[UA] Crosswords and Blue Teets

[James McGraw]

>>> menzi212 at yahoo.com 06/07/01 04:10pm >>
>
>Without a major pressure (say, killing
>off all blue tits that don't drink milk) the pace of
>evolution would never favor bottle-openers over
>non-bottle-openers.  

Not true. Adaptations that confer even a small change in fitness can spread throughout a population surprisingly quickly. An adaptation such as this would actually be a significant enough advantage that it would spread through the population extremely quickly.

>Besides, as it was a behavior
>that spread through a non-related population, it would
>not have had any instinctual base to grow from.

What precisely do you mean by this? I thought we were talking about blue tits, which, as members of the same species, should surely share the same instinctive behaviour.

james the cat

"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a
really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually
change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again.  They
really do it.  It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists
are human and change is sometimes painful.  But it happens every day.  I
cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or
religion." 
                -- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address



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