The spitting fish

[Nellie]

I would class myself as a devout atheist, but I have to ask the question:

Evolution: How did the Archer fish come about? (this is the fish that spits flies/other insects off branches)

I will leave all the subordinate questions to them that want to persue it, but it troubles me. "It takes millions of years" is no bettter than "God dreamt it in a nanosecond on thuesday when he did the rest of the fish". How does a fish evolve eyes and a mouth designed for spitting flies off trees?

[BooTx]

God created evolution duh.

[extarbags]

Why does it bother you so much?

[Nellie]

Why does it bother you so much?
It's a "loose end". If we are going to: /me points at fundamental christians and makes spaz noizes Then we should at least have answers to all their smug points. Fortunately, in my opinion, they can't see the wood for the trees, but it doesn't make it any less a valid point;

[extarbags]

Well, I don't know how it evolved, and I can't seem to find out using the internet, so a loose end it is. I would point out, however, that the notion that there is actually some dude that nobody has ever seen that sat down and designed and made the entire universe from scratch is pretty much *all* loose ends.

[Sharpe]

The best answer I am aware of is in Richard Dawkins second book the often overlooked Blind Watchmaker:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393315703/qid=1105853501/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/102-5754855-8367346

I don't recall if he addresses the archer fish specifically but he does take on other thorny problems in theoretical evolution like the evolution of flight and the complex eye in general. The analytical framework he uses to explain the evolution of the eye in particular IIRC should be applicable to your question about the archer fish.

My paraphrase of Dawkins is that evolution does NOT produce random designs as is the common trope. Evolution is a "design-like" process which weeds out bad designs, but does so without any intentional direction. Eh, I cannot explain like he does.

If you are honestly interested in a discussion of this type of issue, the book is HIGHLY recommended by me :0.

Dan

[Angie Gallant]

See, I just tend to assume that the whole accepting limits to human knowledge thing is part and parcel of the belief in evolution. To me evolution is a better explanation because, while not perfect, it has evidence that supports it. As opposed to throwing your hands up in the air and going "I dunno, must have been some unknowable power!" It's also a part of accepting that science gets things wrong and will get things wrong and weeding out the wrong stuff is the beautiful part.

So my answer is "We don't know. We may not uncover evidence in the fossil record that details the entire change in my lifetime. This does not bother me in the least."

[Andrew Mayer]

The problem is that you've got the question backwards:

In a universe where there are fish that can spit at insects off branches, why wouldn't it happen?

Life and order are things that happen in our universe, supreme being or not. As miraculous (or not) as the fundamental laws of nature and complexity that they arise out of.

Looking at the extreme cases and using that as proof of the existence of God is a poor way to go about showing how cool your divine intelligence is when "occassionaly some fucked up shit happens" covers those things just as well.

To my mind a far more compelling proof of the existence of God is the fact that life isn't spread all over the solar system, but focused in a specific place under a specific set of cirucmstances...

And here's another one to twist your noodle. Maybe life as we know it, and intelligence, as we know it, are kind of a shitty half baked version of the real cool things that happen in the universe, and that these "meta intelligences" are aware of us, and just thinks of us as a poor substitute for the real thing.

[wildpokerman]

See, I just tend to assume that the whole accepting limits to human knowledge thing is part and parcel of the belief in evolution. To me evolution is a better explanation because, while not perfect, it has evidence that supports it. As opposed to throwing your hands up in the air and going "I dunno, must have been some unknowable power!" It's also a part of accepting that science gets things wrong and will get things wrong and weeding out the wrong stuff is the beautiful part.

So my answer is "We don't know. We may not uncover evidence in the fossil record that details the entire change in my lifetime. This does not bother me in the least."

Hmm sounds strangely like the Christian line we don't know but we'll maybe find out in the afterlife. Sounds like agnosticism as a religion comes up as short as the big three motheisms today. How come agnostics and athiests get so peeved when a Christian or Muslim says take it on faith but they aren't bothered that their whole worldview is just as based on faith in unverified facts as well?

[Tim Partlett]

Your failing to see the fundamental difference between scientific and theologic thinking, yuri: dynamic versus fixed. Angie was describing how those who subscribe to evolution accept that it is not a perfect theory, but that it will be perfected over time. That is the nature of science: it is a search for knowledge, not the provider of truth. Christians, at least those that believe in an inerrant bible like creationists, are completely the opposite. Christians provide the truth, and do not seek to perfect their understanding. The truth is already detailed in the bible, and they do no accept any changes to it, no matter how strong the evidence is.

[MikeTwain]

The truth is already detailed in the bible, and they do no accept any changes to it, no matter how strong the evidence is.

To quote Ben Kenobi in defense of Christianity, "Your eyes can deceive you, don't trust them."

[Duality]

The truth is, there is no fish.

