@@JIMDEZWAV A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of the real world. THEORY OF RELATIVITY for example since 1915 has had many tests and todate is and has been proven to be correct same with evolution what your after isa hypothesis which is an idea that may stem from an observation that is not yet confirmed as fact ....
really hard to buy the whole "i only use sponsors products that i actually believe in and endorse" then this BS one always comes up. This is like those electro shocking belts that supposedly gives you a 6pack....
The idea of so called Junk DNA was a naive myth. We are discovering what was thought to be junk leftovers from a supposed evolutionary past is actually quite active in making mostly RNA. The so called junk DNA is now considered by geneticists as one of the greatest blunders in science. It hindered discovery based on a strange devotion to an evolutionary faith.
The idea that my teachers were actively ‘hiding’ anything from me. They were lucky to get through their lesson plans, thanks to the kids that thought they were stars of the circus. There’s funny and then there are those people.
Great presentation. I remember many decades ago, discussions about moths in London with selected color changes due to use of coal, and subsequent coal pollution. I think an adaptation became a step in evolution when small birds [again in England?] learned to peck at the lids on milk bottles to get at the milk. And, here in Charleston, SC we have Monarch Butterflies that overwinter, and dolphins that are strand feeders. Those unrelated animals seem to be distinct species from their common cousins, newly identified either this year or within the past few years.
I think a subject you missed was epigenetics - that genes can be switched off and on depending on how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. This can be down to many things, like stress, famine or the climate. And also some genes can be great in certain situations - speaking from experience of having the 'Celtic Curse' (hereditary haemochrotosis) which many people of Gaelic descent have. This genetic variation dates back to the Bronze Age - and latterly probably grew under English / British misrule of Ireland - protected against famine and blood-loss and boosted fertility, but now can be dangerous as too much iron is toxic and can lead to cancer, diabetes, kidney and liver failure, as well as a host of other bad stuff.
Or like how astronauts literally p%$$ out calcium as soon as they are in a near zero G environment. The body is like “well, I guess we don’t need bones anymore” and literally starts “evolving” in real time
@@mikev4621 "Can" is not enough. If the expression of a gene, or set of genes CAUSES that particular line of an organism, over other lines that do not possess those genetic characteristics, to persist then yes, it would be evolution. But IF and UNTIL those other lines cease to exist it is merely genetic diversity. In other words, genetic expression in the absence of 'natural selection' is not evolution.
As a student of Biology for over 40 years you nail it buddy... The two things i want you to look at are the evolution of the spitting cobra and the honey guide. These are examples of commensalism and co-evolution with humans
it is also interesting to note that the Bajau people have developed larger spleens to help them breathe for longer whilst under water and as for rapid evolution - the cane toad that was introduced to australia (to supposedly eat sugar cane grubs) have literally increased the length of their back legs by around 25% over the past 40 years or so.
The cane toad is just one of many invasive species that have evolved rapidly. Another is the Australian possum that in New Zealand has changed from a cute endangered species into a series pest. They are bigger and tougher then their ancestors and a serious threat to New Zealand's native birds.
@kl0wnkiller912 In this case the adaptation is evolution. Amy adaptation that requires generations being selected for inherited characteristics IS evolution.
@@kl0wnkiller912 I don't think he confuses that. By which meachanism is the adaptation propagated? I would think it's by genetic change - and that IS evolution. I'm wondering about other things: Spleens help to hold your breath longer? (I doubt very much it enables them to breathe ("longer"?) under water.) It might be possible that a larger spleen can help you staying longer under water, since it's storing blood. It sounds rather dubious though; I have to look into it. And I also wonder which evolutionary advantage these people could have from being able to stay longer under water - it certainly is an advantage, I wish I had it, but does it lead to more offspring? UPDATE: Yes, a larger spleen helps indeed to stay longer under water. And apparently it indeed has been an evolutionary advantage for the Bajau people. Interesting.
I think Simon should do more like this - videos on common high school science subjects expanding on what schools teach. Especially in the US, the public educational system has truly failed our children, especially in the sciences and social sciences!
That's because all our Midwest science teacher try and fit Bible study in where they can, hell I remember my chemistry teacher saying evolution was just a theory, like she'd never read the scientific method.
@@SkylerKPHDtrustmebroUNIIt's because it is a theory. We're constantly shaping how evolution works based on new modern studies. That whole "natural selection" thing doesn't tell the whole story. It's far more complicated than school teaches.
Something you missed about transposons: it's possible they are the cause of retaining so much non coding DNA. If only 2 percent of DNA is genes, it's very unlikely that a transposon will relocate in the middle of a gene. Also, I have a biochemistry degree and WTF genes were new to me, very cool!
Transposons are the remnants of viruses. However they have been repurposed. They are there to provide the potential for new genes to evolve.. If you have more code. Something might make a protein that actually works.. Then selection, you know the gig....
