew up in poverty in places like the East End of London and elsewhere, it didn't stop them becoming respected members of society.

Talk to any Psychologist and all of the arguments about how we develop break down into nature vs nurture, genetics vs upbringing and environment, in there own way the people he is deriding are surviving well in their own environment, gaming the system and in a breakdown of governmental control they would be far better equipped to defend themselves and survive than an academic.

I remember a friend who had a degree in maths from a prestigious university who worked for a spell in a factory, he admitted to me that the "uneducated" guys he worked with were able to work out the return from extra overtime in their heads far quicker than he was able, and correctly to the penny, what many educated people think of as intelligence is much more down to knowing the conventions and having the opportunity to study a particular area, I don't believe for a minute we have a human "sub species" living on Council estates.

[Shades]

Have You Seen The Breeders?

Thorne wrote:

"Have you seen the breeders?"

Funnily enough, yes... The Jeremy Kyle Show is on the telly as I type this! :D

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: @skelband

Aargh- just noticed the typo. Android autocorrect changed 'scarped cliff' to 'scared cliff'. Google's AI can't cope with geology.

[jukejoint]

Re: @skelband

you must have a different version:

"I care for nothing, all shall go" in mine ...

thanks for the Tennyson!

[jdv]

> Those that can better fit into that environment are likely to prosper.

The question is whether being likely to prosper is the same as having a higher chance of breeding. My hypothesis is that it isn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

All true of course: ability and opportunity to breed is of course the overriding concern.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what annoys me about all the people who object to genetic medicine based on such arguments as "we are messing with nature". We messed with nature when we introduced the medical breakthroughs which allowed people with genetic disorders to grow old enough to breed. We have allowed traits to be passed to the next generation which normally would not as the carrier would normally die before sexual maturity. We therefore need to either eliminate the condition through genetic medicine, or stop treating the people in the first place and letting them die. I (and I would hope most other right thinking people) would opt for the first option.

[Intractable Potsherd]

@AC 00:49

"This is what annoys me about all the people who object to genetic medicine based on such arguments as "we are messing with nature". We messed with nature when we introduced the medical breakthroughs which allowed people with genetic disorders to grow old enough to breed."

It goes back further than that - we "messed with nature" as soon as we learned how to use fire and cook food. It is what H. sapiens does very well, this "messing with nature. In fact, you could say it is our nature to mess with with nature.

I spend a lot of time with a different hat on asking people what they mean when they talk about nature/natural. Many of them on the eco-nutter side manage to show that they consider humans to be "unnatural" ...

[Robert Helpmann??]

Agreement

@skelband: Although a lot of our evolutionary pressures have vanished by shaping our environment to suit our current evolutionary preferences, we do have other artificial pressures.

Precisely! Evolutionary pressures still exist. While we have more and more influence on our environment over time, every species influences its environment and is in turn influenced by the changes it introduces. The difference in our current situation and that of the past is a matter of degree, not kind. I would argue that while the effects are dramatic, only when we directly and consciously manipulate genetic makeup do we circumvent evolutionary pressures (and perhaps not even then).

Following this argument further, we have a relatively short history of genetically engineered organisms. In as much as we do not release these organisms into the wild, we might argue that their evolution is at an end.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Naturalist! = evolutionary biologist

No he makes the correct point that "number of offspring surviving to breeding age" is now totally disconnected with any genetically inherited characteristics.

If accidents are the major cause of death of young people it's hard to see the selection pressure - unless there is a gene for not stepping in front of a bus,

[auburnman]

Re: Naturalist! = evolutionary biologist

"If accidents are the major cause of death of young people it's hard to see the selection pressure - unless there is a gene for not stepping in front of a bus,"

Accidents are definitely a selection pressure when they are avoidable, but society tries to sidestep that too.

Surely there are genes that dictate your natural level of situational awareness; in days gone by the vast majority of folk who frequently did something dumb like crossing the road without looking or cutting a branch while sitting on it would have removed themselves from the gene pool. Nowadays with our collective knowledge of medicine and physiotherapy, they survive and re-enter society, possibly to pass on genes that Nature alone would have gotten rid of.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Naturalist! = evolutionary biologist

Well, as I tried to explain, the number of offspring surviving to breeding age is not as significant as how many offspring they have in turn.

If the Daily Mail sink estate mother with 7 kids by different fathers (I believe there are really not that many, but it isn't important for the argument) brings those children up to be drug addicts, they may survive to breeding age but that does not mean that they in turn will have more, or as many, children as average. It may be a breeding pattern which, on evolutionary timescales, tends to die out. As the Darwin Awards points out, both death and infertility have the same effect on reproductive fitness.

There is another factor. If educated, well off people have fewer offspring but they are, owing to lack of social mobility, drawn from a steadily narrowing gene pool, there is a selection pressure at work here too. Evolution can occur within subgroups of populations. H G Wells, with his Eloi and Morlocks, was clearly aware of this. Evolutionary change can occur within isolated subgroups (Darwin's finches, even if some of his examples turned out to be incorrect). If those subgroups deliberately choose to isolate themselves, this doesn't mean it is not evolution.

[Dazed and Confused]

Re: Naturalist! = evolutionary biologist

Even I know Attenborough is wrong, just from reading ...

The human race evolves very slowly in human timescales ...

I suspect that he's both right and wrong.

The human race will probably be evolving in terms of resistance to certain infections. A "good" flu pandemic is likely to kill off staggering numbers of people despite the best efforts of the drugs industry. So the post pandemic population is likely to have a higher natural immunity to that strain of flu. So to that extent he's wrong.

But we also help all sorts of people to procreate that couldn't do it naturally. IVF is allowing unsuccessful genetic pairings to have offspring. So this is stopping evolution from removing these people from the gene pool.

As to survival of the fittest, well we might not like the results of "fittest to reproduce" in a so called advanced civilisation. Outwardly successful people tend to have fewer children, so are choosing to not be genetically successful, in terms of having large numbers of offspring and so pass their genes on as much as possible. While typically those who've been less successful in the modern world are much more likely to have more kids and so are more genetically successful.

As they say, the future's bright, the future's orange.

We'll evolve into a species with a natural predisposition to spray tan.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Naturalist! = evolutionary biologist

And again, what evidence have you that IQ tests test for any desirable outcome, in terms of the long term survival of our species?

The tests needed to decide whether people should be allowed to have children could be rather different. A world full of over-competitive people good at abstract reasoning might result in ever more vicious wars to control resources, ideological conflicts, and the use of sterilisation to ensure the success of one political/social group over another.

169, since you ask. And I know that it is only useful for a rather narrow range of jobs. I would, for instance, be a crappy farmer, and farmers are far more likely to ensure human survival than are software engineers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "IQ"

It seems it's necessary to point out (again) that IQ is a measure that is normalised to the average. An IQ of 100 is always the average intelligence of the population at the time.

I speculate that this means that a person with an IQ of 100 today is significantly less intelligent than someone with IQ 100 of a few decades ago. The average intelligence is declining, because we are making it easier and easier for people to survive and reproduce, many of whom would not be capable or fit to do so in a natural environment.

That is not even mentioning the fact that most implementations of a welfare state (e.g. UK) actually incentivise people to indiscriminately produce more mouths to feed.

[Uffish]

Re: IQ tests

@ Def. Thanks for the laugh.

[Lamont Cranston]

Re: the future's bright, the future's orange

Did everyone view Idiocracy as a documentary, rather than a piece of entertainment (or have I made the similar mistake of taking this forum far too seriously)?

[dogged]

Re: the future's bright, the future's orange

@Lamont -

This is what happens you get a self-selected group of society's natural victims in one place bemoaning their lot when not reading their support scripts to people they despise for living much richer and more full lives than they do. It becomes semi-fascistic. I and my peer-group of second-class degrees and unnatural obsessions with Dr Who assistants should be the only ones allowed to breed! although usually put less honestly in terms of (highly gameable) IQ tests and proficiency with something nobody else in universe gives a shit about, such as Ruby on Rails.

What makes it particularly hilarious is their "educated" opinions. There was a post recently about Hyper-V from some TechEd conference down under. The sheer amount of retarded commentry on it served to finally disabuse me of the notion that the Reg's commentards are of any benefit to anyone at all and point firmly to a state where they should absolutely not be allowed to breed.