[Angie Gallant]

Hmm sounds strangely like the Christian line we don't know but we'll maybe find out in the afterlife. Sounds like agnosticism as a religion comes up as short as the big three motheisms today. How come agnostics and athiests get so peeved when a Christian or Muslim says take it on faith but they aren't bothered that their whole worldview is just as based on faith in unverified facts as well?

Because I don't expect anyone to change their beliefs. I fully accept that everything I know may be wrong, and that even if it is then the system is working as intended and some time down the line things will get straightened out. I may not be alive when that happens, but who cares? I'm still living and have smaller but more personally important things to worry about than whether I've got the answers to every question.

[magnet]

IIRC, creationists are incredulous that archer fish can hit their targets when their vision is hampered by refraction of light at the air-water interface.

However, as explained at http://www.physicsclassroom.com/Class/refrn/U14L1f.html, archer fish position themselves directly below their targets (usually at rest on a branch, not in flight as some creationists would have you believe). This position minimizes distortion due to refraction. After that, it's simply a matter of developing a strong enough stream of spit, and natural selection is nothing if not a great personal trainer.

edit:

Incidentally, unlike hardcore FPS players, archer fish are definitely not one-shot-one-kill. A group of them gather around potential prey, and they fire a volley of shots at it. The real trick from an evolutionary perspective is not the kill, but - like an NBA rebounder - predicting where the prey will fall and getting there before anyone else.

The Journal of Experimental Biology 205, 3321?3326 (2002)

Predicting three-dimensional target motion: how archer fish determine where to
catch their dislodged prey
Samuel Rossel, Julia Corlija and Stefan Schuster

On locating an insect prey on a twig above the water
surface, a group of archer fish can shoot it down using
powerful jets of water. The insect, dislodged by one of the
shots, falls on a ballistic path towards the water surface,
where it is devoured by the first fish to arrive. We report
that the archer fish can predict the point where the
dislodged prey will later hit the water surface and move in
a straight line towards that point, thus enabling it to
arrive as fast as possible. Only about 100 ms after prey is
dislodged, the fish initiate a quick turn that aligns their
body axis right towards where the prey will later land, and
not to the actual position of the prey at that moment. In
contrast to other known examples of three-dimensional
target interception in man and animals, archer fish can
head straight to the predicted point of catch without the
need of any further visual feedback. Moreover, archer fish
can predict the point of incidence of a target, regardless of
the angle at which the prey takes off with respect to the
initial orientation of the fish. To perform this remarkable
task, archer fish extract a minimum set of independent
variables that fix the point of incidence, but do not
extrapolate the target?s spatial trajectory.

[shift6]

I would class myself as a devout atheist, but I have to ask the question:

Evolution: How did the Archer fish come about? (this is the fish that spits flies/other insects off branches)

I will leave all the subordinate questions to them that want to persue it, but it troubles me. "It takes millions of years" is no bettter than "God dreamt it in a nanosecond on thuesday when he did the rest of the fish". How does a fish evolve eyes and a mouth designed for spitting flies off trees?
The problem is that there is no way to know what steps led along an actual evolutionary path to any particular creature. This is one of my personal particular sticking points about Evolution. At best, certain steps in the process can be supposed to have come about one leading to the next and creatures in nature pointed to as examples of those steps. But there's no way to be particularly precise as step A to B to C, like there is in explaining every step of a chemical reaction in chemistry, for instance.

Although I have to say it was amusing that despite your clear opening sentence declaring you as an atheist, three of the first four replies were bashing or mocking creationism/religion. I apologize in advance if you don't get very good answers to your questions here, Nellie. Partlett and a few others are good QT3 resources on the topic though.

[Bren]

The problem is that there is no way to know what steps led along an actual evolutionary path to any particular creature. This is one of my personal particular sticking points about Evolution. At best, certain steps in the process can be supposed to have come about one leading to the next and creatures in nature pointed to as examples of those steps. But there's no way to be particularly precise as step A to B to C, like there is in explaining every step of a chemical reaction in chemistry, for instance.

It's possible to trace the evolution of a particular species. What's uncertain is how evolution developes and chooses particular traits, or new species. There are some pretty compelling theories, though. Natural selection, for example.

Questioning capital E "Evolution" as a whole is like questioning "Physics" as a whole.

[magnet]

The problem is that there is no way to know what steps led along an actual evolutionary path to any particular creature. This is one of my personal particular sticking points about Evolution. At best, certain steps in the process can be supposed to have come about one leading to the next and creatures in nature pointed to as examples of those steps. But there's no way to be particularly precise as step A to B to C, like there is in explaining every step of a chemical reaction in chemistry, for instance.
I don't see this as a problem.

As an analogy, there are several factors that are known to govern the development and progression of cancer. For an individual patient, though, "at best, certain steps in the process can be supposed to have come about one leading to the next" and the responses of lab animals "pointed to as examples of those steps. But there's no way to be particularly precise as step A to B to C, like there is in explaining every step of a chemical reaction in chemistry, for instance."

