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Anonymous
/an/, has evolution actually visibly happened? Have we ever documented a species turning into another species?

Also, why/how did people evolve with the fucked up vaginal birth system that caused women and children to die so often in childbirth for 99% of human history?

Logically considering genes with big "birthing" hips have been being passed down more often as long as humans have existed, wouldn't there be next to no tiny bitches?
>> Anonymous
visible evolution?
Take our breeding programs for example.
Cows, pigs, dogs, corn, apples, etc.
We have changed these animals and plants for our benefit drastically.
If you regard it from the animals view, they have adapted to us.

Childbirth death is an evolutionary factor.
A woman that is not fit to deliver a healthy child will not reproduce.
Women who can will spread their genes.
Thanks to modern medicine that has changed though.
Today it is not an evolutionary factor in the western world anymore, so women can look like they want.
>> Anonymous
Albinos and midgets are evolution.
>> Anonymous
>>211556
>visible evolution?
Take our breeding programs for example.
Cows, pigs, dogs, corn, apples, etc.
We have changed these animals and plants for our benefit drastically.
If you regard it from the animals view, they have adapted to us.

Not really a new species.

>>Childbirth death is an evolutionary factor.
A woman that is not fit to deliver a healthy child will not reproduce.
Women who can will spread their genes.

How are there still women who are not fit to deliver children then, if this winnowing has been occuring since humanity first evolved?
>> Anonymous
What about that Russian program where they bred foxes down to be more timid and it changed their coat color. They even started to bark, apparently.
>> Anonymous
>>211553
New species have been seen to evolve in rapidly breeding species in lab conditions. There has also been speciezation in rodents introduced by man to remote islands. There are also cases of less well observed appearance of new species of plants (less well as in we found the new species but weren't there looking when it first appeared).

Mostly the problems in childbirth have to do with an awkward birthing position (humans are designed to give birth in a squatting position, aided by gravity, not in a lying down position). The average death rate before was something like 1,5% of births resulting in death. On average a female needs to produce only three (or rather 2,5 if you live in statistics land) offspring that live long enough to breed. Anyhow, human birth is incredibly difficult because we are born with such gigantic heads, and as long as human brains (and craniums) keep growing, births will keep getting more difficult. Especially now that there's nothing to kill of the unfit-to-give-birth mothers. AFAIK spotted hyenas are the only animal with similiar birthing difficulties as humans, and they've never had advanced medicine.
>> Anonymous
>>211559
You fail to understand how long evolution takes.

Also, childbirth will always be dangerous. We used to tools to get past the limitation, rather than wait for evolution to refine the process.
>> Anonymous
No, we have two types of evolution, macroevolution and microevolution

macroevolution - what most people attribute to "evolution" aka ape to man, species to species

microevolution - a animal adapting to its surroundings, aka the foxes in russia, the whole moths experiement, or any time a animal changes, but not enough to really be a diffrent species, just small minor changes like fur color


we have no doccumented cases of macroevolution, but we know and have documented microevolution

and before people say micro leads to macro, we also have never seen anything that has microevolved go anywhere near far enough to even start to be thinking bout considering it macroevolution
>> Anonymous
>>211571
you are a fucktard sir...evolution does not have a set time
>> Anonymous
one of the issues with the whole "why hasn't childbearing hips proliforated" is essentially that, in most cases, when the mother dies the child can still live via nursing.

Also, she can keep trying until she has a child. Generally over the last several thousand years, people don't just keep having as many children as possible, like animals tend to. You just get a few and then practice safer sex.

unless every sperm is sacred.
>> Anonymous
>>211553
ITT: we don't understand evolution

moron, species don't turn into species overnight, it takes millions of years of gradual, slight change. If you could take a male animal from today and went through time about 1000 years, it could probably breed with a female of the same species. But if you took the same animal ahead 1000 000 years, it probably couldn't breed with a female who *looks* like the same species. Thus they are a different species. It's a continuum with no definite point at which you could say an animal is so different from the last generation that is a different species. Just like for instance, there is no definite point where you could say a zygote or fetus stops being just a bunch of cells and becomes human.
>> Anonymous
>>211553

The first - yes we have visible documented several species turning into another species - mostly in microbial environments and plantlife. The majority of the crops grown around the world cannot be crossbred with their wild ancestors or its genetic descendents.

With animals, while fossil records for certain animals such as horses exist as documentation, no, humans never have seen it change visibly.

Humans have the fucked up vaginal birth system that caused women and children to die so often because the requirement for brain size and head size was a bigger selection priority than, well, ahem, a "loose vagina".

That, and also the fact that caesareans and early term delivery, epidurals and whatnot also allows women with smaller hips to pass on their genes.

