Natures wonders: fish uses other fish for a taxi (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, January 18, 2020, 18:33 (1769 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTES: "The study suggests that this sort of touch perception arose independently at least twice in the animal kingdom: in remoras and monotremes. And, big picture? "I think the real story here is that we just need to look for different sensory capacities in organisms to a much larger extent."

"Because there are a lot of ways that life forms have come up with to make a living."

DAVID: My usual problem is how to come up with a Darwinian just-so story to explain this. The fish had to develop it sucker mechanism before it started to latch on. How does a fish envision this way of life and then design the sucker? It obviously doesn't. This had to be designed.

dhw: First of all, yet again, thank you for yet another fascinating “wonder”. This series of yours is captivating.

As regards your usual problem, of course the sucker had to “develop” before the fish could latch on, but that doesn’t mean the sucker suddenly appeared as if by magic. It is not beyond the bounds of imagination that some clever predecessor discovered that life was much easier if it hitched a lift. Maybe the first pre-remoras did have trouble holding on. Some may have slid off. But the idea was good, and so just as pre-whale legs would have turned into flippers as the organism adapted itself to marine life, those parts of the remora (and other such organisms) it used to hold on with would have transformed themselves into suckers. Yes, this presupposes intelligence – the ability of cells to transform themselves in order to exploit a different environment. Shapiro calls the process “natural genetic engineering”.

As usual you ha e conjured up lots of fore thinking for the fish. Remember, fish are slick. If you've ever caught on a hook and tried to remove it, it is very difficult to hold unless tightly gripped. Developing a sucker takes lots of evolutionary time for developing the proper DNA changes. Your just-so story requires centuries of remora persistence until they get it right. No organism during the human time of studying adaptation has shown any degree of this massive change. That is the problem we face. The flipper and teh sucker require design, and a designer.