Natural Selection and what it didn\'t do for dogs... (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, January 26, 2010, 09:17 (5414 days ago) @ BBella

BBELLA: [...] I just can't seem to wrap my imagination around the process it took for two wolves to make a poodle, or for two chimps to make a man.-
Although I accept the theory, I too lack the imagination to get my head round the actual process. However, the story I heard was slightly different.-Once upon a time, in the darkest depths of Africa, there lived a Mr and Mrs Chumpan. They had a son, and for some unknown reason he was different from them. Maybe Mrs Chumpan had been hit by lightning, or had had an affair with Mr Huchi up a neighbouring baobab, or Mr Chumpan had been eating the wrong sort of banana, but anyway their hairless son was what we clever people might call a humpan. He was more primitive than you and me, of course, but to the discerning chumpan eye he was definitely inchumpan. Then the following year, they had a daughter, and she was also different from them. She was covered with hair, and was what we clever people might call a chimpan or even a chimp (do we really care?). But here's something very strange, because it turned out that other Mr and Mrs Chumpans were also producing humpans and chimpans (otherwise there wouldn't have been any more humpans or chimpans), and in due course the humpans produced humans and the chimpans produced chimps, and humans and chimps became so fashionable that eventually chumpans, humpans and chimpans died out altogether and no-one has seen one since. (Although I'm told there have been sightings in town on a Saturday night.)-Now you may wonder what's the difference between chumpans producing humpans and chimpans, and chimps producing humans. And you may also wonder how humpans "in due course" produced humans, but I'm off to have my breakfast, and in any case that's enough stories for one day.