| | Thursday, February 14th 2008, 10:00 pm | |
| Natural selection? |
Today, I witnessed my cat toying with a mouse. After several attempts I managed to rescue the poor little thing. A friend of mine remarked: "It was natural selection. Apparantly this mouse wasn't strong or fit enough to escape capture and thus was ruled out by natural selection."
This got me thinking. What if the mouse just had a bad day? What if he just was a bit sleepy and did not see our "cute little kitten of death" coming?
Wouldn't that make (at least a part of) natural selection a random event? A flip of the coin, roll of the dice or turn of the river card? |
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| Noobini wrote: |
There is only good or bad luck if you look at a single events as separate from the rest.
In the end there are probably an equal amount of mice that are victims of random events as mice that get away as a result of random events. Seen as a whole, luck is not a factor.
If however the mice are having more and more bad days it is because other factors than luck are against them, making them into inferior survivalists. Sleepy mice aren't as efficient animals as ever alert ones.
On the other hand, if something like a corporation of humans called Disney have managed to completely convince people that rodents are cute and should be saved from natural selection at all cost, they are likely to triumph and eventually take over the world.
And cats would need to find other things to eat, such as sleeping human babies. Bwaahaahaa. |
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| Michael wrote: |
| Which is precisely why there are so many mice and why natural selection is a process that takes centuries ;) that'll make sure that any mice just 'having a bad day' aren't really making that much of an impact on the grand scale |
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