Luckily, most never will.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: the future's bright, the future's orange - @dogged

Too late, in my case. I have grandchildren...

Oh, and stuff you, you and your delusions of your own superiority. It's quite funny that you start by complaining about other people, and then we find in the last paragraph that you behave exactly like the group you're complaining about.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Naturalist! = evolutionary biologist

"Outwardly successful people tend to have fewer children, so are choosing to not be genetically successful, in terms of having large numbers of offspring and so pass their genes on as much as possible"

Is that actually the case?

It may be, but "successful" in human terms is not necessarily the same as "successful" in evolutionary terms. You may also be assuming that "successful" is a desirable trait - when, as it usually involves consuming far more energy and occupying far more space than the average person, it may be very undesirable in terms of the long term survival of genus homo.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Naturalist! = evolutionary biologist

I suspect Sir David knows more about evolution than you do "just from reading Stephen Jay Gould and Scientific American". Probably a lot more.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Naturalist! = evolutionary biologist

You may be right, but I have never seen anything published by him that suggests that this is the case.

My point was that anyone who works through Jay Gould's explanations of how selection actually works and what evolution means, will see that Attenborough is repeating some of the fallacies that Gould complains of. If expert evolutionary biologist with extensive peer reviewed publication history A says one thing and explains with examples the thinking behind it, and naturalist B makes unsupported comments which appear to disregard A, then I'm surely entitled to think that A knows more than B

[Shagbag]

Who TF is David Attenborough?

Sure, he's the guy on the telly that my parents used to watch, but when did he make the jump from media luvvie to monopolist of the truth? Senile twat.

[Gene Cash]

Re: Who TF is David Attenborough?

He's the guy that Adam Savage imitates when he wants to piss off Jamie Hyneman....

[thenim]

Re: Who TF is David Attenborough?

You sir, are an ignoramus of epic proportions, please do humanity a favour and don't procreate.

[doorknobus]

Re: Who TF is David Attenborough?

>Who TF is David Attenborough?

>Sure, he's the guy on the telly that my parents used to watch, but when did he make the jump from media

>luvvie to monopolist of the truth? Senile twat.

Juvenile twat. Baby twat. Twatlette.

(wtf are you?)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Who TF is David Attenborough?

Someone who is more respected and loved than you ever will be in your whole life.

[Jacksonville]

Re: Who TF is David Attenborough?

Wow, just wow.

Sir David Frederick Attenborough, BA(CANTAB) MSC OM CH CVO CBE FRS FZS FSA

OM - Order of Merit

CH - Order of the Companions of Honour

CVO - Royal Victorian Order

CBE - Order of the British Empire

FRS - Fellow of the Royal Society

FZS - Fellow of the Zoological Society

FSA - Fellow of the Society of Antiquities

As controller of BBC2, commissioned The Old Grey Whistle Test, Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Money Programme, America and The Ascent of Man.

Written and presented countless award winning natural history programmes.

Reknowned as "the great communicator, the peerless educator" and "the greatest broadcaster of our time."

And just what exactly have you acheived to feel qualified to call this man a Senile twat? MCSE? Foundation ITIL?

I despair.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Who TF is David Attenborough?

"Sure, he's the guy on the telly that my parents used to watch, but when did he make the jump from media luvvie to monopolist of the truth? Senile twat."

Now that is a beautifully condensed, practically perfect example of why the human race never learns from experience. For a start, Sir David is not a "media luvvie": he has a science degree, studied for a postgraduate degree in anthropology (unfinished), and has spent the last 45 years or so studying wildlife. Only a very thoughtless person would believe that he didn't learn a very great deal about biology and related topics in that time. (By the way, Wikipedia notes that "[b]y January 2013 Attenborough had collected 31 honorary degrees from British universities, more than any other person").

"Senile twat". That charming epithet lies at the root of the problem. Yes, Sir David is old: 87 and counting. But he is very obviously NOT senile, or suffering from the slightest mental diminution. Yet you apparently believe that just because he is very old, and admired by your parents, he is necessarily a fool and his opinions worthless.

Every generation - arrogant young men in particular - finds reasons for looking down with contempt on all previous generations. How else could they convince themselves of that very important belief: that they are the brightest, most creative, and best people who have ever lived? (Which is intuitively obvious to them).

As usual, the whole issue was pithily summed up by George Orwell: "Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it". But of course Orwell would be 110 if he were still alive, so I shudder to think what your opinion of him must be.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Who TF is David Attenborough?

All of this may be true, but I missed the PhD in an evolution-related subject, that would actually qualify him to make his statements.

Being eminent is not a guarantee of being right. And as for your Orwell quote, it doesn't alter the single most important fact about science; that subsequent generations build on the knowledge of their forebears, and so young scientists DO know more than old but distinguished scientists who haven't kept up in their field. That is why elderly scientists tend to stick to good works and administration rather than pontification.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Who TF is David Attenborough?

"I missed the PhD in an evolution-related subject, that would actually qualify him to make his statements".

It's funny how one of the oldest of logical fallacies - the appeal to authority - has become institutionalized in the worship of qualifications. You don't need a PhD, a degree, or even a GCSE to understand the salient principles of evolution. All you need is reasonable intelligence, some books, and commitment. By the same token, plenty of PhDs and professors say things that are demonstrably wrong.

May I point out that Charles Darwin didn't have a PhD in an evolution-related subject? Yet without his books, there would be no such subject as evolution - let alone PhDs in it. Let's have a quick look at Wikipedia to refresh our memory. First, we learn that Darwin was a naturalist (just like Attenborough); indeed it was his extensive observations of living creatures in the course of his travels that gave him the material for his theory of evolution.

"Darwin's early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical education at the University of Edinburgh; instead, he helped to investigate marine invertebrates."

Ho hum. So Darwin, just like Attenborough, was a naturalist. Just like Attenborough, he started out studying a biology-like subject (medicine) but neglected it because he found it far more interesting to study actual wildlife. And then he thought up the theory of evolution, which somehow caught on despite his lack of a PhD in it.

One may also note that neither Newton nor Einstein had a PhD in physics. And so on.

[cortland]

Re: Who TF is David Attenborough?

I'd nominate Tom Welsh for winner, but I'm biased; I've been working as an electrical engineer some 30 years even though I ran off to the Army at 17, technically a High School dropout, never studied engineering and never got a degree.

And while I can't legally teach for pay at a publicly run school anywhere in the Credentialed States of America without one, my last employer had no problem with my teaching something of electromagnetic compatibility to engineers who _had_ earned degrees -- except they said one question I wanted them to answer was too difficult. It required using arithmetic.

Off-tangent and back on topic, what is the rising number of children with Autism and food allergies doing to us if it is not evolution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Who TF is David Attenborough?

"...subsequent generations build on the knowledge of their forebears, and so young scientists DO know more than old but distinguished scientists who haven't kept up in their field".

By that logic, each new generation of scientists know more, as individuals, than anyone who lived before them. In a few more generations we may have a dangerous epidemic of bursting crania, as the sheer amount of knowledge becomes to great for their skulls to hold.

Actually, of course, the trend is for individual scientists to know more about less. Which may not be a good thing at all, as eventually it would lead to people who know everything about nothing.

As a matter of interest, when was the last time a scientist came up with a breakthrough on the order of Darwin's theory of evolution, Babbage's computing engines, Maxwell's work on electromagnetic radiation, Einstein's relativity, the Big Bang theory, or Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's ideas about panspermia?

[Imsimil Berati-Lahn]

Re: Who TF is David Attenborough? @Shagbag

Spectacular piece of trollery there, old chap.

Hats off to you, indeed.

Not that I wish to encourage such stuff, but some people really should learn to

NOT FEED THE TROLL!

I'd venture there's enough troll food here to sustain your average Ringlefinch for about a year.

[Anonymous Coward]

Overpopulation is a horrendous threat - not only to the environment but to the overall human condition, as conflicts are inevitable as people fight for a slice of what they feel they deserve. This is one of the greatest problems of financial social inequality: as the few hoard the most, the rest of the population fights even harder for the balance. As the few grow even more materially wealthy the rest of us simply create more wars over what is left. There is historical evidence of this.

If this is true, then socially we are doomed to an eternal struggle of violence as the meritocracy rewards itself then collapses as the masses revolt, in an never-ending cycle of general social unhappiness.

