[extropy-chat] RE: Re: Intelligent Design and Irriducible Complexity

[Kevin Freels]

> But why did the does continue to choose the bucks with the largest
antlers?  Wouldn't natural selection tend to eliminate this contra-survival
behavior?  Wouldn't the does that preferred smaller antlers mate more often,
have more functional offspring, and thus pass on more genes?
>
>
> Rob Masters


Natural selection does not say that species won;t develop that develop
behaviors like this. It only says that those that do will be come extinct
leaving only the species that do not do this. In this case, that is exactly
what happened. The behaviors themselves come about for other reasone such as
random mutation, genetic drift, etc.

For the species to come about at all, large antler selection probably had an
advantage at some point when small antlers were the norm and the few who had
large antlers were larger and more capable of producing viable offspring for
some reason or another. Eventually the species evolves to include the
selection of the larger antlers as part of normal behavior because  this
helps the species. After a time though, the everyone's antlers are large
enough to solve the problem. The old problem has been neutralized, but the
solution (picking mates with the largest antlers) is still there. It slowly
becomes a handicap and leads to the demise of the species.

A lesson can be learned from this. :-)