Same here. I have a Masters in human biology and I had not heard of them either. Though to be fair…it’s been almost 40 years since I graduated and I don’t work in genetics. LOL
I will then give credit to my both the British school and university system as the basics of this genetics and DNA were covered under GCSE, A-level and my microbiology degree all of which were 30 plus years ago.
@@ForgeMasterXXL That might be over reach as you were an MB major. Though I did study some MB and immunology as an undergraduate and grad student but those were medically oriented classes and my emphasis was largely on anatomy, physiology and chemistry. Shoot I only took one genetics class as a freshman. I wouldn’t compare the British secondary system to the U.S. We have nothing comparable to A-Levels. We do have advanced placement classes and assessment tests like the SAT but the American system is an egalitarian system. If you graduate from high school you can go to University if you can pay the tuition and pass the classes. Also, last I heard, the U.S. University System is hardly secondary to the British. Our secondary system is all over the place though and the quality of education you receive is largely dependent on the affluence of the community you live in. Which is definitely a problem here.
Just remember, evolution is essentially a mathematical probabilistic process, it will happen on anything that makes copies of itself with the potential of making errors in that copy. Be it in biology, physics, software, language or wherever. Hence it does not require "agency" or "decision" or "choices", it instead simply happens. I am surprised that this is not mentioned more often. Just as I am surprised that it wasn't discovered by some gifted mathematician at Renaissance.
Probably because in human environments most of the copying is mediated by humans and the there was the general assumption that spirits interfered all the time. Basically no one observed things copying themselves.
Yeah I'm making an revolutionary program for a personal project. It's always fascinating to me to watch them learn. I'll start with a population of 100,000 and they're all terrible. I take the least terrible 10,000 and start running generational breeding on them. The config is encoded in a string that has "genes" and I made it easy for parents to mix their genes and pass them onto their children. Plus a small chance of random mutation to keep things interesting. Watching this population go from utterly incapable to actually getting good numbers is wild. It's just mathematics but it results in a system that can learn the most efficient way to accomplish whatever task you give it.
Yeah, pretty incredible how something without decisions or choices just so happened to put our thumbs where they are, caused us to have ears that hear, eyes that see, noses that smell, tongues that taste, fingers that feel, a planet that just happens to be the perfect distance from the sun, rotates exactly the right way to give seasons, has a magnetic shield to protect itself from the sun's harmful radiation, and on, and on, and on, and on. Pretty damned amazing.
For most of my life I thought that evolution was too complicated and only scientists could understand it. Imagine my surprise when I happened to watch a Richard Dawkins DVD and discovered that's not the case. The basic concept is so simple now I see it everywhere. Thank you Mr. Dawkins.
Most scientific facts are understandable by most people. Now them formalizing those facts and theories into mathematical formulas to derive new ideas, that's the difficult part. I contend for example that there's only ever like a dozen people on earth at a time who are truly capable of h derstandi g quantum mechanics, and they're not always the scientists you'd expect. A lot of scientists get by in quantum mechanics by being able to apply the math correctly, even if they'll never have the full understading of the quantum mechanics. I am definitely neither of the 12 nor of the hundreds properly applying quantum mechanics.
I found dog breeding the easiest to explain the concept. Its not natural selection but selective breeding. But if you understand dog breeding you can understand evolution.
I see variation with limitations and evolutionary mechanisms as part of an obviously designed system. Evolution is a design feature, and selection pressure is an absolute lie. Many different species adapt or migrate, if the fitness requirements are not met, there is extinction. Thats the reality, thats why people think evolution is a difficult topic to learn,, It makes absolutely no sense that new genetic information can spontaneously emerge, its an appeal to coincidence. A fallacy
12:15 y'know, I recall back in school our teacher was talking about evolution and she told a story about how during the industrial revolution there were moths that evolved to blend in better with the soot from the nearby factories and when the factories stopped they evolved to be lighter in color to blend with their surroundings. Could have something she made up, but sounded convincing enough to me at the time!
Hi Simon... I'm Iysa from Nigeria and I've been following you for a few years now. You do so much and I'm really happy and blessed to have learnt so much from you. From history to science to biology, to psychology... Thank you so much man.
Hey Iysa! Cool name! I'm Kacey from the US. I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see that you guys are getting this information! I've seen a few videos recently about some absolutely amazing African inventors and entrepreneurs lately and seeing how much the quality of life that information has given your continent always puts a smile on my face! Have you heard of Zipline in Rwanda? A man named Abdul created an absolutely INGENIOUS system to deliver medical supplies to hard to reach places out in the field. Mark Rober did a video on it titled "Amazing Invention-This Drone Will Change Everything" that goes into it, and it just blows my mind how friggin smart that man is. Knowledge is power, and open access to knowledge gives power to us all. 💜
Love this. Also, when it comes to the selfish gene, it's REALLY important (as you touched on) to understand that genes don't have a drive to be selfish, they are "thinking" "I need to be selfish to survive". That's putting the cart before the horse. It's just that genes that are better at replicating are the ones that get passed on. The genes that act in the preservation of themselves, will be the ones that survive. It's so interesting, please do more! :D
People mistakenly think that evolved somehow equals better. But in strict evolutionary terms "better" is only defined as "that which persists." So, depending on circumstances slower could be better, or less intelligent could be better. One could actually argue that circumstances - meaning the totality of the evolutionary predicament - is really all that matters.