Regardless of the aforementioned issue, the human population on this planet will continue growing as the devout, and their promoters, forward their belief of planetary Manifest Destiny - the idea that mankind is destined to rule over the entire planet. With that belief comes a fundamental construct that mankind, therefore, can do no inherent 'wrong' to the planet - if we are meant to rule, then we can do as we see fit and the planet will simply adapt and persevere.

With birth control going against the beliefs of several major religions, as 'It was meant to be!' is applied to pregnancy and "Life is sacred!" even BEFORE that life is made by the meeting of the egg and sperm, when we join all of those issues, plus more, together it equals...average human stupidity.

[Anonymous Coward]

Overpopulation is a horrendous threat

Yet we can still all fit on the isle of Wight :o

[Synonymous Howard]

Re: Overpopulation is a horrendous threat

bagsy a deckchair on shanklin beach.

What do you mean I have to stand up? And how long is that queue for the loo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Overpopulation is a horrendous threat

You can bugger off if you are using the one at my folks place, I have first dibs on that one

[Adrian Midgley 1]

Isle of Won't now?

I think we have overflowed Zanzibar now. As noted in the eponymous book.

[doorknobus]

Yep.

But I remember reading a Stephen Jay Gould book that pointed out, eloquently, that humans, rather than being at the pinnacle of the evolutionary tree, are an aberrant side-branch, which might survive for a while, but probably won't.

Dinosaurs dominant: 150 million years.

Cockroaches doing well: 200 million years and counting.

Homo sapiens: 1-2 million years, and struggling (mostly to kill each other or dismantle their habitats).

I've never seen a cockroach smile, but I'd love to be a [whatever]-on-the-wall a few millennia hence...

C1: Remember those human thingies?

C2: Yeah. Wierd things. Prattled about a bit for a while then self-destructed, poor bast***s.

C1: Bet they'd have made good pets, though.

C2: Dunno. Bit stupid, really.

[Mephistro]

(@ Doorknobus)

"Dinosaurs dominant: 150 million years."

I've an issue -sort of- with this particular meme. Dinosaurs weren't a single species, but a clade that included many thousands of different species, many of which probably lasted less than one million years. Comparing that to the time a single species -ours- survives is a big fallacy. Ditto about the cockroaches, who are a genre of insects comprising lots and lots of different, genetically incompatible species.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: (@ Doorknobus)

Dinosaurs weren't, in fact, anything like a homogeneous group. As XKCD recently pointed out, there is a bigger time gap (and possibly a bigger genetic gap) between *stegosaurus and *tyrannosaurus, than between *tyrannosaurus and a modern bird.

Homo currently has a short but explosive history, and has managed almost to eliminate all the closest relatives. The question is whether descendants of the hominoids will be around in a million years time, while the descendants of species of bipedal dinosaurs are currently eating the berries of a plant near my window.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: Cockroaches doing well

Not near my can of Raid they're not !

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong

"...humans, rather than being at the pinnacle of the evolutionary tree, are an aberrant side-branch..."

Those words show that you haven't really grasped what evolution by natural selection is about. There is no tree. There is no pinnacle. There are environments, and there are organisms that survive and multiply better or worse in various environments.

Back in the 19th century, many fairly intelligent and well educated people had the same misconception. They got the idea that evolution was just a clever method of creating us - wonderful, clever, dominant, supreme us - without actually CREATING us (as Genesis was out of fashion). But they still hung on to the wholly wrong idea that we are somehow special because we have - TaDa! - ***intelligence***. Oh, and the ***moral faculty***. No other animals had any trace of those. So clearly all of evolution was simply a way for "the universe to become conscious", or some pretentious mystical twaddle of the sort.

Today, of course, we all know that many animals are intelligent; some are more intelligent than the stupidest humans. We also understand that many animals have a sense of fairness, and that human ideas of morality most likely arise from the primate instincts that allowed our ancestors to prosper in tribal groups. So there is nothing unique about us. True, we are (as far as we know) the most intelligent species. But no one has demonstrated that our particular form of intelligence is even a survival trait. It has been for a vanishingly short period of geological time. In a century or two, or a millennium or two? Who knows.

[Anonymous Coward]

No brakes

"...the human population on this planet will continue growing as the devout, and their promoters, forward their belief of planetary Manifest Destiny..."

I'm afraid it's much worse than that. And you can't blame it exclusively on the religious, either. Virtually all nations are led either by a small bunch of ruthless thugs who don't care about anything except their prosperity (and that of the family and clique); or by "democratic" governments that would never think of doing anything calculated to upset most of the voters. Or both, come to think of it.

So there is nothing to stand in the way of the near-universal human urge to procreate. If only we could hold the average family down to 2.0, all might be well. But we can't. Anyone who wishes to have 17 children is free to do so, and no one can stop them. It would be an infringement of their human rights, to start with!

In the short, medium, and long term (if there is a long term) those who have the decency to limit their families will simply be making sure their genes disappear from the gene pool, vastly outbred by those who don't.

Revd. Malthus, we owe you an apology.

[MacGyver]

How many is too many?

I agree. For those people that don't agree, how many is too many?

We are at 7 billion right now, and left unchecked will be at 10 sooner than later. I would ask what magic number they think is too many, and what they think we should do about it once we hit "their" magic number?

Overpopulation is a real problem, either right now or soon, but we all need to recognize it while we still can, while we still have time to slow it down, or level off. I find the fact that we are just ignoring our impending doom frightening.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How many is too many?

"I would ask what magic number they think is too many, and what they think we should do about it once we hit "their" magic number?"

I should think the answer to that is: any number that doesn't come along until later, when it'll be someone else's decision. And their problem figuring out a way of doing anything about it.

As I've said before, we are in a curiously helpless position. I'm somehow reminded of the feeling of losing all traction in a car while cornering. As the car drifts sideways towards a drop-off into a field 30 feet below, one marvels at the fact that death can turn up so unexpectedly, and that one can be so powerless to do anything about it.

You and I know what the danger is, and we can even offer some suggestions as to the only possible ways of escape. But can we persuade the people who control the world, and the people who control the size of the next generation, to take action? Not bleeding likely.

[SuccessCase]

Er, actually most animals are on a plateau with regard to evolution driven by natural selection. It is not a process which is happening all the time. Evolution tends to occur in fits and starts when there is great population pressure or competition for scarce resources. We, Homo Sapiens, have been on an evolutionary plateau for over 8,000 years. This report makes it sound like David Attenbrorough is suggesting we have recently stopped evolving and this is something only just realised realised, which is not the case (and I'm sure he is aware). Though in relative terms, measured against when life first emerged, I guess you could say 8,000 years is recent.

[doorknobus]

>evolution driven by natural selection... is not a process which is happening all the time.

Actually, it isn't a process at all. It's a retrospective abstraction.

The process (which happens much of the time) is random genetic damage, aka mutation.

Later, we look back and call the long-term change 'evolution'.

(Maths people and 'hard' scientists get this. 'Soft' scientists / general 'ologists' often get confused at the basic linguistic conceptual stage).

[Anonymous Coward]

@ doorknobus

"Actually, it isn't a process at all. It's a retrospective abstraction."

Thanks - very helpful. I'm going to write that down. As a non-scientist, I find it a very powerful and interesting insight.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

We have evolved a bit in the last 8000 years. A lot of us can now drink milk as adults and about half of us can metabolize alcohol and gluten.

Our bodies have evolved since we started doing farming, but not much since we started doing takeaway

[Schultz]

Evolutionary Plateau? Surely not.

An evolutionary plateau is reached, when the creature is well-adapted to its current environment. Historically, the earth environment changed quite slowly, with a few notable exceptions that were followed by mass-extinction. Right now, we humans modify the environment quite drastically (look up the anthropocene), so most creatures are far from their plateau. I, for one, am badly adapted to sitting in front of this computer and my typing abilities could use some evolution as well.

[JP19]

"David Attenbrorough is suggesting we have recently stopped evolving and this is something only just realised realised, which is not the case"

Average life expectancy in this country has more than doubled in the last 100 years. The mechanism of natural selection and the evolution that follows has substantially changed very recently.

Evolution has not stopped, it might be speeding up. What we are evolving into has certainly changed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Largely irrelevant

"Average life expectancy in this country has more than doubled in the last 100 years."