Another factor to consider is that humans actually also artificially lower their chances of a healthy natural childbirth. Eg an African woman who has undergone female circumcision is less likely to survive a natural birth, so does a hyperdieting and tanning hollywood female. People living in the middle ages up to the industrial revolution had funny ideas about hygiene, and the babies with zero immune systems and mothers with compromised immune systems died from exposure to diseases.
>> Anonymous
>>211553

no, because children who are born to a mother who dies in childbirth do not die themselves. Also, increased girth of the hips is not the main way which evolution has compensated for an increase in skull size in babies. We are actually born a lot earlier when our skull size is small enough to fit through the birth canal. We can afford to give birth to children so early in the developmental stage because we live in societies, where others around us help us raise our kids. Thus, living in societies has helped us grow such big brains.
>> Anonymous
>>211571
Regardless of how long it takes, the number of species being created by evolution would seem to imply that we would witness at least one.
>> Anonymous
God made everything in 7 days, that's why.
>> Anonymous
>>211572

there is no such thing as micro and macro evolution. It's the same goddamned thing.
>> Anonymous
>>211580

ugh, jesus christ you're dumb.
>> Anonymous
>>211580

Haven't we seen new bacterial and virus species evolve?
>> Anonymous
>>211582
actually, yah, there is. biology major.
>> Anonymous
>>211583
Okay. Your stupid comparison of a fetus to evolution is pretty dumb.

There has to be a point where a new species is created, where you can go "this is no longer this and can't breed with it, it is no longer the same species."

While it obviously happens over a long time, that point still has to happen.
>> Anonymous
>>211587

I'm a zoology major, and no, there isn't. You cannot separate macro and micro evolution, creationists just try to use that shit to make a point to the other retarded creationists who think they know what they're talking about.
>> Anonymous
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/10/27_greeneyed.shtml

OP, here's your answer.
>> Anonymous
>>211589

no, it's actually quite concise. you can't see the separation into species unless you make jumps in time of maybe a million years or more. Like i said, things don't just suddenly stop being able to breed with individuals of the previous generation.
>> Anonymous
>>211587

Your lecturer is a crackpot creationist then.
>> Anonymous
>>211592
Except, they do.
>>211591
>> Anonymous
YAY A SUGAR GLIDER. I have been bitten by one of those before. I guess I shouldn't have tried to pet him with chicken grease on my hands.
>> Anonymous
>>211598

spoilers: taking 8 thousand years to change isn't sudden
>> Anonymous
>>211605
In terms of geology and evolution, its the blink of an eye.
>> Anonymous
>>211608

lol, in terms of the generation time of the frog, and the life span of the humans observing it (which is the subject of this thread - whether or not we have observed a change from one species to another in the time span of recent history, from one generation to its successor), 8 thousand years is a very long time.
>> Anonymous
>>211608

your point is moot, we're talking about actually seeing a species change into another species. You can't live for 8000 years so you can't see it.
>> Anonymous
>>211613
>>211614

Well that's how long these things take. So is the topic here "Can speciation occur in, say, the 40 years of a scientist's career?" Or in the 80 or so years of a human life? If so, then the answer is no, in the case of higher organisms, it takes a lot longer than that.
And yes, 8000 years is many frog lifetimes, its also a vanishingly small fraction of the ~4 billion year history of life on earth.
>> Anonymous
>>211572
Yes, macroevolution does mean species-level evolution (& higher) but you don't seem to understand what that means either. When a fruit fly evolves into another species of fruit fly, it is a case of macroevolution in action. And yes, this has been observed. And yes, this is a valid case. There is no magic limit to evolution stopping it from producing visibly different species just like there is no limit to human growth so that we can both have microgrowth of a newborn into a 1 month old baby and macrogrowth from a 1 month old baby into an adult human. It's all just small changes accumulating with time. If you think you know a mechanism that stops microevolution from producing macroevolution (which as said, has been observed in laboratory environments!), then do tell us what it is.
>> Anonymous
Giving birth has always implied a danger factor for humans.
Our transition to a bipedal pose involved narrowing the hipbone and thus affecting childbirth. While there are differences between male and female hipbone, the later are not entirely accommodated to the process of child bearing. That's why the bones in the skull of a baby are not united at the beginning. This allows for a safer passage as the skull in more elastic.
It's a sacrifice we had to make in order to become what we are today. While most births occur safely there's still a risk of malfunction and that's why it's important to be assisted by trained staff.

Lol, evolution.
>> Anonymous
ITT arguing over issues that are still disputed through academia and expecting a bunch of anons to come up with a good answer.
>> Anonymous
>>211654
No, the issues raised by the OP are all pretty well established bits of science. The questions themselves reveal that he just doesn't have the knowledge he requires to understand the answers.
>> Anonymous
All your questions are already answered in basic high school science classes. That is not an insult and I'm not calling you ignorant.

Here are a few links that should answer pretty much any question you have:

http://www.talkorigins.org/
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/
>> Anonymous
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>>211553
>> Anonymous
>fucked up vaginal birth system
side effect up upright walking. Unfortunately required for hips smaller than a barrel.
>> Shameless Age !csbuhylnyg
OP'S PIC'S MIDDLE FINGER LOOKS LIKE A PENIS

CAN'T UNSEE
>> Anonymous
>>211580
We haven't really had a grasp on science long enough to observe evolution.