We can't tell whether a particular case of cancer was caused by smoking, ingested carcinogens, radiation exposure, or genetics. That doesn't stop us from coming up with useful and detailed theories regarding how normal cells become cancer cells, how to prevent cancer, and how to treat it.

It certainly doesn't require us to posit a supernatural cause for cancer.

[Tim Partlett]

Likewise we don't know exactly how the Egyptians built the Pyramids, with steps A to B to C, but we can figure out how they most likely built them, based on on understanding of engineering and their available technology. Or we could just take the creationist/ID route and say "god made them" and spend the rest of eternity pulling holes in everyone else's theory.

[Euri]

The problem is that there is no way to know what steps led along an actual evolutionary path to any particular creature

This is absolutely false.

Many, many species have very clear evolutionary lines going back millions of years. The larger and more boney the creature is, in general, the more steps we know. Squishy things can be a real bitch to figure out because they don't leave fossils with any great frequency.

Evolution is beautiful because there is no way to really predict exactly what will arise. Any tiny variation, whether within a species or within a locality, can lead to an entirely new species that may have something unique in all the world. Projectiles aren't really that uncommon in the animal world, and creatures that can bring in food from outside their normal habitat have a pretty large advantage over those that do not.

[shift6]

So as you can see, Nellie, not only do we not have the answer to your question "how did the archer fish come about", but in lieu of spending time researching it (like real biologists do), we here make multiple references to creationism, despite that it has nothing to do with your legitimate biology question. Furthermore, anyone who answers your question by saying "well we don't know yet because..." will be thoroughly rebuked because he believes another explanation altogether, despite that he didn't bring it up. In fact, even those here who are declared atheists and who express any doubt in the limits of our knowledge on this subject will be essentially called creationists.

Again, sorry you had to post this here on QT3. You may do far better posting this legitimate biological question in talk.origins, a Usenet group which was just as good ten years ago as it is now. I'd also like to refer you to a center of evolutionary knowledge (including real biologists) at the talk.origins FAQ located at http://talkorigins.org/ where I'd guess your question about the archer fish has at least been looked at [edit: yep (http://www.google.com/custom?q=archer+fish&sa=Search&sitesearch=www.talkorigins.org)]. Let us know what you find, we'll be here contributing nothing whatsoever.

[Andrew Mayer]

Guess what dude? You don't get to apologize for the forum.

[John Many Jars]

If there were really a God, he'd have created a swallowing fish.

[Bren]

LOL shifty, you're one of the worst offenders for non sequiter tangents.

In any case, I'm not a biologist (see my "I'm not a economist" disclaimer) but since you did ask and haven't really got anything approaching a reply, I will add my 2 cents.

The "millions of years" thing implies that evolution rolls the dice, creating "mutations" as new traits or new species, and iterates like mad. Some of these mutations might fail, either causing a miscarriage or birth defect. Natural selection sees that inferior traits are removed from the gene pool. But the success -- the "magic" -- of evolution is in the iteration.

So-called "genetic algorithm" software simulations demonstrate remarkably how completely random messing about with genetic "code", plus the process of natural selection, plus a lot of iteration, can result in some amazing advancement, and even occasional "leaps", when run for many many many generations. I've experimented with GAs myself, and while they aren't very practical in terms of useful learning (yet), they are remarkable laboratories to demonstrate the viability of the mutation, iteration, natural selection theory.

Let's say some member of a species has an "ah ha!" moment, for example when a fish, maybe even accidentally, leaps out of the water, hits a branch, and knocks down a bug, and eats it. This Einstein of a fish actually makes the connection, and tries it again and again, until he's gotten quite good at it. All his buddies think he's crazy, but he's getting fat, and he's furthermore feeding all the babes, so he's spawning like crazy, and he's teaching his kids how to do this, etc etc etc. Incidentall,y this is a second way that Archer fish hunt.

Then, let's say some way down the road, some descendant of this Einstein fish is born with a mal-formed tail or something, as the result of mutation or birth defect, and she can't jump out of the water. But she's another of these "Ah ha!" fish and before she starves to death, she decides to try something really weird with her mouth, and discovers she can squirt water. Maybe initially she's only squirting a couple of inches, just enough to make up for the fact she can't jump as high.

Now her kids know two ways to hunt, and let's say a few of them favour the spitting thing. They're spitting like crazy, and so are their off spring, so much so that by the time they're of a spawning age, the muscles of their mouths are built up a bit, and this gets into their DNA. Multiply this by a thousand iterations, and you get the Archer fish.

[MikeSofaer]

shift6, that link on talk origins doesn't have anything from them on the archer fish. And Nellie did mention god in the original post.

Nellie, I have a couple comments on your initial question:

1) Why is "It takes a long time" a weaker argument than "god did it"? Is it similarly weak when applied to the formation of stalactites?

2) You are asking about the evolution of a behavior, not a physical attribute. I think it's easy to see how a fish would evolve the ability to expel from his mouth water he did not want to swallow, so it's no surprise that a fish can spit. To me the question is "what would cause a fish to spit at an insect?"