Except inasmuch as that reflects more people reaching the age at which they have children, that has nothing to do with evolution. Once your children are born, you are out of the game. (Nowadays, very few children are allowed to die of neglect even if their parents abandon them at birth or soon after).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Largely irrelevant

Once your children are born, you have a lot of influence on how they develop and, indirectly, on how many offspring they have. There is an argument that the human race really got going when there were enough grandparents around for the efficient transmission of culture (before writing).

My father last weekend was telling his great grandson about the reality of WW2 versus the nonsense that is Star Wars. He may have an influence on the child that will have an effect on his eventual reproductive decisions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Largely irrelevant

"Once your children are born, you have a lot of influence on how they develop and, indirectly, on how many offspring they have."

Indeed, but I suspect in the opposite direction to the one we would wish. It seems to me that those parents (and grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.) who take most care of their offspring's education and upbringing are likely to have fewer grandchildren than average.

That means they will, sooner rather than later, breed their genes right out of the gene pool.

[Filippo]

Genetic engineering of humans will fix this very soon. Not soon on a personal scale, possibly not soon on a historical scale, but definitely soon on an evolutionary scale. Unless we all die first, of course.

[Synonymous Howard]

Looking around the local town it appears we are evolving in to the passengers of the BnL starliner Axiom.

[Anonymous Coward]

When does the "Boat of a Million Years" start boarding?

[Anonymous C0ward]

I was thinking the B ark.

[doorknobus]

>Genetic engineering of humans will fix this very soon. Not soon on a personal scale,

>possibly not soon on a historical scale, but definitely soon on an evolutionary scale.

>Unless we all die first, of course.

But, Shirley, that *is* the fix. (Dying).

[Anonymous Coward]

Natural Selection vs. Evolution

Given how wide an audience he has, its unfortunate that he doesn't make a clear distinction between natural selection and evolution.

I would agree that natural selection is no longer the driver of evolution.

At no time in human history have we had such diverse breeding, extensive crossing of genetic lines that have been separate for thousands of years. More and more people are free to choose (often know as falling in love with) a mate.

I saw a story on the news about a guy who was born with only one leg (gestation issues, not genetic). In other times, he would not have survived. He is an intelligent and charming person, married with 2 kids. His genes are not lost, and every additional gene line is another possibility.

There is a downside to all this choice; some of us choose not to breed.

[Horridbloke]

Re: Natural Selection vs. Evolution

"There is a downside to all this choice; some of us choose not to breed."

That's a self-limiting problem (if it's even a problem at all).

[doorknobus]

Re: Natural Selection vs. Evolution

>I would agree that natural selection is no longer the driver of evolution.

Yeah, right.

So stuff that we - a current product of natural selection - do isn't natural?

What is it then?

Are our brains not natural?

[rcorrect]

There is a downside to all this choice; some of us choose not to breed.

Simply click "Reader Comments" for a list of people who shouldn't breed, myself excluded, of coarse.

[Eddy Ito]

That's harsh

"myself excluded, of coarse."

Not to put too fine a point on it but you should clean that up a bit, it's a little rough around the edges.

[rcorrect]

Re: That's harsh

I wondered if someone would get the joke.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Choice

The problem is that the group of people who should not breed and those who choose not to are mutually exclusive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Choice

It also seems that the likelihood of having difficulty doing so due to medical complications is inversely proportional to the sentiment that the individuals should not do so.

[Ted Treen]

"of coarse"???

At El Reg, that's par for the course...

[Arachnoid]

we started being able to rear 95-99 per cent of our babies that are born

I guess he meant only in the overfed Western world and not the undernourished country's

[Charles Manning]

Re: we started being able to rear 95-99 per cent of our babies that are born

"I guess he meant only in the overfed Western world and not the undernourished country's"

Oh bollocks with the Western guilt self flagellation.

In the last 50 years the 3rd world survival rate has rocketed, as has the 3rd world's access to food. Both thanks to western input. Even throwing AIDS in the pot, Sub-Saharan Africa has longevity twice what it was just 40 years ago.

Sure there are still some pockets of malnutrition and disease, but these are caused by local corruption and wars - not the Demon White Man. They are a small fraction of what they were just a few years back.

Right now, obesity is far more of a problem world wide than famine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: we started being able to rear 95-99 per cent of our babies that are born

"Right now, obesity is far more of a problem world wide than famine."

The two are not opposites, as you might assume. Many chronically undernourished people become obese, even in prosperous countries, if they get too many calories from refined carbohydrates. See, for example, http://www.dietdoctor.com/chinese-people-heading-towards-diabetes?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=chinese-people-heading-towards-diabetes

Or read Gary Taubes' book "The Diet Delusion" (published in the USA as "Good Calories, Bad Calories") if you want to see the full scientific background. For a quick preview, see http://www.thedailybeast.com//content/newsweek/2012/05/06/why-the-campaign-to-stop-america-s-obesity-crisis-keeps-failing.html

[dorsetknob]

""BIG FAIL""

GOBSHITE from a would be Darwinist who is SO two faced.

Yup from the man that had a pacemaker fitted to extend his life

If he truly believed his line of crap he should not had a pacemaker fitted and then let Nature / fate take its inevitable course of action.

[John Brown (no body)]

@dorsetknob

Maybe you should pray for his soul? Or don't you god-botherers believe in what you preach when it comes to heretics?

[Don Jefe]

No you shitsock. Having a pacemaker installed is survival of the individual and has absolutely nothing to do with evolution.

It is no different than digging a snow cave to keep from freezing or building a raft from driftwood and palm fiber to escape a desert island.

[dogged]

Upvoted for "shitsock".

[Anonymous Coward]

But Attenborough is probably past the age of procreation, so the fitting of a pacemaker is irrelevant. On the other hand, through use of chemical hair colouring, natural blondes are becoming an endangered species - some may consider that to be global crisis ;-)

[jukejoint]

through use of chemical hair colouring, natural blondes are becoming an endangered species

either that, or a species being preserved as the natural blondes resort to its use to stay that way.

'Blindingly Blonde' and "Faaaaaaaabulous"!

[Don Jefe]

Evolutionary Imperative

I'm not sure about all this. Evolution does not have to constantly take place, there is no 'ultimate version'. Animals evolve as the situation dictates, if no evolution is required for survival/perpetuation of the species, no evolution occurs.

Things like this are all fine to pronounce; it's kind of like saying you know how many stars are in the sky. Other than sounding a bit loony, you can't be proven wrong. You'd have to alter the environment in a radical, permanent way, then observe if successive generations adap.....,,,,,,!!!!

Holy Condoleezza! Do you think David Attenborough might be a terrorist planning on destroying vast swaths of humanity in order to test his hypothesis? Has the plot gotten that far? He must be questioned. Spare the rod, spoil the species I always say. There is no such thing as a safe risk, none can be exempted.

[Neoc]

I agree with DA, but not for his stated reason.

I personally believe that human evolution stopped (for all intents and purposes) the day we became good enough a moulding the environment to fit us rather than the other way around?

In other words - now that we can effectively do away with most "problems", why would we need to evolve? If the environment is stable, so are those within it.

[dogged]

This would indicate that termites have also ceased to evolve, which does not appear to be the case.

[Anonymous Coward]

"In other words - now that we can effectively do away with most "problems", why would we need to evolve?"

Yes, human ingenuity has certainly abolished all "problems". Or, to put it more exactly, human ingenuity has made us just half-smart enough to solve a bunch of fairly obvious, immediate problems (some of which weren't really problems at all) at the expense of piling up some really huge, intractable, real problems.

Have you heard of Sevareid's Law? "The chief cause of problems is solutions". Probably the best indictment of human intelligence ever written down. You should meditate on it for a few weeks.

[JimmyPage]

Overpopulation

makes human life cheap.

Who would benefit from that ?

[Don Jefe]

Re: Overpopulation

Morticians & undertakers?

[Crisp]

Re: Overpopulation

Human life is already cheap.

Don't believe me? You can get a longer sentence for theft or destruction of property than for murder.

[Tom 38]

Re: Overpopulation

You can get a longer sentence for theft or destruction of property than for murder.

Bollocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Overpopulation

In this country, yes, bollocks. In other 'civilised' countries, not so much:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law#Enactment_by_states

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Overpopulation

"Overpopulation makes human life cheap. Who would benefit from that?"

