Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Nature perfects itself

Evolution is fascinating to me. I think about evolution constantly and how things in this world came to be the way they are. I've recently learned of the work of Michael Pollan and the reason I love his work so much is because his ideas are exactly what I've been thinking for quite some time. When I first saw this video below I was knocked off my feet because what he was talking about is exactly what I've been thinking about for a while. What he gets at in this video is that plants have evolved through completely random genetic mutations to be more and more attractive to consumers who will eat their fruits or vegetables. (Their seeds essentially)
Why does this happen? Why do these traits which cause their fruits to be consumed spread? Because when the fruit is eaten, the seed is spread.
When a new trait/mutation comes along which causes a fruit to have a less attractive color to consumers, this new trait will likely not survive many generation. HOWEVER, if a new trait comes along which causes a fruit to have a more attractive color to consumers, this new trait will slowly but surely thrive because it helps the plant to reproduce.
When a new trait comes along which causes the seed to be more resilient to animal digestive systems, more seeds will make it out the other end and still be viable to produce plants.
When a new trait comes along which makes a plant's taste more desirable to consumers, they will eat it and spread it's seeds.
When a new trait comes along which makes a plant more healthy to consumers, the consumers who eat it will live longer and produce more healthy offspring who will eat more of these fruits and spread it's seed further.
The fruits and consumers co-evolve to create a perfect system.
Think about it in reverse.
When a trait comes along which makes consumers enjoy healthy fruits, the consumers who have this trait will become more healthy which means they will live longer and produce more and thrive. Eventually this new trait will take over the entire population of the species, but this usually takes a very, very long time.
These examples regarding the consumption of fruits and vegetables are only a few of many examples. The spread of pollen is another great example which Pollan gets at in this video. These ideas present the perfect example of the magnificence of evolution. This is how nature perfects itself for us.

1 comment:

Doug said...

Nature is a wondrous being... While we have studied and observed and witnessed for centuries, a lot of what we have are reliable guesses as to how we think nature is behaving. To think that we have evolved to better suit plants is a wild and confusing notion.. but who is to say that can't be??

More on this later.