[magnet]

So as you can see, Nellie, not only do we not have the answer to your question "how did the archer fish come about", but in lieu of spending time researching it (like real biologists do), we here make multiple references to creationism, despite that it has nothing to do with your legitimate biology question. Furthermore, anyone who answers your question by saying "well we don't know yet because..." will be thoroughly rebuked because he believes another explanation altogether, despite that he didn't bring it up. In fact, even those here who are declared atheists and who express any doubt in the limits of our knowledge on this subject will be essentially called creationists.

Again, sorry you had to post this here on QT3. You may do far better posting this legitimate biological question in talk.origins, a Usenet group which was just as good ten years ago as it is now. I'd also like to refer you to a center of evolutionary knowledge (including real biologists) at the talk.origins FAQ located at http://talkorigins.org/ where I'd guess your question about the archer fish has at least been looked at [edit: yep (http://www.google.com/custom?q=archer+fish&sa=Search&sitesearch=www.talkorigins.org)]. Let us know what you find, we'll be here contributing nothing whatsoever.
First of all, we did answer the question. Archer fish don't sniper fish out of the sky like the creationists claim; they get together and collectively squirt stationary insects until one of them gets lucky. This seems to me no more inexplicable than all the small miracles of evolution.

Second of all, if the OP wants additional explanation then he should say so rather than waste time on your link, which consists of five carelessly Googled threads:

Two regarding a certain Mr. Archer
Two regarding archers who carry quivers
One that asked the OP's question and was ignored

[BooTx]

If there were really a God, he'd have created a swallowing fish.

Ahahahaha.

[shift6]

shift6, that link on talk origins doesn't have anything from them on the archer fish.
I simply linked their own search (google powered, natch) of their own web site because I saw a few hits. If the search results suck, OK. I was only pointing out another potential source of info which ended up being of very low potential, apparently.

And Nellie did mention god in the original post.
True, he did mention God. However, in my second post I was pretty much referring to the replies responding either to my first post or (curiously) to Angie about creationism. Because she expressed some reservation about our ability to answer the question well, clearly she's a creationist nutjob. To be fair, there were a few good replies to Nellie's original question, especially the link to Dawkins' book by Sharpe.

First of all, we did answer the question. Archer fish don't sniper fish out of the sky like the creationists claim; they get together and collectively squirt stationary insects until one of them gets lucky. This seems to me no more inexplicable than all the small miracles of evolution.
The question was not "how do they hit fish with water". The question was "how does a fish evolve eyes and a mouth designed for spitting flies off trees?" and I don't see that this was answered. He didn't ask what are the odds or what do creationists think about it (although you were kind enough to include that bit), he asked how this behavior/ability evolved. Describing what they do, which is what your post did, is good information but it hardly answers "how did this come to be so?" In fact, the only phrase in your entire diatribe remotely related to "how" was "...it's simply a matter of developing a strong enough stream of spit..." which again is simply "it evolves", but not answering "how" it evolves.

In fact, MikeSofaer expressed an related question at the end of his post, "what would cause a fish to spit at an insect?" which is at least as important as the physical mechanism. No sir, you didn't answer the question yet.

Second of all, if the OP wants additional explanation then he should say so rather than waste time on your link, which consists of five carelessly Googled threads:
Well as I stated to Mike, this was simply the results URL linked as the result of the google search on the talk origins site. I only suggested to Nellie that there "may" be more info there and then edited the post with a quick link. When running the search, I briefly noted that the first result says "How are the Archer Fish and Rubber Crab explained" and presumed that link and the rest would point to good discussions. It didn't. It happens.

In fact, I'm rather disappointed they don't deal with the question.

[Andrew Mayer]

The question was "how does a fish evolve eyes and a mouth designed for spitting flies off trees?" and I don't see that this was answered.

They don't. The evolve eyes and a mouth, and then start spitting at trees.

He didn't ask what are the odds

100%

or what do creationists think about it (although you were kind enough to include that bit),

All glory to God, the most high!

he asked how this behavior/ability evolved. Describing what they do, which is what your post did, is good information but it hardly answers "how did this come to be so?" In fact, the only phrase in your entire diatribe remotely related to "how" was "...it's simply a matter of developing a strong enough stream of spit..." which again is simply "it evolves", but not answering "how" it evolves.

Ever played Life? Ever run a simulated a-life experiment? Shit loves to evolve. Once you define the "food" add the "sex" and the "death" all you need to do is close the lid and the shit goes crazy.

Mouth, eyes, intelligence aren't the cause, they're the effects of evolution. Watching people "ooh and ahh" over the majesty of mouths and eyes and shit is like watching someone who can't get over that click-clack ball executive thingie, or losing it over the "drinking bird". It's great and all, but the principles behind it are far more interesing.