It's also important to remember that these clever game-theoretic models stop working the moment the genes exist within an organism which in turn lives in an environment and is subject to the accidents and vicissitudes of life
It will be 20 years before it is discovered that self thinking is directly responsible for changes at a genetic level. In other words willing your own changes in order to adapt to an environment.
@@ThomasD66Circumstance, and for "evolution" that the perfect "mutations" happen at exactly the right time, all synchronized perfectly to work with each other to produce the effect that allows the organism to persist, without mindful purpose or plan.
Love this Simon. I have a background in Historical Geology and keep up with research on Evolution and related areas. Speaking about Rapid Evolution, not that many fossils had been found and studied when Darwin took his voyage around South America. He felt that over time, as more fossils were found, it would show that species gradually change from one to the other. As the decades passed, it was observed that species tend to remain stable, until an external stressor acted upon them. Then in 1972, a paper called Punctuated Equilibrium came out, that explained the rapid evolution. It's now known that Punctuated Equilibrium occurs most often after an Extinction Event.
More evolutionary fantasy. By what mechanism is this massive orangement of finely tuned new genetic sequences supposed to have occurred by random chance?
@@CornerCaseStudio I would be interested in what books have a detailed answer on that, or better yet a short form description here. It's a fair question that gets to the heart of the issue: the fossil record does not support the theory of evolution as stated. Distinct species (both now and in the fossil record), no intermediate gradations. 'Punctuated equilibrium' smacks of "our theory is unsupportable by the evidence, so we'll make a new one that maintains plausibility and pretend it's a modification."
@@oldgreg315 The fossil record has gaps in it due to the nature and rarity of fossilization - but the fossil record is not by any stretch of the imagination all there is as far as evidence for evolution. All of these topics are covered in depth in many modern college level texts. If you're lacking this knowledge, it's not because the information doesn't exist, it's because you're looking in the wrong places and being guided by people with agendas other than finding the truth. Go buy some college level textbooks from reputable authors and read them. And that means finding books written by people who are widely respected in the field, NOT just hunting down books that back up your current beliefs. If you won't do that, that's fine... reading dense material isn't for everyone. The only thing I ask is either 1) actually educate yourself, or 2) stop making unsubstantiated claims. It's only a fair thing to ask, really - if you don't know anything about a subject, don't go around commenting about it. I'm not trying to be rude - there are many subjects I know nothing about... so I don't make comments about them. The hard part is knowing when you have enough knowledge about a given subject to actually be able to offer an informed opinion. It can be a hard line to walk, to be sure. I placed the actual book recommendations near (but not at) the end of this comment to see if you would actually read everything I said. I know you probably didn't actually want recommendations, and just asked for them as a gotcha, thinking I wouldn't be able to provide any... so here you go. They are below this paragraph. If you did actually read this far and didn't just skim the first and last sentences of my reply before reflexing typing a response, then you might actually have what it takes to read and comprehend a college textbook if you apply yourself. book recommendations: you might check out "Evolution" by Doug Futuyma, or Evolutionary Analysis: Fifth Edition by Herron and Freeman. Just so you know though, courses on evolution come later in college. usually after 3rd year. You should have a strong background in zoology, botany, microbiology, ecology, geology and basic genetics before directly pondering evolution. If you're truly serious about becoming educated, I have given you a place to begin. if you're not, then I've just wasted 5 minutes... I know which one I would place a bet on, but every once in a while I decide to take a YT comment seriously instead of just dismissing it. This was one of those times. Good luck.
@@CornerCaseStudio Paragraph 1: I find that an unacceptable excuse, and I think so would anyone following the scientific method. It's been the better part of two centuries since Origin of Species, and we've found plenty to draw conclusions from. It was reasonable that no evidence existed in Darwin's time since we hadn't looked. It isn't now, and what we do have is contrary to what the theory predicts. The suggestion that you're the scientist and I'm the ideologue is interesting given that you defend a theory that the fossil record actively speaks against. It makes it seem as though you've already decided what to believe and will only accept one explanation. Kinda like what you accuse me of. P2: See above. P3: I've already been through HS and college bio. Any reference limiting the search to 'reputable' or 'respected' authors is an Argument from Authority, a logical fallacy. My claim is actually supported, among other things, by the need for the punctuated equilibrium 'addenda' to explain the discrepancy. P4: Bold words for a guy who can't answer the question posed. P5: Yeah it's called the Dunning-Kruger effect and it doesn't really apply since I don't claim to be an expert in the field evolution, but I know enough to know it has issues that I haven't heard a satisfactory explanation for... a problem which you haven't helped remedy. P6: Consider your elaborate test passed, wise one. ✅ P7: I'm not saying that I'll *never get around to reading $180 worth of your recommended reading list, but I am saying that it's not high on my list given that I've heard no reason to suspect the serious issues with evolution have been addressed, and we've got Roth contributions to make. P8: This is a logical fallacy. Look up Secret Knowledge or esoteric knowledge fallacy. Also the fact that you can't/won't even try to summarize is not encouraging. P9?! I guess it's more thorough than your first post which was basically just the Read a Book song by Lil Jon, but this basically boils down to the same thing. Here's where we stand in my view: the fossil record, concepts like irreducible complexity, the unexplained mechanism for mutations to actually *increase* complexity (not just create variation within species but actually manufacture new ones), and the origin of life to begin with are all serious issues for the theory. The burden of proof remains squarely with evolutionists when a far better and more obvious explanation exists. Punctuated equilibrium and attempts to demonstrate these concepts in a lab (to my knowledge none successfully) are necessary but feeble attempts to maintain plausibility in my opinion. God bless.
