Can someone comment on how evolution was affected when intelligence emerged on our planet? Or more precisely, how are humans affecting the evolution of life on the planet?
UPDATE (7th Jan, 2006)
From an answer at Yahoo Answers and my discussions at Google Groups, I am mentioning a few noteworthy points:
1. “That intelligence is not the epitome of evolution”
2. “Interestingly, however, we’ve possibly reached a point where further expansion of the human intellect by evolution will be selected against, as the smartest in our society are also the least fertile (not that they can’t but that they don’t).”
3. “The other big impact of intelligence on evolution has to do with other species. We have already created many new breeds and strains through artificial selection, which now acts as a second edriver in evolution, in addition to natural selection (all domesticated animals and agriculture show the results of this selection). Now, we have the intelligence to take that a step further, by selected mutation. Thus, instead of merely selecting from among natural variation, we can create the sort of unnatural variation that we most desire.”
4. I say, “I just wanted a discussion on the issue if humans are special when we see from evolution’s perspective?
I think we certainly are. Since, no other organism(or a large
percentage of organisms) has ever tried to change to paths of natural
evolution by domesticating organisms, genetically modification. So,
today we, humans, are a cause of different type of evolution on earth.
Let us call it Artificial Evolution. ”
5. I say, ” Because we have learnt to manipulate the most basic unit of
evolution i.e. gene. So, in the future we will be major drivers of
evolution. But would then we call it evolution??
Did evolution called its own death by evolving humans/intelligence??””
Very vaild observation. We are speeding short-term evolution but slowing long term evolution.
We are making environment easier to vanish our species and other species by making heavy use of medication, etc. We can prevent diseases for a while but in the long term we are making us more susceptible to attack by other entities because we are not allowing natural selection to work properly.
Good observation… 🙂