[Mark Asher]

I would class myself as a devout atheist, but I have to ask the question:

Evolution: How did the Archer fish come about? (this is the fish that spits flies/other insects off branches)

I will leave all the subordinate questions to them that want to persue it, but it troubles me. "It takes millions of years" is no bettter than "God dreamt it in a nanosecond on thuesday when he did the rest of the fish". How does a fish evolve eyes and a mouth designed for spitting flies off trees?

It probably didn't spit things off trees out of water initially. It probably adapted an underwater hunting technique to hunt above water when underwater food supplies were low.

Suppose it evolved in time when tiny organisms clung to coral and seaweed and one of the ways to remove them for eating was to spot them and squirt at them underwater. You can still eject water while underwater. That kind of spotting and squirting behavior could be adapted to above water hunting I would guess. If the fish eyes are sharp and it's powerful enough to squirt underwater, it would squirt like a high powered gun above water.

[Nellie]

Dont you just love it when an hours worth of post goes up in smoke.

In a nutshell.....

Reading Dawkins.

Getting the kind of responses I was expecting.


1) Why is "It takes a long time" a weaker argument than "god did it"? Is it similarly weak when applied to the formation of stalactites?

It's not weaker, it's as weak and doesn't actually answer the question. In defence of Evolution I suspect that were the question put to a Biologist then a more detailed and satisfactory, if still incomplete, answer might be more forthcoming. I also suspect however that I could approach the most wise and learned Theologian and still get the answer "God did it".

Regarding Stalactites, yes it is. Granted it is at least partially true (something which is not entirely certain regarding our little fishy) but it no more explains the process of the formation of a Stalactite in any meaningful sense than "god did it".

[Houngan]

Good grief, people, just answer the question!

1. There was a fish
2. This fish fed on surface insects, and occasionally slightly-above-surface insects
3. This fish had a behavioral trait that was different from other fish, he tended to expel water when he rose to the surface to attack
4. Occasionally, this would dislodge an insect that was slightly higher than his normal prey, imparting superior reproductive fitness to that particular fish
5. His genes propagated faster than his neighbor's, due to better ability to feed himself
6. A few million years passed
7. Eventually, through positive reinforcement, the fish types with stronger ability to eject water tended to hunt the surface more often, and reproduce more often than their weaker-cheeked/jaws/whatever the spitter is brethren.
7a Interestingly, at the same time arose a variant of this fish, probably on the other end of the trait distribution, that learned the surface hunting wasn't so good, due to his poor spitter. He started hunting below the surface more often, and probably evolved better dark vision, or quicker swimming, or something else.
7b Or he didn't, and his type died off, never to return. (see every species ever, except what is alive right this instant)
8. ad infinitum to the archer fish

See? Simple. Roughly accurate, too. This is the base form of natural selection. Of course, it could have gone the exact opposite way, and you had an animal that, via mutation, had developed the ability to spit through a mature tree, and was annihilating insects when it was attacking. It's offspring were then selected for weaker spitting, until the archer fish! Of course, Occam has something to say about that.

H.

[mouselock]

The problem is that there is no way to know what steps led along an actual evolutionary path to any particular creature. This is one of my personal particular sticking points about Evolution. At best, certain steps in the process can be supposed to have come about one leading to the next and creatures in nature pointed to as examples of those steps. But there's no way to be particularly precise as step A to B to C, like there is in explaining every step of a chemical reaction in chemistry, for instance.


I'm not sure if it's just a flawed analogy, or a matter of scope, but there are many, many chemical reactions that aren't understood. Saying a chemical reaction goes from A to B to C doesn't really mean anything. It's like saying we went from rodents to primates to humans. The only compelling part of a chemical reaction is that generally it happens in a time span you can see, so you have more of a feeling of belief in them. However, even that can be wrong. (Cold fusion circa mid-late 80s comes to mind.)

The truth is every branch of science has things which are observed, explanations which explain the observations, corrections to those explanations, unexplained phenomena, etc. And all of these fit together in a meshwork which form a theory. The theory of evolution is no different than the theory of atomic chemistry (which, as it turns out, in the strictest and most classical sense, is utter bunk: There are no atoms, electrons don't orbit the nucleus, in fact, electrons aren't even little bundles of charge occupying a specific spot in space.)

As previously pointed out, the difference between science and theology tends to come down to whether or not one tries to modify the theory or the observation when there's a conflict. Science (eventually) tends to modify the theory, theology tends to modify (or "interpret" if you will) the observation. Most heavily rational people find the former far less upsetting than the latter. Vice versa for heavily "religious" people.

Of course, science can be a religion too. (As is very evident every time a particularly bold new theory shows up.)

[Bren]

There are no atoms, electrons don't orbit the nucleus, in fact, electrons aren't even little bundles of charge occupying a specific spot in space.

You, sir, just blew my fucking mind.

Of course, science can be a religion too. (As is very evident every time a particularly bold new theory shows up.)

Heresay!!!

[Dunc]

Good grief, people, just answer the question!