Rapid evolution is also called by the more technical term punctuated equilibrium as hypothesized by the late Stephen Jay Gould. Everyone thought the incomplete fossil record was the reason some new species suddenly appear in the rock, it was Gould that pointed out that gradual evolution is punctuated with periods of rapid evolution.
Gould added a punctuation mark to a footnote in a comment on _The Origin of Species_ and represented that as a major revision to the theory of evolution by natural selection. See Dawkins, _The Blind Watchmaker_.
Dawkins didn’t “first put forward” the gene-centred view; he stood on the shoulders of giants, and repeatedly makes that clear in the book. The ingredients were already there, and the cake was baked. What he did, and he did it very well, was to package the cake so beautifully.
I'm surprised you didn't touch on that semi-recent Florida study on the rapid evolution of snail kites. Something about showing measurable results of beak shape and change within only ten years.
The WTF4 gene sounds like an error correction mechanism. If you presuppose that the nominal organism holds that gene, if some cell appears without it, then it must have mutated, possibly having a detrimental error. Such cells are removed by this mechanism.
It'd be interesting to see what genes are near the WTF genes too. It's possible they really exist to protect something nearby that is essential but not immediately lethal to be missing.
@@Virtuous_Rogue You have a good point, but it doesn't need to be necessarily relevant. In computers, we can detect errors in data with checksums which can be stored basically anywhere. Maybe the WTF4 signals an "hash" of a bunch of other unrelated genes.
@@diogoduarte369 The nearness (to either the WTF gene or the solution gene) would be required because of crossing over in meiosis. It can't be a useful "bodyguard" gene because genes that are more than a few percent of the DNA sequence away are statistically independent. The technical term is Genetic Linkage if you want to learn more.
Medics do not refer to ‘stronger’ antibiotics. If a bacterium is immune to an antibiotic, then increasing the daily dose (a ‘stronger’ dose) makes no difference. What you have to do is find an anti biotic capable of killing this bacterium, in other words,a completely different antibiotic, which may have different, or worse side effects. Laymen often refer to these as ‘stronger’ antibiotics, but they are simply antibiotics with undesirable side effects.
American pronghorns evolved the ability to run extremely fast in order to outrun American "cheetahs", cats that co-evolved great speed along with their non-related African namesakes. The American cheetahs died out during the last Ice Age, over 12,000 years ago. Yet, pronghorns still run extremely fast; they're the second-fastest land animals after African cheetahs. This illustrates that neutral traits can continue to be expressed even after the environmental pressure that created them no longer exists.
@@pirobot668beta Capybaras are prey to jaguars, pumas, caimans, and anacondas. They are in fact pretty wary. OTOH they are easily domesticated and allow humans to pet them. This is not "neutral" behavior like the no-longer-needed super speed of pronghorns. It may be that since capybaras raise their young in communal herds instead of strictly by the parents, this docility is necessary to allow bonding with individuals other than their parents.
Evolutionary biology is a fascinating subject. I took multiple classes while studying for my undergraduate degree in Cell and Molecular Biology. I wish I had majored in evolutionary biology sometimes… There’s a series from the Discovery Channel made back in the early 2000’s called the Human Body. It’s four or five episodes and it explains the evolutionary processes that fuel our entire existence. I highly suggest watching it if you’re interested in things like this. It helped me ace my biology final senior year of high school lol
There is no evolution in biology is the problem. It’s nothing but conjecture. There’s never been evolution seen in the fossil record. There is no gradual progression of one species to the other in paleontology or in biology.
Love all the channels and the tangents. Heard about the US marine core outsmarting a darpa ai drone with some ridiculously funny methods. Could be a quick funny one for ya
While we’re talking about unusual stuff in our history as a species, is the “uncanny valley” effect. It could just be a mistake in our mental makeup, but someone once said that perhaps it points out that once there was a genetic advantage to recognising something that looked human, but actually wasn’t. Nobody knows what that creature might have been.
