Boylesy "Civilisation is not an ultimate goal of evolution"

No point in beating around the bush... that is the BIG question....

"The ultimate goal of evolution"?

I think in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (or whatever) the answer was 4

@Boylesy: If there are indeed genuine examples of this then it is the rare exception rather than the rule.

No it's not even rare. Although it is common mammals for males to be big and aggressive, males in other phyla adopt different strategies. Spiders are a well known for the males being much smaller than the females. If you count meekly offering themselves up as lunch to their lady friends as being aggressive, then I guess they are aggressive. Sharks are another example, as are crocodiles.

Survival of the fittest really is defined in terms of the environment. Take the example trying to define the "best" car. Your insistence that it survival of the fittest means the survival of the most biggest or most aggressive is like saying the best car is always the biggest and fastest. That is a naive, almost school-boyish view. The environment the car must fit into defines what is best, and in rare cases that does mean the biggest and fastest, but far more often it means the safest, or the most economical, or the most convenient in tight city spaces, or the one with the most cargo capacity ...

rstuart you have this whole evolution thing arse about with the examples you have cited.

You need to view the size of males spiders in relation to females spiders in terms of the likely success of copulation. A male spider being as large as a females spider would almost certainly result in less success in copulation due to the female spider being more likely to view the male as an aggressor. And it is not universally the case that females spiders are larger than males anyway, e.g. with wolf spiders both sexes are roughly the same size.

What about males spiders relative to other males spiders. Most animal species fight for the right to copulate and hence the bigger more aggressive spider will always win.

Male crocodiles also fight between each other for territory and the right to copulate with females within their territory. The bigger more aggressive males get the prime territories and copulate with the most females.

Don't know about sharks though.

@Boylesy: rstuart you have this whole evolution thing arse about with the examples you have cited.

I am just responding to your earlier claim that Survival of the Fittest means quote: "the 'fittest' are always the most violent, and aggressive". No, that is wrong. Numerous examples prove that is wrong. All I have done it list some. If you think my examples are arse about, then what is actually arse about is your notion of what Survival of the Fittest means.

By the by, one of the reasons it is so hard to grasp is it is actually almost meaningless. It is like trying to understand "the sound of one hand clapping". It is a tautology. We say a species survives because it is the fittest. But how do we know it is the fittest? Because it survives!

Survival of the Fittest is at best a shorthand for a describing how evolution works, but the mechanism behind evolution is far more complex than what "survival of the fittest" seems to say at first, or even 10th glance. It primary usefulness seems to be it is a good way to bring the incessant questioning of a 2 year old to a halt.

Rstuart I did not say that the biggest and meanest are universally the fittest.

I merely said it was the general rule rather than the exception.

For any species where males fight for the right to copulate with the females then the biggest and meanest are nearly always the evolutionary winners. Among mammals this is certainly VERY common. Perhaps less so with birds where the showiest feathers often win them the right to copulate. But we are mammals not birds aren't we rstuart.

" It is a tautology. We say a species survives because it is the fittest. But how do we know it is the fittest? Because it survives!"

Not at all rstuart - it is a matter of observation. If the biggest and meanest caribou consistently do the majority of copulating and that young male caribou consistently grow to be as large and aggressive as those males that sired them, then it is perfectly reasonable to assume that the biggest and most aggressive male caribou are the fittest.

If the smallest least aggressive caribou were equally fit then it would be reasonable to conclude that there should be as many small less aggressive ones as there are large and aggressive ones. But this is simply not what is observed.

"Survival of the Fittest is at best a shorthand for a describing how evolution works, but the mechanism behind evolution is far more complex than what "survival of the fittest" seems to say at first, or even 10th glance. It primary usefulness seems to be it is a good way to bring the incessant questioning of a 2 year old to a halt."

Disagree.....at least with direct reproductive success in relation to size and temperament. You may be right when it comes to more difficult to discern things like disease resistance and genetically linked physical features etc.

@Boylesy: For any species where males fight for the right to copulate with the females then the biggest and meanest are nearly always the evolutionary winners.

Sigh. No, not always. Not even nearly always. There is one species where should be very clear to you males to compete strongly for females, they the biggest and strongest do not always, or even mostly win. That would be humans. Peacocks would be another example, as would bower birds.

Perhaps you meant physically fight. Well, you would still be wrong. A very common strategy is to sneak in while the bigger, stronger male isn't looking. This is common in squid, seals and some fish - off the top of my head. It is so common it have a scientific name, which believe it or not, is "sneaky fu+ckers", without the spelling mistake. Google it. The first few hits are biologists discussing it.

The occasional species takes this to an extreme. The males of a particular species of fish have three genetically determined mating strategies. The big meanie guarding his harem. The sneaky fu+cker that darts in when the big meanie is off fighting other meanies. And the female mimic who lives in the harem with the females, unnoticed. The ratio's are set by breeding success. If there are two meanies and they spend all their time fighting what they others get the girls. Too many sneaky fu+ckers and the meanies can ignore each other and spend their days guarding. Too many mimics and there are no harems to invade. The system naturally heads to an equilibrium where all produce the same number of offspring, on average.

What you are really saying is you can imagine environment where only the biggest and most aggressive win. I don't doubt you can. But it doesn't exist outside of your mind. If the biggest always won, the males size would grow indefinitely, and unlimited aggression means unlimited injuries. The world is never is simple as you seem to imagine it is.