Can anyone tell why we evolve so fast?
594390
We don't, it's taken millions of years to get us to today's state
980858
Interesting questions. Since technology seems to be evolving alongside of us, I tend to suspect out bodies will adapt to deal with this. As most technology appears to be making our lives easier, or lasier (which will be more critical as I explain my theory), there is no doubt in my mind we will loose alot of our mobility. Since there is a large push towards working at home and automating everything, I think it is potentially possible we may loose the function of our legs and arms and the moving parts of out bodies. Having said that, it will be interesting to see how we will feed ourselves and reproduce. I suspect the theory discussed in the story, "The Time Machine", is not to far from the truth. It could be possible that we evolve into two different types of humans, similar to termites. We will have the workers; those that will grow our food and carry out the pysical tasks, The general populous which will be home bound and in control of mental actvities. Whether this happens in the next 1000 years seems unlikely since evolution takes much longer than this. But in reflection, considering the environmental change the globe is going through, other changes in the human form will need to be taken into consideration. Could it be possible that humanity will not evolve in the next 1000 years, but simply die out and a new species takes its place? This seems more likely since it has happened to many species throughtout the earths history.
1135377
You have to look at evolution as a series of slight beneficial changes that are passed down through generations.  The steps from single to double circ are unknown to me, but it is more than a single big jump.
376158
Because people can't even begin to fathom the amount of time evolution has been at work on this earth. Mast people can't give their God credit for being around for the 5 billion years the earth has been here. How do you expect the average member of the human species to wrap the feeble little minds around the idea that humans have been around for only 4 million of those years. It is unconsciencable to them. \n\nAs a species, we've only had the ability to write our thoughts down for others to read for the past 20,000 years. When you are asked to realize that life first evolved 225,000 times longer ago than you've been able to write down stories, it's hard to imagine. When truths like that are stairing you in the eye, it's not unreasonable to get scared and and run for one of your oldest fairy tales.
447655
I believe that you have a good grasp of the concept of why we have hair based on the text you submitted and that your question actually is... why have we not lost hair? or\n"why havn't we evolved?"\nThis is a way too common misunderstanding of what evolution is.  In order for organisms to "evolve" there needs to be selective pressure on the ability of the organism to survive and allow it to pass its genetic material to the next generation (ie. be able to successfully breed)  For people to lose their hair there would need to be some sort of reason why we should.  For example if some sort of parasitic worm infested the earth  and and ate people who grow hair on their heads (hypothetically of course) then the people who are most likely to live and pass on their genes would be people that grow less hair.  Over time, the population would be limited to survivors of this parasitic hair loving worm, which would be people with little or no hair. That is how evolution works, just because we may not really need hair now in order to breed sucessfully, I know plenty of bald men with children, doesn't mean that nature will automatically detect this and spontaneously cause people to lose their hair over "thousands of years".  There needs to be some survival factor in play.  \nOk, that was fun....watch out for those hair worms.
1098773
We did not evolve from apes. I find it hard to believe evolution can create two different species.  That's like a cat evolving into a duck.
362754
We re not genetically encoded with a predisposition to evolve, bt a predisposition to survive.\nTherefore any advantageous features that allow survival would be retained...an accumulation of these factors result in evolution, and is done purely on the basis of chance/mutations hence it taking millions of years to occur.\nIt does not prove the existence of God as science doesnt prove anything just supports hypothesis, but supports the evidence of chance and survival of the fittest.\nt\nps if u like u can say how this amazing coincidence that all these "chances" have culminated in striking concordance to produce the human, which has such a minute probability...may have something to do with the wonders of god...if u want ;)
552015
The only thing that comes to mind is population growth.  The more people (or whatever organisms) there are, the faster their population grows.