As far as I know, uncanny valley is a survival mechanism to keep us away from corpses, ensuring we stay away from potential diseases and the predators that corpses would attract
@@jameshall1300 oh interesting. I'm from Canada so a little bit different education system. It's not like my schools denied evolution, just wasn't part of the curriculum.
I learned about evolution in the 5th grade. My teacher was a biologist who had published papers on evolution. She was also a Catholic nun. Please check your facts.
What really need to know though is how many different TH-cam series is Simon on? 10 or 20? Simon has probably been watched by nearly everyone on the planet. Even the North Koreans are like, 'Simon Whistler? Yes yes we know him. The Great Leader writes all of his shows and has to teach him about everything before he films a show' or something like that.
Artificial selection IS NOT the opposite of natural selection, it's the same process. We call it artificial because humans chose the traits instead of nature. The reason it is mentioned here is that artificial selection produces such a strong selective pressure that it often carries unwanted alleles with the desired alleles (like stowaways). It is similar to the bottleneck effect.
Yes, I think opposite was a poor choice of words. It could be understood the meaning merely meant "not by nature". Although if we have no free will, we are most likely just as part of nature as any other creature, perhaps proving your point.
@@patrickpaganini I do think it just meant "not by nature" and they used clumsy wording (I had to point it out because it was too big). My other point was more about WHY the authors chose artificial selection as an example of concepts that are not taught in basic genetics classes. Not only is this pretty easy to understand, it is commonly used as examples of evolution in beginners classes. What happened (I think) is they opened up a Genetics textbook in the evolution section and fell upon the chapter on genetic drift, which would include examples of bottleneck effect, founder effect and artificial selection. So artificial selection allows "favorable" alleles to be selected, but these alleles are physically attached to other genes and random alleles that can cause deleterious effects. Like breeds selected for coat color, but end up having poor reproduction (inbreeding also plays a part here, as the deleterious alleles become homozygous). On your point about animals and free will: yes, we are only very smart apes who think they have it.
@@benoitguillemette7562 btw do you think there are important mechanisms that cause evolutionary change we haven't discovered? I've always been puzzled why some species can stay the same for 10s of millions of years.
@@benoitguillemette7562 Also the building blocks seem so insanely complicated, I wonder whether DNA arrived on earth (like Fred Hoyle thought), and perhaps the universe is older than we imagine atm.
Misunderstanding evolution is the entire basis for all arguments against it. Everyone who denies evolution either doesn't understand it, or is pushing lies based on misunderstanding to others. It's sad but true.
@@zogar8526 It is not even close to being a proven fact. That means it is observerable and repeatable, which it is not. There are so many holes in the theory. Those who believe it is a science fact have been duped, and likely have never studied it from an objectional viewpoint. Let's do a test, what is the percentage similarity between chimp and human DNA?
@Rich-mw9ye yes it has. Your inability to understand doesn't change the facts. Evolution is observed and known for a fact. It is not up for debate, anymore than the shape of the earth or the fact gravity exists. Sciencecis never done, and we always learn more. But it starts with observing something, then figuring out how it works. Evolution is the observed fact, and can not be denied.
Number 5: Traits that evolved for one environment can sometimes prove advantageous in a completely different environment. Camels have wide splayed toes that help them walk over soft sand. It turns out that the ancestor of the camel actually evolved in a snowy environment and originally evolved those toes to act as natural snow shoes.
I have a hard time with the evolution of the bot fly. It catches mosquitoes and lays eggs on the mosquitoe's belly that when the mosquitoe's belly gets warm and full with blood. The eggs drop off onto the bitten host. How did that process even start ???
I don't recommend thinking about evolution in the context of lab controlled experiment in determining survival fitness. To put it simply, lab conditions are very ideal in comparison to the wild, so a lot of things we think are "beneficial" is not necessarily so in wild. For example, we tend to screen functionality by mutation which favors genes that lifts limits on growth to be discovered while under-estimating genes that limits growth that might be crucial to stress-survival in the long run. Natural selection is about fitting into a defined niche, hence why when niches disappear (aka bottleneck events) happen, a largely random drift can happen, but is it random by chance is still debatable. Lastly, I hope people especially science communicators stop using "rapid evolution" as a term, since evolution is just evolution, mutation + selection. the rate of which a trait dominates a population is in direct correction to the weight of the selection pressure; hence there is no concept of "rapid", just whether selection is applied more heavily or not. Also note that selection pressure doesn't not necessarily improve survival fitness.
When I was at school the nearest we got to evolution was explaining the rise of man - none of the DNA, genes, etc. And who thought up the name for the WTF gene (that presentation must've been a wow of a session)
The early days of gene discovery were a bit of a Wild West. A lot of genes got silly or rude names e.g. DKK meaning Dickkopf i.e. dickhead because fly geneticists made fruit flies grow their genitals on their heads. Another is Sonic Hedgehog (SHH), which means we all have to talk about the Hedgehog signaling pathway because it turns out that it's incredibly important. There are lots more out there to find, but finally, the Human Genome Organization's Gene Nomenclature Committee came along to standardize and approve the naming of genes and other features. Dull? Yes. But try telling a pregnant woman that her developing fetus has holoprosencephaly and will be severely disabled, that the gene causing the defect is called Sonic Hedgehog. It's insensitive to say the least. So we try to be as sober and descriptive as possible these days. I sometimes find it helpful but other times gene names can be a pain to pronounce - such as the TNFSF superfamily. I never can say it correctly, and I've been working on inflammatory bowel disease, where TNFSF15 is an important risk factor, for over 12 years.
damn. altho most anti evolution schools will likely even deny that humans evolved at all. never mind that we are and evolved from animals. even less that we are apes.
