Science Memes

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Spearmint (mander.xyz)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 months ago (3 children)

There are billions of cows, chickens, etc. in the world. Purely by numbers, those species are incredibly successful. Yet, If not for humans finding them tasty and easy to manage, we would not have bred them to this degree and they wouldn't have reached this degree of success. Somehow, against all odds, being tasty/something we want to eat has somehow become an incredibly valuable and successful adaptation.

Evolution is absolutely wild, and this really drives home the fact that evolution isn't about the individual's likelihood of survival, but their likelihood of reproduction.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Depends on how you define success. If you look purely at population numbers, yes. However, if you look at how they live in industrial animal mass production facilities, no.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Evolution only cares about population numbers so evolutionary successful and quality of life successful are two very different concepts.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Yes, that is what I tried to say.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

Evolution doesn't really care about quality of life, so long as an organism still reproduces. If every organism in a species is in horrendous, absolutely unconscionable pain and suffering for their entire existence but always manages to successfully pass on their genes, then the species can absolutely be deemed "successful". In a way, we have a symbiotic relationship with e.g. cows: even if we cause them mass suffering as individuals, as a species our relationship is mutually beneficial and that's all evolution really cares about at the end of the day.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Well, now it has. But uhhh, rest in pieces to all those species that were tasty ,but too much of a hassle

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Didnt work so well for the mammoth and Aurochs. I guess you have to be a manageable size.