Ramblings on Evolution

According to evolution, plants and animals develop in ways to allow them to thrive in their given environment. If its cold, you grow fur. If its wet, you develop webbed feet. Nature produces some weird designs. Look at the platypus. Any animal could have a beak or claws or whatever but being a platypus is a whole other thing.

Humans have succeeded based on brains not brawn. However evolutionary speaking, brawn is not a bad strategy. Lions and tigers and bears are all the top of their respective food chain. Brains work, brawn works. Being huge isn’t a bad idea either—no other creatures mess with a whale or elephant. But there are some survival strategies that just plain baffle me: a giraffe is pretty much a horse that said to itself, “if I grow my neck a little longer, I'm gonna be running this jungle.”

Another "curious" evolutionary tactic is the skunk. The skunk is nature’s ultimate hater. Of all the natural defenses you could evolve: claws, spikes, fangs—the skunk has chosen stink. You mess with a skunk, it’ll make you smell bad. What kind of predator is going to be deterred by that? I don’t think a bear or wolf sees a skunk and thinks to itself, “well I haven’t eaten in five days-- but on the other hand, I might go to a club tonight.”

Even some plants have pretty sly stratagies. What do industrial farmers have in common with a bees? Like the bumblebee, both disseminate the genes of one species, a potato instead of a leek, rather than another. And like the bumblebee, they view the plants as here for their benefit. The bumblebee breaks into the flower, finds the nectar, thinks he's making off with the goods and thinks he's getting the better of the deal with the flower. But, in fact, it's the flower that has tricked the bumblebee into doing the work for him, to take his pollen from flower to flower to flower. From the flower's point of view, the bumblebee is this credulous gullible animal. Likewise, we could just be pawns in corn's plot to dominate the globe.