1. There was a fish
2. This fish fed on surface insects, and occasionally slightly-above-surface insects
3. This fish had a behavioral trait that was different from other fish, he tended to expel water when he rose to the surface to attack
4. Occasionally, this would dislodge an insect that was slightly higher than his normal prey, imparting superior reproductive fitness to that particular fish
5. His genes propagated faster than his neighbor's, due to better ability to feed himself
6. A few million years passed
7. Eventually, through positive reinforcement, the fish types with stronger ability to eject water tended to hunt the surface more often, and reproduce more often than their weaker-cheeked/jaws/whatever the spitter is brethren.
7a Interestingly, at the same time arose a variant of this fish, probably on the other end of the trait distribution, that learned the surface hunting wasn't so good, due to his poor spitter. He started hunting below the surface more often, and probably evolved better dark vision, or quicker swimming, or something else.
7b Or he didn't, and his type died off, never to return. (see every species ever, except what is alive right this instant)
8. ad infinitum to the archer fish

See? Simple. Roughly accurate, too. This is the base form of natural selection. Of course, it could have gone the exact opposite way, and you had an animal that, via mutation, had developed the ability to spit through a mature tree, and was annihilating insects when it was attacking. It's offspring were then selected for weaker spitting, until the archer fish! Of course, Occam has something to say about that.

H.

I was thinking about this too; here's a slightly different variation:

1. There's a fish again, and an insect (he gets to level up too in this version.).
2. The fish gets pretty good at spotting and eating insects on the surface of the water.
3. Since the insects are getting fed on, they make shorter stops on the water, so
4. The fish begins to watch for the insects as they approach or leave the water - develop vision that's better adjusted for seeing things out of the water. (Probably start jumping too).
5. The insects are still getting eaten, so some of them begin to sting and bite; some are poisonous.
6. Fish that aren't able to spit out stinging (or poisonous) insects quickly, die, or at least miss a meal. (Probably other fish had this ability as well, from other prey with stingers.)
7. Fish in areas where there are lots of stinging, biting insects get good at spitting. Taste, then spit if it's bad.
8. Not a huge jump from here to, "See an insect, spit, then taste"

Dunc

[Tim Partlett]

Regarding Stalactites, yes it is. Granted it is at least partially true (something which is not entirely certain regarding our little fishy) but it no more explains the process of the formation of a Stalactite in any meaningful sense than "god did it".

There is a difference. With the dynamics of evolution and an infinite amount of time any animal that you can think of that can exist on the earth is possible. However, even with an infinite amount of time, there is no guarantee that a supernatural being would appear to create even something as simple as an amoeba.

[Nellie]

Only because you believe that to be the case (as do I for that matter, but it is somewhat beside the point).

Ultimately I know the two arguments will remain diametrically opposed so you might as well boil it down to sitting opposite each other and taking it in turns to say "It takes millions of years" and "God did it".

The original point which just happened to use an Archer fish (I find Cetaceans and Bats/Flying foxes just as mystifying to be honest) was that we have a theory which to the average layman states that living things change gradually over long periods of time to stay ahead in the race to survive. Yet a quick look around the place seems to suggest there are a lot of living things with traits that do not seem to lend themselves to gradual change, how do you gradually learn to fly/glide as a squirrel? it seems a pretty terminal learning curve to me.

[edit] to qualify the final point further, lets have the squirrel jumping from branch to branch as a starting point. When and how does the Gene for X (armpit hair or something) become the gene for big flaps of skin, become the gene for wings? And I guess to take it further does behaviour drive the physical change or does a physical change drive the behaviour where it is not something as simple as improving on an existing characteristic (being able to run quite fast to being able to run really fast)?

[Tim Partlett]

It's not just belief, Nellie, it is about as much a fact as anything can be a fact. Even most creationists accept that given an infinite amount of time, and the dynamics of evolution, all life on earth is possible. They just don't accept that there has been enough time on earth for this to happen, either because they believe the odds are too slim for it to have occurred in billions of years, or because they are young earthers and believe the earth is only a few thousand years old.

Given an infinite amount of time, anything in the physical world is possible. As Dawkins points out in the Selfish Gene, if you have an infinite amount of time the molecules of a stone statue will one day move in such a way that the statue will animate itself and walk across the road. What definitely has no guarantee of happening in an infinite amount of time is that a supernatural being, i.e. one not of this physical world, will come and create some physical entity in it. There is no guarantee of any supernatural being no matter how much time you have, and so this is purely an article of faith.

[Nellie]

Given an infinite amount of time, anything in the physical world is possible.

We seem to be reaching a point of philosophical explanation rather than a somewhat more , dare I say it, scientific approach. "Given enough time why shouldn't there be fish that spit at flies, or gliding squirrels" seems to me to be on a par with "God did it" and "it took millions of years" in that whilst they all offer a broad explanation they also all strike me as being a "thats what I think about it, end of discussion" sort of reply.

I don't need convincing about the lack of supernatural beings, I don't believe in them to start with let alone the chances of them coming back to give us flying worms or underwater butterflys or something equally bizarre.

