My Evolution Wrongthink

When I’ve had a chance to breathe lately (which hasn’t been too often, as my son and I have been sick on an off for roughly a month) I’ve been thinking about all the things I’ve gotten wrong about evolution. I tend to think of it as something neat and linear: picture a single line leading out of an ocean and onto land. I’ve talked before about how I’d always thought of evolution as sort of a straight arrow (fish—>amphibians—>reptiles—>mammals) when in truth things started branching off fairly soon after life crawled on line. Weird mammal-like reptiles were some of the first successful inhabitants of earth…and little mammals were around even in the Triassic.

One thing I’d never really given thought to is this: as soon as life escaped the water, it started going back in. That’s why we have whales. It’s a strange thought, to me at least. But you can see this sort of thing being played out even today with the Macaques (Snow Monkeys) of Japan. They don’t just bathe in the springs, they hunt in them. That is evolution in action. Who knows what the Macaques might look like in a million years. (Assuming they’re still around.)

Finally, when we think about evolution in the abstract, we tend to think about it having an end point. As if “peak evolution” exists. But things don’t stop evolving. Even highly-evolved, successful creatures continue evolving. It’s a fascinating train of thought to follow, and if you’re interested, may I recommend the series “The Future is Wild?” It really is! And so is evolution.