Which organism has the most fascinating evolutionary adaptation for survival?
467236
All of them... or, none of them.\n\nIt all depends upon your notion of "facinating". \n\nCertainly humans have the ability to synthetically "adapt" temporarily to many environments, but there is also a plethora of creatures that are far more specialized than we:\n\nIce Worms live in glacial water\n\nSome tube worms live near ocean vents in amazingly extreme conditions, such animals have been found to transcend (near) boiling to (near) freezing water.\n\nArchaea is a bacteria group that has species which can live off of sulfur (or Iron, or such) and need no oxygen to survive.\n\nHyperthermophiles are another bacteria group within Archaea that survive in temperatures above 100 degrees C (~200 degrees F)\n\nThe Wood Frog, Rana sylvatica, can be Frozen solid (as in an ice cube) for months and survive the ordeal fine.\n\nWater Bears, Tardigrada, live in droplets of water and can survive for tens of years in a hibernate-like state \n\nI would bet this could be a very long list...
1069201
Evolution happens so living things can adapt to the surrounding environment,get better and perpetuate their species.Humans dont need to adapt anymore as they're adapting everything else to their needs so evolution is most probable to slow down and even stop.
1036161
DNA is a way of storing information.  But that is far from intelligence.  Nothing senses changes in the environment and *decides* that it needs to change the organism to survive.\n\nYou are on the right track that there is an *element* of "luck" involved.    Randomness creates *variation*.  But there are two corrections you should know:  (1) Mutation is not the only source of randomness; and (2) Randomness is not the only thing driving evolution ... i.e. EVOLUTION IS NOT BLIND LUCK.\n\n1. Random mutations are improbable, but given huge numbers of replications, and huge amounts of time, there are *many* chances for mutations to occur, and those that produce some slight advantage tend to get propagated slightly better into future generations.  \n\nBut the invention of sexual reproduction took that randomness to a whole new level.   DNA from two different individuals could produce *huge* numbers of different combinations.  This allows improvements to propagate much faster into future generations, and allowed much faster adaptations to a changing environment.\n\n2. It's really important to know that EVOLUTION IS NOT JUST RANDOMNESS (BLIND LUCK).  Evolution is driven by 3 ingredients: variation + selection + time.  Randomness produces the *variation* ... but the selective pressures are NOT random.  \n\nFor example, a mammal may have several litters of offspring, say 20 in total.  Randomness produces the *variation* that some of these will be more hairy than their siblings.  But there is *nothing* random about the fact that those offspring with more hair may survive better in a colder environments and therefore produce more babies.  (E.g. if the environment is getting colder, or if some members want to, say, push a little further north.)  Add the ingredient of *time* and a much hairier subspecies can arise and get separated from the parent species ... and even more *time* and the subspecies can completely lose the ability to mate with the parent species, and you have two different species.\n\nSummary: randomness supplies the sparks of evolution, but selective pressures in the environment + time, provide the fuel.
209985
In biology and ecology, an organism (in Greek organon = instrument) is a living complex adaptive system of organs that influence each other in such a way that they function as a more or less stable whole.
1032770
Read "aquatic adaptation" from any standard biology book. It will ans both ur qst.
661985
Few complex life forms we know of can survive exposure temperatures that low for more than a moment. However, if pockets of milder temperatures could be found (thermal vents, well isulated hybernation dens, etc) some life would likely adapt. Life forms that could mature and reproduce in one warm season (such as a plant that produces spores capable of surviving such a harsh winter) would have a great advantage. Plants such as trees woudn't stand a chance, as is true of many things humans and other complex life depend on for food and shelter. \n\nAnother consideration would be the erosion due to lack of any plants capable of maintaining a root system to stablize soil. Between the turbidity from erosion and likelyhood that all rivers would freeze solid through most of the winter, most life in rivers and lakes would become extinct. Since the upper temperature is not much if any higher than what we have now, the average temperatue is much lower. This would concentrate vast amounts of water in the icecaps, possibly enough to greatly increase the salinity of the oceans, which would also see a major drop in temperature. Most marine life is more sensitive to temperatue changes than terrestrial or freshwater life, so a great number of extinctions there also.\n\nSo no, life would not survive other than perhaps a few simple life forms. Even a drop of a dozen degrees in average temperature would be devastating in the long run for life as we know it.
451859
Depends on your definition of intelligence.They are most definatly able to problem solve and communicate but they cant nip down the shops for some fags and a newspaper.Although would you really say that a species that doesnt seem to have its own survival at its highest priority was intelligent?i think not.It depends on your definition!