I can't pretend to even muster the illusion of respect for creationism as an explanation, but I will at least listen to an attempt to put it forward on the off chance the clouds part and choirs of angels sing, but frankly I think we all know what I think of the chances of that happening.

So we can accept that I believe that Evolution is the most probable explanation we have. We can also take it that with the evidence around us I can accept at a base level the "given enough time..../it takes millions of years" as a broad explanation. The bits that are of specific interest to me are those that to the layman's (ie mine) eye don't seem to fit in with the generally accepted pub answers.

Yes I know I could/should have asked the question on a different forum if I wanted all the answers, but I chose this one ;)

[mouselock]

Has anyone brought up that we can actually see evolution in action in certain organisms that go through generations incredibly fast? Those superbacteria that are resistant to antibiotics out there are a pretty good case for believing the entire idea of evolutionary pressure on biology. A few mutate to ways that make them more resistant to antibiotics, the rest die, and the mutated ones are left to reproduce. They subsequently further mutate, some to better resistance, some to worse, and the better resistance ones grow faster and crowd out the previous generations (the worse just die). Repeat over 10,000 generations (which, at a life cycle of 6 hours, isn't obscenely difficult), boom, superbugs.

So far as I know fruit flies have also been shown to respond to evolutionary pressure. 24 hour life cycle there I believe.

[Tim Partlett]

Well, Nellie, given the physical world we live in, one is possible (evolution through time) and the other is impossible (creation by supernatural force). I don't see how you can get more fundamentally different than that. Creationists will argue that evolution is improbable, but saying that any evolutionary outcome is possible given infinite time is not the same as saying that god willed it. It is not an article of faith: it is a fact.

[MikeSofaer]

Nellie, I don't think of "It takes a long time" as an argument. "It takes a long time" is a specific response to the standard argument from incredulity.

The argument is that sexual reproduction, transcription error and solar radiation combine to maintain diverse gene pools which are continually expanding in all directions (if you think in terms of vector spaces of genes the idea of direction makes sense,) and natural selection cuts back the gene pool unevenly, causing the resulting shapes to change, move or split. That is how species change, split and die.

Some people respond to that by saying "I can't believe that process could result in so much diversity, it doesn't make sense" and to them you say "It takes a long time, if you had any idea of how long a million years was you wouldn't have that problem"

[SolomonGrundy]

I'm not sure why it is so hard to believe.
We have opposible thumbs, there is an Octopi that can mimic other animals, Dung beetles-WTF are they thinking? 8 gazillion differnet spiecies of insects. Bats that drink blood exc exc.
There is no rhyme or reason to nature other than, the fittest survive, and that changes as the enviroment changes. Maybe 30,000 years ago, the water where the Angler lives was short on prey. But there were alot of flying bugs. To survive, the old Angler prolly started by jumping at the bugs. Somwhere along the line one spit. It survived easier than the jumpers, and it's line survived. Then one got better eyes,,,rinse repeat.
the one thing that creationists cant glom onto is that the old speices DIE OUT. The fossil record is about 5% of what was really around. The Angler is sucessful in it's tiny niche, hence a very small area for a fossil record and one change in the enviroment there and boom it's gone.
what's next the Spider? It must be gods will for these little bastards to build webs of a geometric design right in front of my door.

[Qwijybo]

to qualify the final point further, lets have the squirrel jumping from branch to branch as a starting point. When and how does the Gene for X (armpit hair or something) become the gene for big flaps of skin, become the gene for wings? And I guess to take it further does behaviour drive the physical change or does a physical change drive the behaviour where it is not something as simple as improving on an existing characteristic (being able to run quite fast to being able to run really fast)?

In this particular example, I don't see why body hair genes would have to change to anything to provoke this trait. There are genes (at least in humans, and I would assume analogs in many other mammals) that can produce syndactyly (www.e-hand.com/hw/hw019.htm), or webbed fingers. So perhaps some proto-flying-squirrel has this syndrome and has it in such a way that it does not impair its movement, rather it allows the squirrel to make slightly longer and more controlled jumps, perhaps just enough so that it improves its chances of finding food, safety and a mate. Repeat for many generations and you have a flying squirrel.

From a similar (or, heck, even the same) set of circumstances, there may be another ancient rodent that starts developing longer, thinner, more spread out fingers in conjuction with the syndactyly. And after a multitude of generations, voila!, you have a bat.

I think it's this "time passes, then voila!" part that some people find distasteful during discussions about evolution. But it's like my Mom, who turns 60 next year; in her mind (and mine) she is still the thirty-something Mom of my youth. And while there were the natural physical changes of age between, say Year 30 and Year 31 (a couple more gray hairs, a wrinkle or two), it is nothing compared to the changes between Year 30 and Year 60. So sometimes now she wakes up in the morning, enters the bathroom and thinks to herself, "My God, who is that old woman in the mirror?" 30 years pass, and voila! So if that much change can occur incrementally (and, on a day-to-day basis, imperceptibly) over a few decades, imagine the possibility of change over millenia.