Forget about some face rock Simon, I think you've reached the point in your success where it's mandatory to have two people follow you around with palm tree fronds & incense to ensure the air you inhale is rarified. ;) In all seriousness, thank you & your team for the great content, every time I look at your channel there's more interesting topics that you've covered. And your side stories and tangents honestly add to your excellence. Thank you to both you & your team for all the hard work - You deserve that palm frond! Happy Holidays to everyone, all my best!
If you want to witness evolution pick something that has a very short lifespan. The shorter the span the more generations that will pass in your lifetime. Also you could say viruses evolve hence why we need new vaccines for the flu. Also super bugs that are resistent to medicine.
Minor correction: The Theory of Evolution which involves evolution by natural selection is about 150 years old. The idea of evolution by who knows which means (one popular old one was the will of the creatures themselves) is much older and as far as I know has not been traced back to any specific origin. It's also interesting to note the differing testimonies of people in comments - who was and wasn't taught the basics of the modern science in k-12. There are clearly regional or even more local differences, and sometimes differences within the same religion or culture.
We need more like this here in the US. I was fortunate to be raised and educated in a 'blue' state and was taught this but too many people have not been taught real science and even don't believe bacteria can evolve. The number of people who don't understand evolution is WHY antibiotics need to be used responsibly is staggering.
Chubbyemu did a recent video highlighting the issue with resistant bacteria. Scary but important. Look for "A Mom Ate Chicken Burrito From A Suspicious Restaurant. This Is What Happened To Her Gut."
I live in a red state. I was also taught this in high school....I feel most probably are. There are just to many people who don't actually learn what they were taught. They just brain dump it after the test.
I grew up in that most blessed of things in America, a swing state (not really- I'd definitely describe my "home" state as severely cursed). Almost all American States have taught the theory of evolution in public school since the 19th century. A small handful of states were able to ban the teaching of evolution in the 1920s mostly on religious grounds (likely influenced by the legitimate horror of eugenics in America in the early 20th century, which was directly influenced in turn by the widespread acceptance of the theory of evolution and the idea that it should be forcibly "helped" and "accelerated" in humans, giving pundits very reasonable ground to cast the theory in a severely negative light; I could go off on like three different historical tangents here to try imparting more perspective, but I'll spare you, especially since I'm pretty sure it would be falling on deaf ears for one who seriously believes that if they go over state lines from California to Arizona they'll find themselves in a bizarro world where people still think babies come from the stork and that 1+2 is 12 because they want to be taxed less more than they want comprehensive welfare systems (or they recognise that their taxes are mostly not going to welfare anyway) or have a different opinion on the extremely nuanced issue of whether the moral good is defined as personal agency or the preservation of human life and they vote accordingly), and the Supreme Court overturned all of those bans in 1968. Teaching the theory of evolution has not been banned in American public schools (in any state) since 1968. The theory of evolution has been a part of the core curriculum of most American schools since 1968, and this went into full effect in all states by 1970. Only recently has the concept of home schooling actually come into vogue. Private schooling is too expensive for most of the sorts of families that have vehemently opposed the concept of the theory of evolution since the late 1800s. Since the late 80s (with the last stragglers catching up in the mid 00s), even red states have been making evolution education explicitly mandatory, though it was already ubiquitous before that; this was merely the law codifying that. You most likely would have been taught about evolution growing up in America _even_ if you grew up in rural Alabama with a father who was mad the Bush family wasn't conservative enough and a mother who was also your cousin and who wasn't allowed to have an opinion either way because she was a woman. The fact is that in the most extreme cases you would have been taught Creationism _alongside_ the theory of evolution in a public school, but even that is rarely practiced despite being _allowed_ in some (but not all) red states. Every attempt by far-right enclaves (in red and blue states) since the 1970s to make creation education mandatory or to make the ridicule of evolution theory compulsory (or label evolution as "controversial" in schools) has been shot down. Here's a shot in the dark, but I wouldn't take it if I didn't think it had a fair chance of being an accurate cold read: There's no "illiteracy epidemic" in America either. No, statistics derived from deliberately selected small sample sizes stating in a textual survey that they must be capable of reading to even answer that they have read fewer than 5 books in the past year does not mean that most American adults are incapable of reading. That's some classic "blue" numbers-massaging.
