Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id CAA01238 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 4 Dec 2001 02:34:27 GMT Message-ID: <006701c17c6b$a893fbe0$9b88b2d1@teddace> From: "Dace" <edace@earthlink.net> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> References: <200112030529.fB35TFI19575@mail1.bigmailbox.com> Subject: Re: circular logic Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2001 18:30:30 -0800 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Joe wrote:
> "Kenneth Van Oost"
>
> >The famous giraffe- example of Lamarck is also a misunderstanding,
> >Devillers and Chaline, Théorie de l'évolution, Paris, 1989 write, in a
kind
> >of circular logic, if the ancestors of the giraffe did got indeed a
shorter
> >neck
> >they had to be bigger in general than the giraffes of today. They too did
> >reach (for) the leaves at the top of the tree.
> >
> >What in a sense dismisses any explanation as for Darwin as for Lamarck.
> >The thing is, according to Devillers and Chaline, that not only the neck,
> >but
> >also the frontlegs of the animals were getting longer. The result of both
> >processes, forced upon them by the environment, is that the giraffe,
without
> >standing up on its backlegs can now reach a hight of six meters ( 20
feet).
> >All is due to habits. And the habit, more likely the need, of reaching
for
> >the
> >highest leaves resulted in changes.
> >
> Nope. Shorter giraffes starved to death, taller ones (however 'taller'
was manifested, by neck or legs or both) survived to reproduce, giving us a
new spectrum of heights in succeeding generations; the shorter ones of these
generations starved to death, too, and the median giraffe height rose as a
consequence of this blind purposeless natural environmental selection of
certain mutations over others, or of one end of that species'
body-configuration spectrum over the other, in continuous iteration.
>>>
That giraffes have long necks due to their desire to reach the highest
leaves is what Gould refers to as "the tallest tale." It's a myth.
Giraffes developed long necks because the males of the species establish
mating supremacy by trying to knock each other down. Like goats they charge
at each other, except that their weapon is the neck instead of calcified
hair. They usually end up neck-wrestling and, inevitably, the longer neck
wins.
Environment and the threat of starvation have nothing to do with it.
Ted
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Dec 04 2001 - 02:40:43 GMT