Also, I think the different human "races" would qualify as microevolution. We can all breed together but I reckon that if we'd stayed isolated for another 100,000 years that might not be so. (or maybe 1,000,000 years, whatever)
>> Hyper Cutter !XQ6W0CNp/o
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>>Have we ever documented a species turning into another species?
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html

>>we have no doccumented cases of macroevolution
The theory of evolution has only been around for a little over 150 years, you're not going to see dramatic changes in that sort of time. Also, there are transitional fossils linking many major groups (picture very related), including some particularly spectacular examples (Ambulocetus, all those feathered dinosaurs from China, Tiktaalik, a veritable army of hominids, and good old Archy here just to name a few)...
>> Anonymous
>>211755
what he said. our social system allows the dangerous process of childbirth to succeed in most cases, and children to survive even when the mother dies. thus it doesn't significantly harm the species. walking upright, however conveys significant survival advantages.
>> Anonymous
Bacteria.
>> Anonymous
OP here, thanks for the info scientific anons. I'm obviously one of those armchair scientists who assumes things based on common sense and such.

To the people who showed links of species emerging and also explained that babies often survive birth that the mother dies, thanks.

Everyone else, eat a dick.
>> Anonymous
Childbirth has become more dangerous because our brains have become larger, more than our hips have become smaller.
>> Anonymous
>>211756
fuck you, cannot unsee and I wanted to save that image
>> Anonymous
God created the world as it is, there is no such thing as evolution. He put the dinosaur bones there to test our faith. Man evolve from monkeys? Don;t be ridiculous, we are not idiotic animals, we are humans, created in God's image.
>> Anonymous
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>>212035
O really?
>> Anonymous
Over the past century we've seen minor changes in our physiology. Not exactly a full on evolutionary change but more of adaptation to our environment
Once the industrial revolution occurred, those workers bodies had to adapt to the new demands we were putting on it. Over several generations we became more mesomorphic in stature: the human body was a very solid structure and was capable of handling greater demands.

Unfortunately over time, man found better, easier and more efficient ways for industry, introduced machines and then computers, and finally automated systems. Mankind could relax and take it easy but the body was still used to building up energy and then decided to store it all as fat reserves just in case he needed them later. Man became very endomorphic.

These days, it seems our bodies are becoming used to the idea that we have little to do physically and that on the average we don't need to lift hundreds of pounds on a daily basis or swing sledgehammers.. So these next couple of generations are more ectomorphic. Their bodies prefer to stay lean and bones are a bit more brittle. Their bodies are about the same height on average but their frames are slimmer: we can see this change in swimsuit models from the 60s-70s compared to today.

So why are there still fat people? If we evolved from chimps, why are there still chimps around.. If its so easy to make money in America, why are there still trailer parks..
Cause it's funnier that way
In nature you always have the anomaly. There's always going to be 10% who stick to their same genetics and also like in nature they tend to die out. However, unlike nature our medical technology is so advanced we tend to keep alive the ones who'd normally be weeded out in nature, allow them to blend with our society and eventually breed and continue their line of bad genetics.
>> Anonymous
>>211553
What you're describing is not evolution exactly. Changes in life style over a 100 years or more may effect people's health and stature but they basically posses the same genotype as their ancestors.
>> Anonymous
>>212053
>> So why are there still fat people?

Because anyone who eats more than their body needs will grow fat. That happens with any vertebrate. Especially if they eat lots of fats and refined carbohydrates. People have not had access to this much cheap fat and sugar ever before.

>> If we evolved from chimps, why are there still chimps around..

Because we didn't evolve from chimps any more than chimps evolved from us. We had a common ancestor, which BTW isn't around anymore.
>> Anonymous
holy fuck, are there still people who think "evolution = you came from a chimp"? go retake high school biology, please.
>> Anonymous
It's not an rpg, this isn't evo, the species doesn't just level up and change classes all of a sudden.
>> Anonymous
>>212053

Your fucking science sucks shit U wannabe intellectual!
Go back to school you fucking douchebag loser! We all know if you had any kind of education you wouldn't be on here. GBT D/Ling your CP you faggot
>> Anonymous
out of animals we have the biggest brains and therefore the biggest skulls (if you look at it compared to the rest of our body). That coupled with the fact that our hips are narrower so we can walk upright more efficiently makes childbirth for humans more dangerous than for any other animal ^_^
>> Nagi
>>211808

This.

Also http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Main_Page
>> Anonymous
People are fat because our fat cell have unlimited storage and we have assumed a sedentary lifestyle. Our ability to store fat is different that almost all other mammals.
>> Anonymous
>>212608
My bad, it's not that our fat cells have unlimited storage, it's the fact that we can make an unlimited number of them.
>> Anonymous
tl:dr

NEWSFLASH! people with unfit genes are still out there having kids. with medicine the way it is children that normally wouldn't or shouldn't live are still around and having kids. even the midgets and retards.
>> Anonymous
how about cane toads in australia? When the species came to the country, they were mostly short legged, with very few long legged, which is a different breed, not a different species, like different types of dogs. Now, however, they are almost all long legged because the ones with longer legs are able to ravel faster when it is breeding season. They have more babies, outcompete short legged toads for food, and are therefore evolving.