• Question: How quickly can an animal evolve?

    Asked by moveslikejaggard to Alessandro, Angela, Claudia, Marina, Phil on 12 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Phillip Wilkinson

      Phillip Wilkinson answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      Evolution is caused from the random mutation of DNA. Say for example, you have a monkey and it has a baby monkey and that baby monkey has a mutation where it has no fur. Having no fur, could mean that it doesn’t overheat as much and is generally a positive thing. Now because this is a positive thing, the monkey will survive to breed with other monkeys and the mutated ‘furless’ gene is passed on to future generations. So as you can imagine this is an incredibly slow process and is dependent on how many of the animal there are, how often they reproduce etc.

      However! There’s also ‘cultural’ evolution, where a trick learnt from a previous generation is passed on to future generations. For example, when we first domesticated dogs they realized that by working together they get more food and we get more security. Its actually said that if you take a wild wolf it would take 7 generations (the first wolfs great great great great great grand son) for its aggressive nature to be weened out.

      As always there are exceptions to this rule and its a very complicated area once you start digging into it!

      -> http://www.cracked.com/article_19213_7-animals-that-are-evolving-right-before-our-eyes.html

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