987170
its called mutation, when a species must adapt in a certain way in order to survive in the new environment, mutations occur and their offspring gets it, and the offspring therefore can adapt to the new environment, in our way, we evolved into humans so we can adapt to our daily lives
417065
hmm i would say it will definitely be the yaks. \nyaks are very incredible animals which are very vesatile. they can easilt adapt to any environments but wilds yaks are usually found at the himalayan mountains. but now they are able to live even where the temperatures are not very low. even now there are yaks that are domestic and are breeded by people and even used to plough the fields! incredible isn't it? and another thing, the milk from the yaks is pink! haha  =D
566879
Do your own homework!\n\nBut nematodes are in a funny spot, since they may or may not have changed much in a long, long time.  Of course this probably just suggests that they are about perfectly adapted to the environments they choose to live in, and any mutation that individuals may have undergone offered no significant advantage.
406386
Evolution...hands down\nthere may be a god but there is still evolution\njust look at viruses...adapting to be more effective\nsame goes for animals...but longer time periods\nand we have a skull record that takes humans to these lemur things....
264382
Organisms that are the best fit tend to survive longer and reproduce more, having more offspring and passing on their DNA to future generations.  If mutations occur in the DNA that makes the organism better able to survive, it's likely that it will be passed on.  If you look at organisms' DNA over time, you'd find the changes/mutations that have occured.\n\nThe above responder is absolutely incorrect about mutations: they CAN add nucleotides to the sequence of DNA. In fact, they can make 3 small-scale changes: point mutations (changing from one nucleotide into another), insertions (adding nucleotides), as well as deletions (removing nucleotides). I know this for a fact because we have just recently finished studying this exact subject matter in my biology class.  Also check out my source link and you'll find that out.
1186604
One answer might be that they have gradually changed, or evolved,over a very long time to suit the places they live in and the food that is available to them.\n                 In the 19th centurya scientist named CHARLES DARWIN (1802-1882) put forward a theory, which he called 'natural selection'. to explain how these changes might happen.\n              According to darwon, individuals animals and plants sometimes have qualities that help them to survive.For example,in agreen forest, a green bug would pribably survive longer than a brown bug,because its appearence would help it to aviod being seen amd eaten.\n       The individuals that survive the longest are likely to have more babies,and will pass on their useful qualities to them.Over a very long time,each species will very gradually develop all the most useful qualities for surviving in its own habitat.
280108
Greater then all of those... because it can adapt.
543003
Heh heh. Clever question. I always like to see a lateral thinker. The answer lies in appreciating that adaptation occurs for the population, not the individual.\n\nAdaptation in the sense that you refer to in your question is a population process. Imagine we have a population of one hundred animals, 50 are fast and 50 are slow. The slow ones get eaten. The slow individuals don't adapt because they are dead, and the fast individuals don't adapt because they don't need to.\n\nBut the population has adapted. We started with a population consisting of even numbers of fast and slow animals. Now we have a population consisting of 100% fast animals. That is because all the slow animals are dead.\n\n\nAnd because it is the population that has adapted it doesn't matter whether maladapted individuals survive. All that matters is  that sufficiently adapted individuals survive and produce offspring.\n\nThis is precisely what happens in the real world. There was a time when jack rabbits as a population were much slower than they are today. As all the slow animals succumbed to coyotes only the fast animals survived to produce young. As a result the jack rabbit population became faster and faster with every generation even though individuals rabbits were stuck with the genes they were born with.
1103783
We have totally removed natural selection, a key requirement for a being to evolve.  If anything we will become less robust, less strong, less health, and less successful because there is no need for it.    \n\nGeography is also no longer a boundry, so there aren't any more isolated groups evolving independently.   With the spread of people across the word, the average person will look more and more like a mix of everyone else:  eg. most will have medium complexion, most will have brown hair.\n\nHowever, if your scenarion will allow for natural disasters or plagues, the end result is unforseeable.   Those who survive a period of plague will have better immune systems and generally more healthy.   Those who survive a disaster like a world-wide drought or flood will be those with the best survival instincts:  clever, resourceful, excellent social smarts, more fit and more efficient metabolism.
793751
Feasible (sp?), perhaps. Evolution to adapt to the environment will certainly take place. Obviously no one can say for sure that will happen, especially since we don't know what would genetically change.\n\nBut even so, that'll be a couple thousand years from now. Personally, I'm not concerned.