1099264
you seem to be so smug in your belief of evolution.  there is no proof whatsoever of it happening.  adaptation is different.  bacteria becoming immune to antibodies is adaptation.  humans do this all the time.  the bacteria aren't changing into anything different, they are still bacteria.  \nthere is no evidence in the fossil record either to support your idea.  in fact, all evidence in the fossils says otherwise.  there is no common ancestor of humans and primates.  nowhere.  lucy was an oversized chimp.  neanderthal man is equivalent to modern man in brain capacity, body structure, and everything else, what's the difference?  you can't use the tooth of a pig to create an entire skeleton of a human, that is called fraud (piltdown man).\n\ntry these FACTS: dr. frederick hoyle did a study on the probablility of a single-celled lifeform through means of random process from the beginning of time.  the likelihood of this happening is 1 in 10 to the 40,000 power.  (anything over 1 in 1050 is considered scientifically impossible).  hoyle stated, "evolution is nonsense in the highest degree"\nthe co-discoverer of DNA, francis crick; did a similar study on the chance of one single strand of DNA happening by random chance, but the results came that the chance is so small that it is nonexistant (so close to zero it's actually there)\n\nthe alternative? intelligent design.  all evidence points to a young earth.  if the earth is millions of years old: why hasn't it stopped spinning yet?  it slows down every year?  why hasn't the sahara desert taken over the plant yet?  it's growing by the day?  why have we never seen a single star form?  why hasn't the moon left us yet?  it gets farther and farther away every year?  \n\nother science would ask: why do some heavenly bodies rotate counter-clockwise if they all resulted from the big bang?  (according to the LAW of angular conservation, they should all be spinning the same way)  why isn't there a huge vacuum (present after any explosion); but the universe is instead expanding?  (refer to newton's LAWs of relativity)  why would the population curve put the start of humanity at about 4500 years ago, if we've been around for millions?  why is the oldest tree (also the oldest living organism) only 4500 years old?  \n\nuse evolution to explain morality, emotions, intelligence, abstract thought, love, etc.  you can't.  the only plausible answer is intelligent design.  \n\nanthony flue, once the greatest known and most highly revered atheist; writing over 30 books on the subject is an oxford double-doctorate with numerous other degrees and awards.  now a theist.  the clincher?  intelligent design.  unless you think that you're smarter than this guy (and it doesn't look like it from your grammar, spelling, and theology)  study a bit more before you go bashing theists.  \n\n"when science finally comes to the top of this mountain of truth, it will see that religion has been there all along."
334406
Could just be mutations.
113213
Ahem. People, he's asking about the RATE of change. Not whether changes occur or whether evolution occurs. He clearly already knows that.\n\n__________________________________\n\nWell done. You’ve asked one of the most controversial questions in current evolutionary biology.  Much debate rages about this subject right now. \n\nWhat you are describing is commonly referred to as the evolution of evolvability. As you point out, if a population doesn’t have sufficient variation then environmental change could lead to extinction. But at the same time if the population is too variable the outliers will simply perish in current conditions. For example if elephants contained the inherent variability to produce young twice as big or the size of a rabbit those individuals would die.\n\nThe belief was for 100 years or so that the selective pressure of current environment would maintain a fairly tight rein on variability, that mutation rates were approximately constant and that survival in times of change was simply a case of pot luck. But then people started to look at the fossil record and the real world and it seemed like that wasn’t plausible. Novelties seemed to appear almost overnight, and they appeared almost any time they were needed. \n\nSo then came the concept of punctuated equilibrium. The idea that  a population would sit still for long periods, then as conditions changed they would suddenly leap forwards into a radically different form. That was all well and good, but it was basically just a restatement of the observations, not really an explanatory theory.\n\nIn the past 15 years ago there has been a lot of debate about the idea that organisms have evolved to evolve. That they have evolved in such a way that they are physically stable in times of environmental stasis, but when the environment becomes stressful change they can either mutate more, or reshuffle genes or express pattern of dormant genes to produce stable phenotypic novelties at rates that far exceed background rates.