In humans, the testicles hang outside the body to remain about 3C cooler than body temperature for optimum sperm production. Elephants’ testicles sit within their bodies, keeping them hotter than is ideal for sperm production and increasing the risk that the DNA in the sperm will be damaged. Vollrath argues that elephants evolved to produce multiple copies of the p53 gene to repair the DNA damage in their sperm.
Nothing ever evolves “to”. Those who did not have the extra copies did not produce children, therefore the population became dominated by those who did.
If evolution is real, explain Norfolk.
TIL elephants’ testicles sit within their bodies.
Tim’s blog is like a box of chocolates.
You’re right of course but also tilting at windmills. Just about every natural history programme paints evolution as the result of conscious responses to external stimuli.
Didn’t know elephants were so hot!!
By the way Steve, evolution works by weeding out the unfit. Does that fit Norfolk??
Of course one has to ask what the evolutionary advantage was, to hefalumps retaining their nuts inside the body? My suggestion would be lions. Hefalumps with swinging nuts didn’t reproduce but lions dined well.
Sounds like a load of old bollocks to me…
Dave, I heard an item on the wireless the other day regarding Orchids. Apparently the name is derived from testicles (but this was Al Beeb so could also be complete bollocks).
Regarding evolution weeding out the unfit, everyone who has gender re-assignment is rendered infertile. Good eh?
bloke in spain-
like the old schoolboy joke.
q.why do elephants paint their nuts red?
a.to disguise themselves and hide in cherry trees.
q.what’s the loudest noise in the jungle?
a.Giraffes eating cherries.
Bboy – evolution works by weeding out the unfit. Does that fit Norfolk??
Norfolk family trees look like a rhododendron.
I blame the change in the meaning of the word fit. If the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ were still generally understood to mean ‘survival of those best adapted to their environment’, then the public would understand evolutionary theory. Instead, the phrase is now understood to mean survival of people with gym membership, which is clearly stupid.
Hence there’s no longer a wonderfully snappy phrase to summarize evolutionary theory in four words. And people find themselves unwittingly following Lamarck rather than Darwin. Teleology rather than mechanics.
(PS my degree was in German not sciences; I’m happy for someone to now come and explain how I don’t know what I’m talking about here.)
How could a bird “evolve”?
Thousands of generations of disgusting little lizards, and suddenly one of them sprouts wings or summat? Bollocks.
Evolution is a Just So story for people who can’t handle the fact that God made the world in 7 days. Source: God.
Tilting – I regard Don Quixote as a thoroughly honourable man, one to be emulated. Possibly a tad misguided at times, but wholly honourable.
Steve,
I’d guess it’s something along the lines of:
Start with an animal a bit like an egg laying rat
Rat gradually becomes a bit longer -> squirrel
Squirrel gradually gets larger bits of skin between legs -> flying squirrel
Flying squirrel gets longer stiffer hair to help with airflow -> feathered flying squirrel
Feathered flying squirrel gets longer forelimbs to increase wingspan -> winged feathered flying squirrel
Wffs tail becomes stubby, feathers grow longer -> proto-bird
Proto-bird nose hardens to facilitate airflow -> almost-bird
Almost-bird limbs change to be what modern birds have -> bird
CD – thank you, but that explanation is absurd and fails Occam’s shaving test.
The simplest and best explanation is God made birds, simple as. Source: St Francis of Assisi.
But I am also interested in Fred Hoyle’s panspermia. Hoyle envisaged a sexy universe, pregnant with life and seething with genetic possibility, although he wasn’t fond of big bangs. The seemingly incredible ability of our biosphere to recapitulate complex lifeforms, shortly after world ending mass extinction events, is suggestive. No?
Hoyle was an atheist and a Yorkshireman, but nobody’s perfect.
Steve
Remember the Burgess Shale.
When you have trillions of species evolving over hundreds of millions of years surprising things can happen,
– Of course one has to ask what the evolutionary advantage was, to hefalumps retaining their nuts inside the body?
In the case of elephants it’s a derived characteristic; they didn’t evolve internal testes, they are descended (ahem) from an ancestor that had internal (non-descended) testes. Elephants are Afrotheria, a clade that split from the rest of Placentalia (which became Boreoeutheria; the vast majority of mammals) when Afica was isolated many tens of millions of years ago. Descended testes came about in Boreoeutheria, quite possibly an adaptation not initially related to sperm temperature. We have external testes because we come from an ancestor that did.
That’s another important aspect of evolution – it has to work with what it’s got. A good illustration is the difference between manatees and whales. Manatees are Afrotheria and have internal testes by default. Whales are Boreoeutheria and have to accommodate their descended testes internally, using a complex heat exchanger that cools arterial blood to the testes with venous blood from near the skin. Since closely related Hippos are also ascrotal, it’s possible your predation adaptation idea applies here (as well as not dragging giant balls through the water).
Er…PJF… we all evolved with internal testes. Or didn’t you notice. It’s whether they descend or not is the adaptation.
Didn’t know elephants were so hot!!
why do they have Big Ears ?
Coz him & Noddy fell out?
Birds are descended from feathered dinosaurs, not squirrels, perhaps a feathered dinosaur. So I’m told by the fossil record, I wasn’t there. If I recall the ideas, feathers were an adaptation for some other purpose (heat regulation?) that subsequently conferred an advantage in the direction of flight (escape from predation?). Birds are the only dinosaurs that made it through the mass extinction events, so it was a big advantage. Probably just being able to be elsewhere quickly.