[SolomonGrundy]

Of course the real agrguement between evolution and creationism isn't about which one is right at all. It is a control issue.
It would be easy enough to say the big guy created evolution as part of a complex system and just let it go nuts. Kinda like a big game of Sim Life.
But no, evolution is a lie...there is no way we came from apes...we are Gd's children! That is impossible. Anyone that has spent any time with an ape or a monkey knows that we are related.

I wonder how the creationist explain the less tasteful creatures , like African bed bugs that disembowel the male after breeding, the grasshopper, dogs with some bizzare built in homosexual behavior....
What about tapeworms,Ebola,flesh eating flies, and other truly nasty stuff. Why would gd want to make this stuff?

[Pace]

Of course the real agrguement between evolution and creationism isn't about which one is right at all. It is a control issue.
It would be easy enough to say the big guy created evolution as part of a complex system and just let it go nuts. Kinda like a big game of Sim Life.
But no, evolution is a lie...there is no way we came from apes...we are Gd's children! That is impossible. Anyone that has spent any time with an ape or a monkey knows that we are related.

I wonder how the creationist explain the less tasteful creatures , like African bed bugs that disembowel the male after breeding, the grasshopper, dogs with some bizzare built in homosexual behavior....
What about tapeworms,Ebola,flesh eating flies, and other truly nasty stuff. Why would gd want to make this stuff?

According to some, "To Test our faith". You know, coz God likes fucking with our heads.

God: "HA HA HA! Ebola! Let's see how they explain that one! No one will believe in me now!"

[Andrew Mayer]

Monty Python's Ode to Creation

All things dull and ugly
All creatures short and squat
All things rude and nasty
The Lord God made the lot

Each little snake that poisons
Each little wasp that stings
He made their brutish venom
He made their horrid wings

All things sick and cancerous
All evils great and small
All things foul and dangerous
The Lord God made them all

Each nasty little hornet
Each beastly little squid
Who made the spiky urchin
Who made the sharks? He did

All things scabbed and ulcerous
All pox both great and small
Putrid, foul and gangrenous
The Lord God made them all

- Amen -

http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/monty_python_pic.jpg

[deccan]

And I guess to take it further does behaviour drive the physical change or does a physical change drive the behaviour where it is not something as simple as improving on an existing characteristic (being able to run quite fast to being able to run really fast)?

Behavior never drives physical changes that can be inherited (unless you want to factor in crazy people deliberately exposing themselves to mutagenic effects, i.e. "Geek Love"). We are talking about Darwinian evolution here, not Lamarkian evolution.

And to help you get over the incredulity mount, it's helpful to remember just because a particular adaptation is used for a particular purpose now, it is not necessarily the case that in a more primitive state, the survival value of that adaptation was in the same purpose. So it may well be beyond credibility that proto-wings could be useful for flight, but that doesn't mean that it didn't have survival value for some other purpose.

However, it should be conceded that the vast majority of questions like, "How did this particular feature evolve?" will probably never be resolved. Most evolutionary biology explanations for this are what some scientists have called "just-so" stories, stories that present a series of logically plausible steps whereby a particular adaptation could have physically evolved, but trying to definitively say that a particular adaptation actually did come about through a specific sequence of steps is probably impossible, given how little we can know of the actual environment in which the ancestors of the species in question lived in, the impossibility of observing the behaviors of the ancestral form and its interactions with the ecosystem etc.

[Houngan]

Nellie,

The usual path will be a characteristic that becomes more useful due to an environmental change. As the characteristic grows in importance (say 1% better water retaining ability during a drought), its impact on the survivability of the animal increases. If the trait is inheritable, then the larger brood of this successful animal will spread a bit faster through the population, carrying the characteristic with them. As you get a breeding population of these critters, the degree of the characteristic will naturally fluctuate between animals, with the more pronounced characteristic-having animals enjoying greater success. There's always a bell curve, but the curve keeps scooting right, so long as the trait is important, and enhancement also causes improvement.

Note that in many, many, manymanymany cases, a trait will only be momentarily useful, in geological time. Then, when conditions change, the trait most likely starts moving out of the population, as it usually takes energy to support whatever structure it was, thus selecting for the left side of the curve, rather than the right. Some times, it even wipes out a population, as in the case of the Irish Deer.

H.

[Derek Meister]

For comedy value, look at how the creationism/evolution argument progresses on a relatively mainstream gaming forum (http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t=152939) compared to here.

Just because evolution is taught in the public schools does not mean it's science.

[Nellie]

Personally I liked this response a few posts down.

-NO-ONE KNOWS. JESUS CHRIST, SHUT THE F*CK UP. THE NEXT PERSON TO SAY "EVOLUTION IS ONLY A THEORY" WILL BE THROWN OFF A CLIFF WITH A PIECE OF PAPER READING "GRAVITY IS ONLY A THEORY" NAILED TO THEIR CHEST.