Natures wonder: cuttle fish survival mechanism (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, December 02, 2015, 18:11 (3277 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Reduce the electric current you produce and sharks won't sense it:
-http://phys.org/news/2015-12-camouflaged-cuttlefish-electrical-stealth.html-QUOTE: Consequently, the common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) has figured out a stealth technology to protect itself in the electrical spectrum, -David's comment: IF the cuttle fish really 'knew' what attracted the shark, that would explain the response, but did the cuttle fish really 'know' that. Either the cuttle fish figured it out, or if they used trial and error they shouldn't be a species any more. dhw?-The author says “figured out”. Your view of evolution suffers from your refusal to acknowledge the possibility that organisms to which you cannot relate might be individual beings and not just a bunch of automatons. There is no reason at all why hundreds of cuttle fish might not have died trying to “figure out” a means of protecting themselves. But Kevin and Kitty Cuttle were the geniuses who finally cracked the puzzle, and once it's cracked, everybody knows what to do. So there can be “figured out” AND “trial and error”, and so long as SOMEBODY figures it out, the species will survive. No less likely a hypothesis than God preprogramming the first cells with cuttle-fish protection equipment to be passed on a couple of thousand million years later, or personally giving them lessons, when all he really wanted to do was produce humans.