I wonder what they were called before there were fences?
It’s not evolution, it’s adaptation.
Caught in the act is indeed the right expression. This is just one more example of the convoluted thinking of evolutionists. What she describes here is a process whereby those lizards with the long-legged gene were best adapted to their new fire-ant environment. They did not “develop” the long-legged gene. It was already part of their genetic information. Those that possessed the long-legged gene survived, multiplied and soon became the dominant population in those areas where fire ants were active. This is something that Darwin described as micro evolution or natural selection and with which no one is in disagreement. Rather than describe this process of natural selection, however, this scientist couches the events in the language of progressive evolution, as though the lizard had evolved the genetic information and sprouted the longer legs out of thin air. Wrong again.
Polar bears should be able to evolve their way through global warming.
Adaptive responses such as this cause me to wonder whether experts in genetics, given the currently advanced state of basic knowledge and electron microscopy (or whatever the currently most advanced microscopy may be), can determine whether the gene that makes the longer legged version of this creature was present in the gene pool all along. This question would apply to any such adaptive change.
Or, a variant: Did random mutation provide the requisite new information, then through normal interbreeding become sufficiently widespread to make possible a large scale change in the population in question?
Or is my question just plain dumb?
He told me that competing fire ant hills are very aggressive toward each other. He demonstrated this by scooping up a spade-full of the top of an ant hill. Fire ant hills are pretty shallow, so the spade full contained thousands of ants.....and he dropped it on another ant hill and then took a spade full of them and dropped it back on the first.
A huge "ant war" broke out immediately in both groups and they killed each other by the thousands.
Later that day, he went back and put fire ant poison on what was left of both hills to finish them off.
If you see an ant hill and think it may be fire ants, an easy way to tell without getting stung is to look at the size of the ants. If you have several, noticeably different sizes of ants in the same hill...they're probably fire ants. Or at least that's the way it always seems to work in here in Florida.
In So.FL the fire ants would strip a lizard down to the skeleton in less than a day when one would get hit by a bicycle on the sidewalk. Maybe the evolution will cause them to move faster to avoid the bikes.
Is this evolution, or adaption? I don’t see this species turning into another species. I see this species adapting to their environment.
When humans adapted with their bridge nose width and pigmentation due to climate, they didn’t change from humans. They merely changed the subspecies in the human species. Right?
| This just in...
Colorado State Professor of Entomology Adrian Bugsterbunny has discovered that fire ants are developing little inflatable sacs under their chins in order to fool lizards into thinking that fire ants are their friends. The ants are also learning to do push-ups with their front legs to better imitate their reptilian prey. "The ants will sneak up on the lizards, do a couple of push-ups, then inflate and deflate the little sacs under their chins. Then they bite the lizards, which any human can tell you hurts like Hell." |
If it makes Darwinist Believers feel better to refer to adaptation as evolution. Fine. Have at it, but the Darwinist Believers preach their religious doctrine as though the lizards adapted to fire ants by sprouting wings while mocking creationists for clinging to their evidence of Intelligent Design. You know the sort of intelligent design that might have been the inspiration for the verses:
Matthew
6:25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
6:26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
Fire ants are a by-product of free trade.
Jim Morrison predicted this would happen.
Evolution ping.
p.s., There is no point arguing otherwise, this is SCIENCE!
No new species to see here, move along folks...
No fireants were harmed during this experiment, however, one researched suffered a hangnail and a subsequent salmonella infection but recovered after two days of infusion Immodium therapy.
Fire Ants are Evolving to Better Catch Lizards