\n\n\nThe theory certainly makes sense. It’s hard to argue that such a trait wouldn’t; be a survival advantage. Unfortunately the evidence is ambiguous. And at the moment there are umpteen dozen theoretical mechanisms to explain how it could occur, and they are impossible to separate out. There is some work which has shown that many species can open up dormant genetic material for expression and re-assortment in response to stress (see first link below). And some experimental evidence suggests mutation rates increase in response to environmental change. Some say that prions are the key. Other favour inherent genetic instability in those individuals that survive initial changes, meaning that the decedent population is inherently prone to genetic varaiation until the environment stabilises and kills of the outliers again. Other propose that assortment of populations within the same or closely related species could explain it. But at this point we can’t even prove that genetic variation does change under stress. But at this point we just don’t know. \n\nYou ask a damn good question but the concept is hard to study and harder to establish with any certainty.\n\n_______\n>>>>Being able to actually understand how, and under what\n>>>> circumstances mutations happen strikes me as extremely\n>>>> important.\n\nWe've actually got a pretty good handle on how and when mutations occur. This is more of a question of when they are expressed or encouraged. Organisms have the ability repair genetic damage thorugh several mechanisms. They also have the ability shield the nucleus fom many mutagens. The issue is whether they may be able to damp down those processes to encourage more mutations.\n\n>>>> I can definitely see that species that do not have the \n>>>>capability to mutate in response to external forces\n>>>> would be selected against.\n\nYes, it's a rather hard
1012778
We didn't evovle from monkeys we evolved from a monkey-like creature which evovled from something else all the way back to cells before that amino acids which form naturally in space.\n\nThis took billions of years and millions for humans to evolve all the time God was there too.
331313
It is thought that man came from ape like ancestors, not quite monkey's.  \n\nIt could take hundreds of thousands of years for macro evolution to occur.  Wait around that long, and i guarantee there will be NEW species.  So it is still happening.\n\nThe fossil record is not complete because fossils are hard to come by, not everything fossilises despite contrary belief.  In fact it's amazing we have as much info as we do.\n\nHow on earth does it take less belief to believe in a god, there is no evidence whatsoever for this!  At least evolution has enough evidence to fill several hundred warehouses, what do you have, testimony.. Yeah right, thanks, i'll keep to evidence, not faith to inform my decisions about the world around me.
1098346
Truth is, we are still Evolving, but evolution is a slow process barring environmental disasters (think Chernobyl or the meteor impact that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs).\n\nThe last two big DNA changes with humanity occurred 10,000 and 4,000 years ago, if _Science News_ articles are to be believed.  They were mainly dietary, involved changes to the digestive system so that mannose (tree nut sugars), lactose (milk sugars) and other plant and animal simple sugars could be digested by the human digestive system.\n\nAnd this was in the absence of either civilization (which may or may not slow down pro-survival pressures) or pollution (which may speed them up).\n\nBefore that?  You have to look at some of the dietary and bloodstream changes between ancestral Africans (bitter-taster versus non-taster, and the platelet changes responsible for sickle-cell anemia) and others that occurred in part to confer extra resistance to malaria.\n\nNot that any of this matters if you refuse to believe in physical evidence gathered by genetic research or paleontology....if you willfully refuse to heed reason nothing *will* convince you.  Not a flame, a statement of human nature, really, sad as it is.
560377
I believe that we will keep evolving. Because humans are now on the verge of controlling their DNA, probably we could soon direct our own evolution instead of letting nature do it by natural selection. Also, there is a great possibility that humans may merge with synthetic materials , machines, and artificial intelligence, to create a Homo Roboticus, or cyborg.
508160
Well, it's actually a lot more "great's" than that.  The first single-celled organism has had a *lot* of time to evolve into us.  And that doesn't rule out the existence of God any more than gravity does.\n\nHere's my counter-question:  what sort of evidence would you accept as proof that we evolved from a single-celled organism?\n\nThere's a lot of evidence -- but what would it take to convince you?
1023532
Well, the main reason would be that evolution is a process that take thousands, if not millions, of years to accomplish. Also, because evolution works to allow an organism to compete for a resource better than another organism. At this point, we have no competition so the motivation for evolution is basically zero.\n\n I also think that the main issue with global warming isn't going to be humans being unable to survive the temperatures so much as the environment is going to be destroyed so we'll have less animals and plants to eat.