Rulers and the rich (two largely overlapping groups). Rulers enjoy having more power over more people, and more money to spend on things that make them happy. The rich enjoy extracting rent in return for essentially nothing, and appreciate having more people from whom to extract it.

[Gerardo McFitzpatrick-O'Toole]

Oh but [d]evolution is continuing...

It's just that the incentives now mean that human beings are being selected for different things, such as lack of education.

[YARR]

Evolution? Devolution!

Our rate of evolution has slowed since we (i) avoided being prey and (ii) became top of the food chain without being locked into symbiotic evolution with our prey, (which maintains the fitness of other predators).

The slow accumulation of genetic mutations has always been counterbalanced by natural selection, so the ~99% of mutations that are a hindrance die out, allowing the ~1% that advance our species to survive. Our increasing ability to overcome our deficient mutations allows more of those mutations to persist in our gene pool, causing the fitness of our species to decline - i.e. we are devolving now rather than evolving.

If this situation persists we will discover in a few generations that most of the population are sterile and cannot reproduce without medical assistance. To reverse this situation either (i) natural selection must apply to our species and there will be a mass die off, (ii) we apply eugenics involuntarily, (iii) a subgroup of the species voluntarily practices eugenics and isolates itself from the rest of the species, or (iv) we apply GM technology to the majority of human reproduction (effectively ii but we all get to reproduce still). Pick your least worst choice from that list or face extinction.

[Thorne]

Re: Evolution? Devolution!

GM is where it will go. Evolution will continue but by human hands and not survival of the fittest.

It will just become part of the normal pregnancy cycle along with the usual tests and screenings.

A mother will come in for her prenatal tests which will include DNA of the child. Any potential faults will be corrected long before the baby is born. Where it will get interesting is while fixing, a few optional extra will get installed.

It's like getting the brakes fixed and getting a turbocharger installed at the same time....

[Don Jefe]

Re: Evolution? Devolution!

You may be right. My wife is a geneticist and we discuss this all the time. At what point is the altered Human no longer a Human?

Wife believes one of the earlier 'optional' modifications will be to prohibit females from being impregnated by 'inferior' males. Allowing them to "slum it" for fun but assuring that only 'superior' material will be present in any offspring. A lot of animals do this, but they usually just eat the inferior specimens, Humans probably wouldn't do that. It's a pretty relevant thing as genetic modification will likely never be available to the average person. Will the wealthy biologically separate themselves from normal Humans? The gene pool is guaranteed to shrink over time, where will they get new material?

One of the characteristics of Humans is that most any reproductively healthy male/female pair can produce offspring. If that is no longer the case are those with limited breeding options still Human?

[Vociferous]

Re: Evolution? Devolution!

There is no such point.

Organisms never cease to be anything they've historically been. A bird is still a dinosaur is still a reptile is still a tetrapod is still a vertebrate is still a chordate is still Life.

That's not to say you can not have new species of human, but that just mean they'll be another species of human. They'll never stop being human, just like we never stopped being monkeys.

[The Blacksmith]

Re: Evolution? Devolution!

Monkeys? Apes please, or a certain librarian will be after you!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Evolution? Devolution!

@ Don Jefe

We've had discussions along a similar line.

At some point in the near(is) future the current body of rich/powerful/elite will be able to make themselves effectively immortal. We're not a hundred years away from head transplants (for example). As soon as that's nailed then that generation of uber-rich are sorted, and baring any "Highlander" style final showdowns would be able to continue on virtually indefinately (brain issues etc aside). That's just one example using something that was discussed recently (i believe they are having partial success with head transplants on rats).

20-30 year old head trauma corpses will be the human equivalent of a high performance car with a d-class write off to car modifiers. A few more medical advances in other areas and the next generations Gates/Jobs will head their companies for centuries.

Imagine if you will our current "dear leader" Mr Cameron Sticking around and remaining in politics of some sort until his brain totally gives out after a few hundred years and a few new bodies.

[squigbobble]

Re: Evolution? Devolution!

"Wife believes one of the earlier 'optional' modifications will be to prohibit females from being impregnated by 'inferior' males."

There are cheaper ways to achieve this than DNA manipulation; condoms, the pill and the stereotypical american dad.

Also, if this was implemented widely then parents' (I'm assuming that this is an american dad's idea) selection criteria would cause a massive drop in the birth rate due to an overly strict implementation of 'superior', as all the 'superior' males will be either taken or gay.

[Frank Rysanek]

Re: Evolution? Devolution!

I don't think it will ever be possible to correct the DNA in a fetus that's already started developing (cells splitting). Once the cells start splitting, you can only compensate for genetic defects (some protein or hormone missing or some such) by supplementing the missing bit in some other way. Correct me if I'm wrong there - and please elaborate on technological details :-) "Make a virus that can cut and paste the DNA in every individual cell at a very specific place in a very specific way" - doesn't sound realistic, the virus would have to be too complicated (carry along too much tooling and data).

It would seem more realistic to me to engineer a "fertilised egg" (the single initial cell with a full set of chromosomes) with a desired genome, and let that start splitting/developing into a fetus. I'd almost suggest to have a few eggs fertilised in vitro in a semi-natural way, and then select one whose genome looks best - but that would imply a non-destructive reading of a genome of that initial single cell, which again doesn't seem technically likely/feasible. Maybe let the egg split once, separate the two cells, destroy one for DNA analysis and let the other one develop into a fetus (thus effectively keeping one twin of two). Even a more problematic method would be to have a few early fetuses develop enough material for DNA analysis, and kill those you don't like. Starts to sound like a horror story...

Well actually we do already screen fetuses pre-natally for known genetic defects, and those diagnosed with serious defects are suggested for abortion. Various countries approach this in different ways, depending on the level of their healthcare system and general public opinion about abortions (yes it has a lot to do with religion). Yet based on what I know, those defects are either life-threatening already in early childhood or often directly prevent future reproduction of the individual - so these generally wouldn't proliferate in the gene pool either, even if not aborted artificially.

Looking at the "removal of natural selection" (or some particular pressures thereof) in a statistical way, the future of our society looks like another horror story. We don't have to speak genetic-based conditions that are directly life threatening. Consider just some fairly harmless genetic traits that may e.g. make you less imune to a particular type of infections. Or may mean a stronger tendency to "auto-immune" / allergic responses (let's now abstract from the fact that some cases blamed vaguely on "auto-immune response" might actually be caused by undiscovered infections). Before modern medicine, even such "harmless" genetic features would statistically decrease your chances of survival. With modern medicine, many of this is treatable and gets passed on to future generations. Even genetic traits that might normally affect your survival *after* your successful reproduction, would traditionally still hamper your ability to rear and support your offspring, hence reducing your offspring's chance for further reproduction... With modern medicine (and social support), this pressure is removed.

Modern medicine is expensive - depending on a particular country's social arrangement, modern healthcare either burdens the whole society by a special healthcare tax (e.g. many countries in Europe), possibly making doctors work a bit like mandatory conscripts for sub-prime wages (post-commie eastern Europe), or it's individually expensive and unavailable to lower-wage classes (many U.S. states and other countries).

Imagine a population of people who mostly wouldn't be able to reproduce in a natural way for one reason or another (infertility, babies growing too big to get born naturally, various lighter/treatable conditions in pregnancy that would mean trouble without modern healthcare) and permanently suffer from various non-lethal but onerous conditions throughout their childhood and especially adult life (it's likely to get worse with age).

A population of permanently suffering people, dependent on modern expensive healthcare. I fear that gradually, even with modern healthcare, the balance of natural selection -based dieoff could be restored. So that a great percentage of individuals born alive will die of disease or other medical conditions before getting "old", despite having the luxury of modern healthcare.

For how long have we had modern healthcare? Since 1900? Maybe more like since WW2, if you count antibiotics. That's just a few generations. In some respects, we're already less healthy than our ancestors. Take respiratory diseases, take fertility for instance. Some of this used to be explained by industrial pollution, but here where I live, many of the population health problems persist, even though industrial pollution has been greatly reduced over the last two decades or so. How long will it take, till the public health will degrade catastrophically, due to minor genetic-based imperfections getting accumulated due to the removal of "natural selection pressure"? A couple more human generations?

I recall a study on a particular species of butterflies, showing how a dark variant (mutation) has become prevalent in an area affected by some industry, in just a couple of years, just because the original lighter colour became better visible to its predators... and how the ratio turned back in a couple years, after the polluting industry was removed. That was also just a few insect generations.