@@vitriolicAmaranth Uh, yes there absolutely is a literacy epidemic. The problem with it is that a lot of folks assume illiteracy means you can't read at all. That's wildly inaccurate, however. The issue is too many schools teach only to do the bare minimum the standardized tests require. That leads to terrible outcomes overall. A seemingly minor deficit in reading comprehension has significant effects in one's ability to properly understand what they're reading. It is actually a very real issue and requires a solution. That solution absolutely is not denying it exists. Many more folks are functionally illiterate than most realize. This manifests in various ways but if anyone who's ever worked in retail has likely run into folks who are. They tend to bluster their way through things when a system they've carefully memorized changes rather than admit they can't actually read very well. Somewhat more concerning, I've seen this in folks with office jobs as well.
I find it easy to see how one species of animal can change superficially over time into another. Dinosaurs into birds, for instance. What is harder for me to contemplate is how a dinosaur came into existence in the first place. By this, I mean, look at humans. We have a heart that beats, sending blood throughout the body, picking up nutrients from the digestive system, oxygen from the lungs, etc. So, what came first? The heart? Blood vessels? Blood? Lungs? Digestive system? Kidneys? Pancreas? Liver? All these organs work together to keep us alive. I'm not saying anything other than my apparently little brain can't visualize how this all came about naturally.
Cool question. 1) The heart predates dinosaurs by hundreds of millions of years. As for which came first, the chicken or....I mean the heart or the blood, I would love to hear what an actual evolutionary biologist would have to say on the matter. 2) My guess would be "heart", or at least the distant precursor to it. When a life form is simple enough, it does not need to actively move nutrients around itself, nutrients can be distributed by simple diffusion (the thing that causes the smell of perfume to be smelt on the other side of the room that a bottle is opened in). This would be a huge limiting factor though in how large it could grow. If it got past a certain size diffusion and osmosis could not spread the nutrients fast enough to keep individual cells from di ying. So perhaps this was the limit for 10's or hundreds of millions of years. But eventually, enough beneficial mutations accumulated in a population that some pulsating mechanism was formed. That would help distribute the nutrients incredibly, giving that population a huge survival advantage and allowing it to grow larger. From there. It just grew more and more refined. Life is weird and incredibly varied. Even today, insects have hearts but do not have veins or arteries. They have what's called "an open circulatory system" meaning, (over-simplistically) that their inside goo just gets pushed around in the cavity of their body as the heart pumps. What it pumps is doing the equivalent job that blood does, but it's not blood, so even today many animals do not have veins or blood. (More accurately, but still over-simplistic, insects have a "dorsal tube" that acts like a hose, the heart pumping it's inside goo to the front of the insect and that pushes other goo toward the back of the insect to be taken in by the heart again and pumped to the front)
Oh, and to answer your specific question, of the ones you listed, the digestive system came first because even single celled life forms have one (an eating cell just surrounds and engulphs a smaller one, then releases enzymes that break the eaten single celled critters into smaller nutrients that can then diffuse through the swallowing cell - it's a process called phagocytosis)
The main thing they don’t teach about evolutionary theory in secondary school is what the theory actually tries to explain and what it doesn’t explain. To phrase it concisely; Evolutionary theory tries to explain the biological process of speciation. What evolutionary theory does not try to explain is the origins of life.
And it fails at even that. "Speciation" is the pruning of variability to a reduced subset with specific outcomes. As breeding demonstrates, there is lots of variation within the wolf. When we selectively take certain traits (i.e. short) and keep reinforcing those genes, we severely reduced the options to favor short. However, it was always a dog and will always be a dog.
However, it certainly prompts the question of what came before. Precellular metabolism and prebiotic replicators are interesting areas with a lot of long-standing concepts such as Eigen's "metabolic hypercycles" and Prigogine's investigations of self-organising chemical systems. RNA autocatalysis got a lot of attention from Sjostak. That was just the 70's through the early 90s. Lots more work done since.
There is so much not taught in school about this subject. One of the unintended consequence of evolution vs. creationism fights has been that a huge amount of interesting information is suppressed for fear that anyone discussing details of the topic often gets labeled as a "crazy nut job creationist idiot"
"Crazy nut job idiot" and "creationist" are redundant. Questions can easily be phrased in a way that shows you're genuinely curious and not being a jackass.
USE not UTILISE. When you "utilise" something, you are using it in a way which is against its intended purpose. So, you use a hammer to drive a nail but you could utilise the handle of a screwdriver to do the same job.
Not a geneticist so I can't be sure this is still current science, but I've heard that a lot of the non-coding DNA is at least suspected of being the programming that determines when proteins are made - for example, when a fetus is developing, there's a point at which cells go from being stem cells to being specialist cells, and by and large they seem to know when in the sequence of development that change needs to happen (which varies based on what is being developed) and what they need to turn into (ie: the stuff that will wind up forming the interior of the skull becomes neural matter, not muscle). There are occasionally some alterations to the standard pattern but even in those cases, the vast majority of what is supposed to happen develops as expected. There's a reason no human comes out as a chimpanzee despite the fact that we've got pretty much all the DNA required to make that happen. Logically there must be some system for explaining that, and one of the leading candidates for why was, at least at one point, non-coding DNA.
