A Mathematician's View of Evolution

The Mathematical Intelligencer ^ | Granville Sewell

[MineralMan]

"Dogs are very efficient trotters. They push game to exhaustion before they sprint. "

Well, I know one thing for sure. A golden retriever will wear me out long before I wear him out. That has been proven again and again in practical experiments.

If I were a marathon runner, I guess I could outrun the golden, but if it wanted to attack me, it would happen long before I got my second wind.

Of course, if it did catch me, it would just lick me to death, I suppose, or beat me to death with its tail.

[colorado tanker]

(chuckle)

[Quix]

THANKS MUCH.

BUMP

Hope you have your hazmat suit on.

Great doc.

[js1138]

The question is not whether you as an individual could survive an attack by a wolfpack. The question I posed is whether you could outrun a dog in a marathon.

Even a modern American jogger can run a dog to death on a summer day. Dog's can't get rid of the heat fast enough. the same is true of nearly all four-legged mammals.

Being hairless has advantages.

[js1138]

He has you. That should insulate him against penetration by mind rays.

[sittnick]

A 50,000 year old member of the equus genus would likely not have been able to easily breed with a modern horse. Equine evolution has been remarkably well documented.

A 2,000,000 year old modern horse (Equus stenonis) was believed to have been found in Italy.

Huh? Peanuts are not nuts, they are legumes. I don't believe that there is any taxonimical controversy over their classification.

The world is a lot bigger than taxonomy, which is a man-made construct. Nutritionally they are regarded as nuts, and are nutritionally classified in the meat group. Taxonomical categorization is only ONE way of thousands to categorize things. It is often impractical and dopey to insist on taxonomical classification, which is why a jar of mixed nuts can be up to 50% peanuts. If your grocery store put the Planters' peanuts by the lentils, it might be right according to the current system of taxonomy, but it would drive the customers crazy.

[murphE]

BTTT

[Quix]

Hmmmmm . . .

Not sure how to take such . . . sweetness . . . so early in the afternoon.

[Tallguy]

If apes and humans evolved from the same species, wouldn't skills needed to survive and environments have been the same?

One theory is that the common ancestor lived in the Forest that used to cover the sub-saharan region of the African continent. The forests receded and the grassy savana expanded. Apes generally stayed with the trees. The human ancestor (probably shared with the baboon) moved out onto the savanah. Walking upright helped cool the brain, freed up the hands, which then created a feedback-loop that spurred further developments in intelligence (toolmaking). Just passing this along... not saying I necessarily buy it.

[Alter Kaker]

Nutritionally they are regarded as nuts, and are nutritionally classified in the meat group.

I can't believe you're making me argue that peanuts are not meat. My suggestion: go get a peanut plant. Look at it. The peanuts are encased in pods. It developes from a singal carpel. That makes it a legume, by definition. This is not a complicated concept. Take Botany 101. Grocers may refer to peanuts as nuts, but they're grocers, not botanists, and they're wrong.

A 2,000,000 year old modern horse (Equus stenonis) was believed to have been found in Italy.

Wrong. Equus stenonis was not modern (modern horses are Equus caballus), but an earlier species. It was likely a distant ancestor of modern horses, but it was not a modern horse by any stretch of the imagination.

[onedoug]

[FreedomProtector]

It does interest me :) , in fact... I have written a few programs based on the paradigm often called "evolutionary algorithm"... is it essentially a probabilistic search technique for optimal values. Evolutionary algorithms don't produce anything new, just find different parameters..

x[t+1] = s( v( x[t]) )

where x[t] is the population under a representation at time t, v(.) is the variation operator(s), and s(.) is the selection operator

These algorithms are nifty but only if the selection operator and variation operator, and termination condition are very carefully designed. "But it takes intelligence to create the evolutionary algorithms!" You are absolutely correct....In fact I know from experience that it is actually easy to write one which will never converge on the optimal set of parameters especially if the search space doesn't have natural "hills and valleys" (doesn't fit hill climbing algorithms). These algorithms require a highly ordered/designed computational device capable of running the same set of designed instructions over and over and over again with out error.


An interesting probability model is calculating the probability of trying to assemble life from non-life purely by chance and natural process:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1689062/posts?page=185#185

a) Calculations of Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe for random generation of a simple enzyme and calculations for a single celled bacterium.
b) Calculations of Hubert Yockey for random generation of a single molecule of iso-1-cytochrome c protein.
c) Calculations of Bradley and Thaxton for random production of a single protein.
d) Calculations of Harold Morowitz for single celled bacterium developing from accidental or chance processes.
e) Calculations of Bernd-Olaf Kuppers for the random generation of the sequence of a bacterium.

[metmom]

Perhaps but the short sprint can be pretty critical. It doesn't seem like it would matter if the human could outlast the wolf in the long run if in the short run, the wolf catches and eats him.

[ryan71]

"You need to find yourself a girl, Mate."

[metmom]

If man is so less suited physically in terms of strength, speed, agility, etc. to survive in the same environment as apes, or other hominids, then how would the fledgling species have managed long enough to discover firs and use it to enhance his survival? It doesn't seem reasonable that the discovery of fire alone could account for man's survival with so much else against him. Nor does it make sense that there would have been an evolutionary advantage for man to develop as he has.

[ahayes]

And if early humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes?

If early Americans came from Europeans, why are there still Europeans?

Why did they not evolve even slightly over the millions of years it supposedly took humans to evolve?

Who says they didn't?

[metmom]

If it's not random, there must be a purpose to it. Where'd that come from, I wonder?

[js1138]

Not likely in real life. There are few, if any documented instances of wolves attacking a healthy adult human, at least in North America. Rabid wolves don't count. Rabid squirrels will attack. Wolves raised by humans don't count. They have little fear of humans.

In any case, a single wolf would be suicidal to attack an adult human. And the original question, in case you just forgot to respond, was whether a human could outrun a wolf, or any other four-legged mammal over a long distance.

[MineralMan]

"If man is so less suited physically in terms of strength, speed, agility, etc. to survive in the same environment as apes, or other hominids, then how would the fledgling species have managed long enough to discover firs and use it to enhance his survival?"

Well, I never said that humans were less suited to particular environments than the other apes. Obviously, they were, since they survived and prospered.

Fire is not a real factor, in my opinion. It was useful to humans, certainly, but nobody really knows which of the hominid species first used it.

Tool-making is more of a factor.

[metmom]

Being hairless has advantages.

And disadvantages; like sunburn, sun poisoning, exposure, and frostbite. Seems like those would present a greater handicap than the ability to lose heat more quickly in a warm environment only while running.