I've noticed someone in this forum mention that people are getting gradually more intelligent. Never heard this opinion before. Educated, maybe. On the contrary, there's a popular opinion (too lazy to google for sources) that the most intelligent humans evolved during the ages of "natural selection pressure" - such as during the last ice age. And that indeed, since then, there's an evolutionary plateau in that respect - that pressure got removed, and the average IQ of the population is getting diluted (as much as I otherwise hate the IQ variable and having it individually measured and compared). It does make perfect sense. Life has still been a struggle for those 8000 years since the last ice age, but I guess it's become a lot less of a struggle in the last century or two - with industrialization, modern healthcare, modern agriculture.

I'm struggling not to get started about the growing concentration of production resources in the hands of global enterprises. About the abundance of and lack of use for human labour, college graduates etc. Heheh - and about how fragile such a society is.

What happens to modern agriculture and food supplies, when the oil runs out? How much more expensive will freight and horsepower become?

What happens if the modern society collapses for some other reason (perhaps just social events such as popular unrest, a series of revolutions) and the modern healthcare gets withdrawn, a couple generations down the road?

My answer: a more natural selection pressure will apply once again...

It's plenty of material for a couple more dystopian science fiction movies, with a socialist or radically capitalist background :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Frank Rysanek

Best comment so far, IMHO. (And not just based on length!) I wish I had a dozen upvotes for you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Evolution? Devolution!

"It's like getting the brakes fixed and getting a turbocharger installed at the same time...."

So all our offspring will be supermen and superwomen. Whoopee! Luckily, nothing could go wrong with a project like that. After all, everyone agrees on what characteristics are good and which are bad.

[Thorne]

Re: Evolution? Devolution!

"So all our offspring will be supermen and superwomen. Whoopee! Luckily, nothing could go wrong with a project like that. After all, everyone agrees on what characteristics are good and which are bad."

Ok Mrs Smith, looking at your genetic profile, I can see you suffer from short sightedness. While we fix that fault in your baby, we'll install 20/20 vision.

Now that heart problem in the father's DNA is easily corrected, We're replace that with an athlete's heart.

Like cake a bit too much Mrs Smith? We'll tweak your child's DNA to boost it's metabolism so weight gain isn't an issue for them........

This is just the start

Imaging the 20/20 vision is replaced with eagle DNA and with thermal night vision overlay? Regeneration in case of injury? Improved strength using primate DNA? Improved intelligence? Faster reflexes? Immortal?

What you will find is human will split into two sub classes. Breeders churning out peons and the rich, elite class of improved humans ruling society.

A natural birth will eventually become a sign of lower status.

Breeders will still be useful when random chance produces an improvement, the elite will be able to copy it and give it to their offspring.

[Thorne]

Re: Evolution? Devolution!

I forgot. If the singularity happens, evolution becomes moot......

[Franklin]

This is what happens when people who aren't evolutionary biologists try to talk about evolutionary biology.

The normal lay view of natural selection--the "survival of the fittest" model where only the most 'fit' individuals in a community survive to reproduce--is oversimplified to the point of being flat-out wrong.

Evolution only needs three things to operate:

1. There are differences, however small, between different individuals in a population;

2. Those differences are heritable; and

3. Those differences have some impact, however small, on the likelihood that an individual will reproduce.

Humans still have all three. There are still heritable differences between individuals that affect, even if it's only to a tiny degree, the odds that we will reproduce. Whether it's a gene that makes it just slightly more likely that we will have asthma, and having asthma makes it just slightly more likely that we either won't reproduce or will choose not to reproduce, or if it's a gene that has just a tiny effect on our immunity to disease...anything, even if it only has a small chance of affecting reproduction, matters.

The number of studies demonstrating evolutionary processes at work in humans is too long to bother listing completely, but here are a few:

http://www.livescience.com/19993-humans-evolving-natural-selection.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091019162933.htm

http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v9/n1s/full/embor200863.html

http://phys.org/news/2011-10-humans-evolving.html

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

There is still a lot of difference in "3" since we started farming !

[naw]

But sometimes, a genetic defect can have a positive effect - for instance sickle cell anemia, which is very debilitating and life-shortening when not treated, is thought to offer advantageous protection from malaria. Sickle cell, carriers represent 30-40% of the population in some areas where malaria is prevalent. But what would happen I wonder if sickle cell were not treated (by blood transfusion) or malaria were eradicated?

[Anonymous Coward]

@Franklin

"Whether it's a gene that makes it just slightly more likely that we will have asthma, and having asthma makes it just slightly more likely that we either won't reproduce or will choose not to reproduce, or if it's a gene that has just a tiny effect on our immunity to disease...anything, even if it only has a small chance of affecting reproduction, matters."

This is what happens when people who are evolutionary biologists try to talk purely in terms of evolutionary biology, when a given situation involves a lot of other factors that are more important.

Do you really believe that a slight extra likelihood of having asthma makes more difference to a person's expected number of offspring than whether that person has to pay about £500,000 for each child, or that cost is borne by taxpayers (aka "the State")? Or whether that person feels an obligation to have no more than two children, because she understands the impact on world population?

[Charles Manning]

Of course we are evolving

The fundamental laws of evolution still apply: changes in attributes are filtered to favour certain attributes above others depending on the "fitness function".

All we have done is change the "fitness function" - the function that weeds out poor candidates and allows better candidates to continue. To be clear, that is poor/better as judged by the fitness function, not by any moral judgement on my part.

We've changed the fitness function through various means such as medicine and social engineering.

People that would have died due to various medical defects are now kept alive to lead normal lives and procreate. Genetic dead-ends such as infertility are now reversed. Women with conditions that would have caused death during childbirth are now kept alive and can breed to pass on their genes.

The move towards smaller families was a result of medicine. No longer did you need to have 10 kids to keep the next generation around. Now you need 2.3 kids to do that and the "fitness function" changed to prefer having fewer kids and investing more in them so that they can get ahead with better education and the like. This put them ahead of the families that had 10 kids but could not afford to educate them.

In many countries social engineering has changed that yet again. Free education & benefits mean there is no longer a penalty for having many kids. The state (aka the taxpayer) will pick up the bill for education, feeding them, etc. This change to the "fitness function" now favours the families with 10 kids again.

Valuable survival traits such as being able to run fast are superfluous thanks to transport. Being big and strong - no need, I have a gun. Surviving heat - replaced by air conditioning. The list goes on.

Evolution never stops, it just changes direction.

[Thorne]

Re: Of course we are evolving

The problem is the religious. Religious people have been shown to have lower than average IQ and religion rejects birth control and promotes large families.

You just have to see Catholic and Muslim families with ten kids to realize that Mr & Mrs Smart with their 1, maybe 2 kids, can't compete.

When gullibility and stupidity become a prime trait for "Survival of the Fittest", we're in trouble.....

[Don Jefe]

Re: Of course we are evolving

I think you might be oversimplifying there a touch. Your bias is showing :) Religion is not the disease, it is a symptom.

A lower 'IQ' is shown to have a negative impact on potential for financial success: Dumb people are more likely to be poor. Poor people fuck a lot because they've got nothing else to do and make more kids. Dumb people and their dumb kids are less likely to be exposed to education and critical thinking because they are poor.

But they're still Human. They have an innate need, a requirement, to find comfort, togetherness with other members of their species, a perception of safety and most importantly hope. The church offers all those things and eases the existential angst that all Humans have (to some degree). Religion is custom tailored for dumb, poor, scared and horny Humans. Which makes a lot of sense as it was designed by dumb, poor, scared and horny Humans for dumb, poor, scared and horny Humans.

If you take away the Church, people are still just as dumb, poor, scared and horny; they just don't have hope. How much that hope benefits the religious, I don't know. But I do know that if you educate people, they tend to make more money and engage in lifestyles that don't allow for 10 kids so they have fewer children who are themselves better educated and will tend to gravitate away from dogmatic ritual and develop more tolerant attitudes which results in better society overall.

"Treat the symptoms, not the disease" came about as a result of treating dehydration in cholera patients. Properly hydrated, the symptoms naturally went away and as a result symptomatic treatments have been misused to terrible effect ever since. It is usually not the best way to fix things. It may obfuscate things, but generally doesn't cure anything.

