why DID we evolve into humans?

No, DC that's not the way I would describe it.The need does NOT cause the change.Our ancestors were there, faced with a number of changing situations. Some had small differences that were helpful some didn't. Some lived, some died. The conditions and the differences caused the living and dieing but did NOT cause the changes in them.

There is no reason to think it is anything but selected mutations.As for brains, look under the book nook for my entry on Nature via Nurture. It may not be so hard to produce mutations to increase brain size as we might think.

That is not a correct statement of how it happens.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 08-10-2004 04:07 AM

The only hitch would be getting the grant application approved. But once you had it through, you're off the hook for a millenium!!

Most of what you have posted is, at best, peripherally attached to the topic of human evolution but let's look at them. That is why evolution doesn't depend on only natural selection. What you say is correct to a degree. However, you are forgeting about the addition of new characteristics due to the mutations that pretty well every single individual organisms carry. Before you use examples in your debate you need to get your facts straight. A minor detail is that octopi and humans do not have compound eyes. That is a term used to describe insect eyes.At best human and octopi eyes are only superficially similar. In fact, they both show the separate evolutionary history that they went through. In addtion, it is arguable that the octopus eye "design" is better than human since the blood supply to the retina is the right way around in the octopus. It is a significant structural difference between us and then. The woodpecker is, as you note, higly adapted to it's particular method of hunting. But what you should ask is: "Are there any other birds that acquire insects in a similar way but are not as specialized as a woodpecker?" Have you checked? Do you know anything about the feeding habits of similar or even rather different birds? Please fill us in on your studies in this area.Do you actually think that there is no niche for a bird that is capable of getting insects out of places that are not as difficult as hard wood? A bird that needs a tongue something like a woodpeckers and a beck shaped like a woodpecker but without the same skull. You may lack imagination but you inability to think of a pathway to a woodpecker from a related bird doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Did you check this out? Can you tell us both that no such birds exist today and that no such fossils are available? What are the genetics of woodpeckers and what are they related to? Do you know that?You can go off wildly like this. But you actually have to know quite a lot before you will be taken at all seriously.

Because humans, dogs, lions and so forth never breed "true".Each one born is only a good match to it's parents not a perfect match.If there is anything selecting those that breed into the next generation based on those differences then the population HAS to change. It simply can NOT be held stable.If two animals are different enough genetically they can not interbreed. If enough changes pile up over time then lions will not be able to interbreed with their own nth generation descendants. Every single "lion" in the chain can breed with all of immediate ancestors and descendants and all of the "lions" around it but eventually it will have a great-great-great-....great grand son that it can not breed with. (If they were both alive somehow of course ).Your statment about one animal producing one like it is wrong. They are NEVER alike they are just very close in one generation.

Recorded history has been about 10,000 years (tops). Homo sapiens (from an archeic form to modern has been around about 200,000 years. Homo as a genus has been changing for about 2,000,000 years. The time scales are rather different.In addition, evolutionary change does not occur at a constant rate. We may well be moving slower than we once were. You are becoming boringly repetious here. Animals can acquire new characteristics without breeding with a different animal with them. This is what a mutation does. This has been explained to you 10 or 20 times this week.I have read most of them and I can see that some are pretty confusing. Others however have been rather simple and straightforward. Rather than just repeating yourself in what can only be discribed as a pig-headed fashion why don't you get one thing and work from there?1) A population of animals CAN aquire a new characteristic without breeding outside that population. Period full stop.White mice can arise from a purely (repeat PURELY) black population.Do NOT go on about this being too small or anything we will get to that. This IS a population acquiring a characteristic WITHOUT breeding with another animal with it. Ok? Simple? Got ONE simple FACT yet? Just one?Your above paragraph is factually incorrect.

Nope, there is no danger of you reading. We are safe.