– Thousands of generations of disgusting little lizards, and suddenly one of them sprouts wings or summat? Bollocks.
Christopher Booker had a similar problem accepting the idea of “half a bat”. You can see little shrews getting by okay, and bats are obviously whizz at whizzing around. But if bats came from shrews, presumably at some point there was a supposedly well adapted animal that was both a shrew with weird forelimbs and a bat that couldn’t fly. But it’s not clear that bats did come from shrews; genetic evidence puts them splitting off from a different line. There is a “tree down” hypothesis that suggests an insectivorous creature that hung from branches and dropped on to passing prey, with enlarged forelimbs to make catches. A clear route to flight is visible from there.
Evolution is difficult to get your head around. That’s why people give up and accept a creator deity, conveniently ignoring just how fucking weird, involved and complicated that is.
. . we all evolved with internal testes. Or didn’t you notice. It’s whether they descend or not is the adaptation.
That’s why I put “non-descended” in the first sentence re elephants and Afrotheria, and went on to mention the descended adaptation in Boreoeutheria.
The point being that your notion of earlier elephants having their nadgers eaten by lions is why surviving elephants have internal nadgers, is false. But it may explain the situation with the semi-aquatic ancestor of Hippos and cetaceans. External genitals are an easy target for a hungry fish that is almost impossible to see coming. So back in they go (but with adaptive cooling).
@Addolff – “Apparently the name is derived from testicles”
Yes. The Greek for testicle is “όρχις” or “orchis” using the Latin alphabet.
The question for the creator divinity community is how did God evolve?
Even the modern all-forgiving nice God may not have your best interests at heart, Steve.
Why is it that evolution is stupid, but then God put in all those really dumb features that are obvious kludge?
Humans have an appendix. A blind spot in the eye. The same number of neck vertebrae as a giraffe. An eating tube that doubles as a breathing tube, so we choke easily. Male nipples. Babies feet that attempt to “grasp”, but only for a few days.
If evolution is stupid, then God is stupider.
When you have created a universe with 10 to the n particles & need the processing power of 10 to the n to the power of n bits to keep track of it all, you’re entitled to a few mistakes, Chester.
Especially when you can only manage one thought every trillion years.
Oh, if you’re interested in knowing what the thought was. And this is far more profound than the question, the answer to which was 42. It was “BUGGER!”
post hoc ergo propter hoc
why doth treason never prosper…
I thought it was
We apologise for the inconvenience.
It always struck that the hardest part to get over to people about evolution is the concept of just how looooooooooong the times we are talking about. Humans are, for a variety of perfectly normal reasons, almost incapable of even imagining time at the sale that evolution works within. one million years is way beyond conceptualising for many if not most, yet it is a pretty short time in an evolutionary space.
That sign should be used on the toilet door when it’s out of order.
Acshully, Steve, God made the universe, and everything in it, in 6 days, (pretty impressive, huh?) as He rested on the seventh. And as He didn’t create the sun until day 4, He was also working in the dark!
Of course, we also know He create light on the first day, so probably a torch.
And this is far more profound than the question, the answer to which was 42. It was “BUGGER!”
Of course, 42 isn’t the answer at all…
But we all knew that.
PJF – you’re just jelly because I have a cross shaved into my hair like the Housemartins and you don’t.
I’m your brother don’t you know. x
Stand up, stand up, stand up.
It always struck that the hardest part to get over to people about evolution is the concept of just how looooooooooong the times we are talking about. Humans are, for a variety of perfectly normal reasons, almost incapable of even imagining time at the sale that evolution works within. one million years is way beyond conceptualising for many if not most, yet it is a pretty short time in an evolutionary space.
That’s true if you’re talking about large mammals, but not for e.g. microbes. Coronaviruses can evolve on a timescale of weeks, as we’ve recently seen.
That’s true if you’re talking about large mammals, but not for e.g. microbes. Coronaviruses can evolve on a timescale of weeks, as we’ve recently seen.
Ok. How long for a Corona virus to evolve into something that isn’t a Corona virus? Like a hanta virus? Or something new? Is it even possible? (These could be questions for Leggy)
I assume it must be, otherwise how do we get viruses?
You can look at a rat and at a dog and see that a looooooong time ago, there was a common ancestor.
How long for a virus to do the same?
Chernyy
Damifino how long it takes a corona virus to evolve into another sort of virus. However it only seems to take a few decades for them to evolve an immunity to antibiotics or whatever.
Something like smallpox, that causes lifelong immunity is rare. For obvious reasons.
The concept of a god that would be merciful to Steve is way too farfetched.
@Boganboy
Until we went on a concerted worldwide vaccine drive, smallpox was actually very common.
@ Nautical Nick
Firstly, God can see in the dark; secondly, He created light on (or, some translations suggest, *before*) the first day, so He wasn’t working in the dark except when He chose to do so; thirdly it was only *our* sun that was created on the fourth day – lots of other stars are much older; fifthly, we don’t know how long the first few evenings and mornings were – probably equivalent to several billion of our years if there was no sun to rise and set (or appear to do as the earth rotates on its axis).:-)