The cure for all the things that cause religion is education. Education is going untreated and the symptoms have a very negative impact on society. Elevate people to the point where they can think for themselves and they'll do better financially and societally and if they choose can pursue a deity driven philosophy; but they'll be doing it on their own terms.

[<shakes head>]

Re: Of course we are evolving

I think you are mixing up cause and effect. i think you will find that people with lower IQ's are more likely to have religion

[AJ MacLeod]

Re: Of course we are evolving

@Thorne; Your comment shows that at best you are extremely ignorant - not least because if you were to actually study the list of the very greatest scientists and engineers of the past few hundred years you would find that many or most of the very best of them are/were very religious, even to the point of religion being their main inspiration.

This, despite religion having been generally held in disdain amongst the majority in the "educated" circles during the same period.

[Thorne]

Re: Of course we are evolving

"@Thorne; Your comment shows that at best you are extremely ignorant - not least because if you were to actually study the list of the very greatest scientists and engineers of the past few hundred years you would find that many or most of the very best of them are/were very religious, even to the point of religion being their main inspiration.

This, despite religion having been generally held in disdain amongst the majority in the "educated" circles during the same period."

And now? Hawking? No.

I'm afraid most scientists don't think the world is 6000 years old and god buried dinosaur bones to test our faith plus all scientific test to the contrary are wrong cause a book tells us so.

In Western countries there is a direct correlation between education and the decline of religion. Religion is now the realm of the stupid and uneducated.

May god strike me down if I'm wrong........

Nope still here........

[Anonymous Coward]

Its only taken other forms...

"We stopped natural selection as soon as we started being able to rear 95-99 per cent of our babies that are born. We are the only species to have put a halt to natural selection – of its own free will, as it were."

But natural selection doesn't merely stop at birth. How many of those babies who got born mainly thanks to modern medical science have actually managed to live up to a commonly normal age? Not many.

Which is another aspect of natural selection; weeding out the weak. And although I most certainly agree that this process seems to have been slowed down, I don't think we stopped it. Not by far; one can't ignore that people continue to die long before their full lifespan.

Now, this may not be a very popular comment to make, I don't mean any disrespect to the families who may have had to suffer from situations like these, but what about people who manage to kill themselves in traffic, for example through use of excessive speed, crossing the railway when "nothing is coming", or other means? I think there's much more to this issue than merely looking at babies. Because if we have evolved, then why couldn't the process of natural selection have evolved with us by taking other forms which are just as ruthless?

And that's not even taking a more common aspect such as natural disasters into account.

Which is another eery thing to consider: what if we only have managed to stall things? Meaning; for all we know a disaster could happen tomorrow claiming a huge number of lives. Freak accident? Natural disaster? Or a new form of natural selection?

I don't think one can really make claims such as these. We didn't stop anything in my opinion.

[Thorne]

Re: Its only taken other forms...

Yes but speed, strength, intelligence etc was used to escape predators, hunt better and survive to breed in our ancestors

Now stupidity, gullibility, promiscuity and addiction are now prime traits to ensure your genes are passed on.

Now I'm not saying we should make stupidity illegal but lets just take the safety labels off everything and let nature take it's course......

[Mr. Peterson]

"Britain's most popular naturalist has warned in an interview that humans have become the first species to effectively halt the influence of natural selection."

Considering the immense number of extinct Earth life forms, I think we can safely conclude that Natural Selection is highly overrated.

[Vociferous]

It's impossible for any species to stop evolving.

All that's needed for evolution is that every individual does not have exactly as many surviving children.

The reason Attenborough thinks evolution has stopped, is because the traditional pressures affecting reproduction has stopped: starvation and disease are non-issues in the west today. However, we have new selective pressures.

Presently the selective pressure on humanity in the west is estimated to be 98% sexual, ie how many children we elect to have. Traditionally humans who limited their number of children had a better chance of raising them to adulthood, but modern medicine has changed that, so that it is now evolutionarily optimal to produce as many children as possible, as quickly as possible.

Humans who limit their reproduction are being strongly selected against, and removed from the population, while traits which increase reproduction (early maturity, promiscuity, premature birth, having twins...) are selected for and increasing in the population.

Don't like the implications of that? Tough. Evolution is blind, it only cares about what works.

[Anonymous Coward]

Funnily enough

it wasn't all too long ago I was talking about this with somebody. Although we were talking more about the medical concerns, such as the raise in rates of cancer / heart disease / genetic disorders such as huntingtons. The basis of it was that if you have a genetic predisposition to heart disease, or any genetic disorder, it's relatively unfair on the offspring, and tha by continuing to reintroduce that DNA into the genepool we're effectively perpetuating poor health. Just look at the increase in the number of people with these problems (heart disease / huntingtons / other genetic disorders) since healthcare came along. We're fixing more people, but on the other hand that's reintroducing the gene into the pool which is spreading the problem to others.

If anything I think the only thing which will restart natural selection to some degree will be when it's too late, the gene has been spread too far, and the healthcare system collapses under the weight of it all (it kind of already is)

It's also a reason why I'm in favour of embryo selection etc. If rather han relying on chance you could choose to eliminate genetic imperfections, it would allow those with these conditions to procreate without passing on said imperfections slowly eliminating said imperfections from the gene pool.

[Anonymous Coward]

But...but....but.....

How does Attenborough explain the X-men??

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: But...but....but.....

"How does Attenborough explain the X-men??"

I don't think he's done a program on them yet.

[Steve Button]

Stopped? Reversed you mean.

Surely, if you had, for example, really poor eyesight anything over a few hundred years ago, then your chances of surviving long enough to bring up children would have been greatly reduced. In modern times, you stand pretty much the same chance as everyone else which allows you to pass on these new defects.

Over time these would reverse evolution, but by the time it's had a chance for making any significant impact (many generations) we'll almost certainly have technological fixes for these things. Be it genetic manipulation, or nano technology or something completely different.

My point is, it's not stopped, it's reversed. I thought this was obvious to most people (who read the Reg).

[Alistair MacRae]

I wouldn't say we've stopped evolving.

We still have to breed and the circumstances bringing about the ability to find a mate still are needed.

We will still continue to mutate so we will still "evolve" in some kind of direction.

Any one seen Idiocracy? It was about the intelligent people focusing on careers and stupid people kept on having more and more children till everyone was stupid. (this was a comedy and not even a good one IMO but you get the idea)

[Velv]

Depends on how you define "Natural Selection" - just look at the Darwin awards.

We really should start removing the warnings labels and signs and fences and guards and let nature take its own course...

[M7S]

From the Office of Grand Marshal Skaldak

Humanssss. If you want a challenge to act as an imperative for your evolutionary processs, send breeding pairs to Mars instead of your old and expendable.

In a few generationsss, we'll have sssome sssport. That is if any of you sssurvive whilsst we wait

Icon: sorry I'm undressed at the moment

[Alister]

humans have become the first species to effectively halt the influence of natural selection.

But not the first species we did it to...

Most farm and domestic animals, and most farmed crops have been untouched by "natural selection" since humans started selective breeding, which is something like10 millennia ago.

[ahahaha you won't catch me that easy again]

You're all getting carried away.

God will decide when our time is up. Not us. Or David Attenborough.

Don't forget.

[Dusty]

This isn't about who is breeding, It is about who isn't!

There are 5 Women who I keep in touch with from my youth. These are intelligent well educated women. Between them they have produced 3 children!

3!

And I don't imagine for one minute that this is unusual.

Allowing for "Wastage" even in this day and age I suspect that the adequate "replacement" number should be nearer a dozen!

Now, It is my suspicion (based solely on anecdotal evidence) that "Smarts" is an x chromosome characteristic. That is to say, one inherits it down the female line (From an technical POV, this would actually make sense)

The pressure over the last couple of generations to encourage women, and in particularly smart women, to eschew parenthood in favour of career (And if they DO have families to only have small ones) means that millions of "Smart" gene lines will have effectively been truncated! (Rendered extinct!) once truncated these are lost forever! they wont just magically reappear a couple of generations down the line when we might need them!

We are not looking here at some sort of gradual decline in "Smarts" over many generations. This represents a catastrophic self imposed genocide of the intellect! I suspect that "Advanced" societies two three generations down the line (Well within the life expectancies of those reading this) will quite possibly be no longer capable of supporting themselves (We are already struggling to maintain the infrastructure that we already have). The burgeoning (and increasingly unsupportable) welfare states that are now almost a constant in all developed countries represent only the beginning of this collapse as those needing external support to survive increasingly outnumber those who have the ability to do the supporting (And Aging populations are an additional pressure)

Detroit's collapse occurred because those doing the supporting moved away. An entire society no longer able to support itself will be a pretty grim thing!

[nichobe]

Lyrics from Flagpole Sitta seem appropriate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GBoxdee52A

[adam payne]

A case for chavs to be stopped from breeding surely!

[heyrick]

Not halted, just changed.

Wait until WW3 when a substantial portion of the population is wiped out. Survival of the fittest is harsh.

[Thorne]

Re: Not halted, just changed.

Yes but bogans are like cockroaches. Very hard to get rid of.....

[Frogmelon]

In the past, genetic bottlenecks caused by asteroid strikes, volcano eruptions etc were one reason for radical species radiation.

If one poster here is correct and the more affluent/intelligent in the population are having less kids, then won't this then create a "voluntary" genetic bottleneck caused by human behaviour in this particular section of the human species?

Taking this to the theoretical conclusion, if this carries on then you should see *more* radical mutations, evolution and species radiation in the section of the human race that are having less children, compared with the section of the human race that are breeding like rabbits, where I would imagine there would be more homogenity in the population over the long term?

[Frogmelon]

In effect, human behaviour, possibly affected by programming in the genes responding to external favourable stimuli, is making a deliberate push for faster evolution where it is advantageous to do so.

[squigbobble]

Genetic bottleneck already in the works

courtesy of both China's government and chinese ideas about gender. There's currently an excess of about 32 million men in China due to the preference for male children which gives chinese women the pick of the crop. In a couple of generations we'll know just what kind of men they like and, to a large extent, what kind of male personality types can cope with moving to the cities as lot of the factory workers that have migrated to China's industrial cities are women.

[John 156]

I believe the next evolutionary step for humanity will be to become RoundUp Ready as all those whose metabolisms are compromised by harmless-to-humans weedkiller are eliminated from the gene pool; thus Roundup will become mostly harmless to humans and Monsanto will take over from Goldman Sachs as Masters of the Universe.

[Rogue Jedi]

The Theory of Evolution

First this is not an attack on any beliefs but in a story about evolution I believe this needs saying.

Evolution is a theory, a theory which is widely accepted but still a theory, it has not been proven and may someday be disproven or it may be adapted to meet new evidence. I will remain sceptical until I can see direct evidence of evolution.

I have before now heard it suggested that the adaptions made to Canis Familiaris (dog) are proof of evolution however the breeds all belong to the same genus and can interbreed, there are many other examples all of which may be convincing circumstantial evidence but are far from proof.

on the other subject of the article

I would be in favour of some form or population control, preferably in the form of removing benefits for any other than the first child (unless 2 or more are born as a result of the first pregnancy)and excempt any children born before or within eleven months (to alow for long pregnancys) after the law came into force, it would also need a provision for someone who previously could afford more children for a number of years who is made unemployed. This would mean people would only be able to have the number of children they can afford, but still mean there is a safety net if required. The less wealthy tend to have more children and are often reliant on state help this should at least reduce population growth if not reverse it.

[Vociferous]

Re: The Theory of Evolution

No, evolution is directly observed fact. The _theory_ of evolution is "differential survival due to natural selection in genetically diverse populations". The theory is the tentatively accepted explanation of the observed fact.

A perfect analogy is this: gravity is directly observed fact. The leading _theory_ of gravity is "virtual photons exchange quanta of energy between particles".

The fact never changes. The theory might.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Rogue Jedi

It's a shame that your points may well have had some merit, but since you were unable to express them in coherent sentences the meaning has been lost and the effort you expended was for nothing.

[Stevie]

Bah!

I may be mistaken but I was under the impression that evolutionary change in a species takes place over a much longer period than the one in which Sir David has been in a position to spot it happening.

Saying "nowt new has evolved since t'war" is true, but fails to properly capture the vast sweep of time I thought necessary for any such change to become established in the population.

No doubt I am missing the point of the great man's thesis.

[Amorous Cowherder]

I don't think we stop "evolving" or finding tiny little ways to try to ensure survival of our species. How many little things do we take for granted that keep pushing our species forward, something as simple as brushing our teeth? Dental hygene ensures we don't get abcesses, leading to blood-poisoning and early death.

Evolution and survival of the species as the whole is a continuous process of small, what appear to be almost insignificant steps. The UK implements the NHS to ensure better health for the UK population, we in turn live longer, contribute more and offer more to the outside world. More people living longer in the first-world ensure we raise the standards and aspiriations of the third-world which has seen a huge rise in life-expectancy over the last 50 years to point where some places are starting to get on a par with the first world. We've gone too far in the first-world and we now have it too good, we take it for granted and such problems as too may old people for the young to support and an explosion in obesity.

There is already a wealthy class strata in China, well to do. upwardly mobile, relatively well-off people who don't want to make the mistakes of their parents and do not want to follow the decadent ways of the west, they will most likely overtake us in terms of living standards in the next 25 years. An example of cultural evolution, learning the mistakes of a past. The west got fat and decadent, bad example. Take the good bits, leave out the bad. Evolution, with natural and cultural selection at work and in time periods that are observable.

[Jediben]

Speak for yourself. In the West here, we are buff, ripped and physically supreme. Evolution doesn't "take good bits and leave out bad" - it's only once it has happened that you can see what the bad bits were. The good bits can become bad ones just as quickly.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Amorous Cowherder

"How many little things do we take for granted that keep pushing our species forward, something as simple as brushing our teeth? Dental hygene ensures we don't get abcesses, leading to blood-poisoning and early death."

True, but completely off topic. We're talking about evolution.

[Anonymous Coward]

MORE NATURAL SELECTION PLEASE!

Some days I wonder how some of these people remember to breathe.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Evolving to be more appealing

Have you seen those monsters pushing the prams?

[foxpak]

We are evolving at a faster rate than ever

Because there"s more humans than ever before. Genetic diversity of the human race is greater than ever. Whether we are evolving in desirable direction is another issue but Sir David is right in the sense that we have diverged from natural selection as the main evolutionary tool.

The marching morons teeming in their billions are in overshoot for sure and natural selection will play a bigger part in the future as we return to a simpler way of life-that is unless we can solve the limits to growth. I think the Moties civilization cycles is an optimistic view tho since we're really not that smart, about as smart as yeast it seems, and we wont be going to space as a race.

Working men voting for tony abbot as pm is like the chooks voting for Christmas~! but only 52% voted for the Libs, we're not all like that! Jule Bishop as foreign minister i mean to say!

so embarassing.. just had to say that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Going Backwards ?!?

If any of the yokles that live round my parts are anything to go by your would consider that maybe it had stopped and started to go backwards as a lot of them are some sort of devolved sub species off shot..!

[Nym]

Human Evolution

Is by means of language/society and there's absolutely no sign that since a species 'evolved' [mind you, we don't really know what that means and it would depend on a high breed-rate to allow for the sports...sport] we could call human...that human evolution has occurred differently. We like big busts and shapely butts because our society tells us to, not because of instinct; examine the standards of beauty (thinking breeding) in the medieval ages.

[briesmith]

Who Gets the Most Shags

Natural selection has always been a combination of random failure of cells to divide accurately; radiation and biology working together to produce mutations. I think we all understand this, apart from some Americans who are perhaps still a little too close to their monkey.

This imperfect cell division resulted in new versions which were either better, no worse or absolutely hopeless at getting their end away. The biggest antlers, the brightest plumage, the biggest nose (in monkeys) got you the most shags. This meant your particular set of mutations got to continue while someones else's withered (for a want of sex).

Nowadays, we don't compete so simply and directly or Andrew Lloyd Webber would never have got to shag anyone, instead he's donated his genes to nearly every diva you can name. So I think evolution is continuing but driven now by intellectual rather than physical success. The smart birds are putting their money on the smart bollocks. The successful shagger these days isn't your square jawed, muscle man but your bespectacled geek who knows how things work.

I mean, have you seen Ed Milliband's wife? Or David Cameron's? Clegg's is a bit of a mystery - I mean, her, with him, who'd of thought it? - but nobody said evolution was perfect.

[JCitizen]

Canines will rule..

They are our pets now, but will succede us! HA!