It was a bit misleading when he confused junk DNA with non-coding DNA, they are not the same thing. There is non-coding DNA which controls gene expression but this is likely to only account for ~10% of the genome. The rest is likely to be junk DNA with no function, other than some sections which require a certain amount of DNA but are not too picky on the actual sequence.
We share I think 70% DNA with chimps, it's actually not 90%+ as the claims, the 90%+ has been debunked. So the reason we don't come out as chimps is because we are a different species and our DNA is very distinct from chimps.
@@rakuengrowlithe4654 Actually the ENCODE project is exploring what the non coding part is for and the number I heard last was 60% of the DNA they have found a purpose for so far, so it's not 10% at all, that was just people making stuff up because they didn't understand.
@@DavidJJJ Actually no, that figure (72% iirc) came from a creationist funded paper that deliberately undersold how comparative genetics works in order to undermine common ancestry.
@@nealjroberts4050 it depends on how you measure it, but either way, I think the point you’re trying to make is that we all came from a Designer who created everything, hence the similarities and complexity in the design of all living things, and I totally agree with you 👍✨
Bacteria can also evolve without reproduction. Two bacteria can meet and exchange DNA between them. They have to be from the same species but any E. Coli variant can exchange with any other. This is what scares me most about overuse of antibiotics in livestock. One strain of a bacteria that only infects cattle for example can develop a resistance and then trade that resistance to a variant that infects humans.
No. Bacteria can evolve without sexual reproduction, but unless a trait can be passed on to offspring, there is no evolution. Individual bacteria can acquire new traits without reproduction, but that is not Evolution in the biological sense of the word.
Yeah, it's pretty embarrassing. The ones raised that way aren't as bad as the ones that know there's evidence against creationism but still try to convince themselves it's true anyway.
My schools had no issues teaching on this subject. Perhaps is as much about limited time combined with an overall lack of focus on any STEM subjects as a whole. Its not as if this particular subject was being avoided,.as the truth is .most of your "sciencey" subjects decreased in high school as well as your time honored vocational courses as well. NO more wood shop or home economic or anything practical were you'd work with your hands. Everyone was being told to get "cerebral"jobs and thus here we are two generations later and those plumbers, painters, carpenters and sanitation specialist everyone looked down on are now earning doctor and lawyer money,.LoL Its easy to see why the post WW2 generation wanted their kids no be more successful and thusly more "cerebral" but it was an over-correction,.not some vast freaken conspiracy . Yes,..people whom consider themselves "religious " or "spiritual" exert some influence on American culture ,.but they are far far far from steering the ship. Because f they were,.wed have had MANDATORY prayer in all US schools since 9/11
@@terryshrk the speaker of the house is a young earth creationist. 2nd in line for the presidency. We are literally one successful assassination plot away from having one of them in charge of the country. It's far worse than you think.
Fascinating. Personally, I was always fascinated by "sexual selection". There are so many tiny details which have emerged in this area (e.g. pheromones). I'd love to see a video on that by you.
We hijacked human sexual selection with the invention of the contraceptive pill. It eliminates women's ability to successfully select the perfect mate based on pheromones.
I live in the US. Christian extremists made sure evolution was not taught in any school I ever attended until I went to college. I am so happy for the internet and the ability to learn everything I didn't have a choice in when I was a child.
Went to public schools in the US and we were taught evolution and not creationism. Where did you go where the opposite happened? Must have been a private Christian school? If so, that would be why and not exactly because in the US the "Christian extremist" made you, your parents made you by way of putting you in that particular school. Or at least that's how your comment reads to me. Maybe I need some clarification but an interesting comment all the same. Also I know, I have poor grammar, punctuation and all that, hence my public school education. Lol hopefully you at least got a better education in a private school if that is in fact where you went.i really would like to know if I guessed correctly?
@@CdoGtheGreat I went to public schools in a small town in WY. Our text books had evolutional studies in them but they were marked out with red sharpie. The internet was not a thing until I went to high school, at which time I looked up the text books and was able to read about evolution at that time. We were not taught religion in school either just to be clear. When I went to college I took as many Science classes as I could, which was were I learned about evolution in a formal settings, as well as genetics, Neanderthal and other humanoids and DNA. My children also attended school in WY. They did not learn evolution in their Science classes in public schools either. I don't know if its the whole state or just the extreme conservative area I grew up in.
I grew up in a Christian town where teachers had bible verses on the walls, looks like I’m twice your age, and we learned about evolution. And back then Christians were burning heavy metal albums. You from Idaho or something?or Utah?
Simon. Your voice can be very difficult to follow, in particular, the way you modulate your volume up and down etc as part of your cadence of speech. It would be very helpful for we listeners if you could use a microphone or sound software to even out the volume of your voice so we can hear you more clearly. Thanks.
I always laugh when some religious person screams at me "so you think we came from monkeys." To which I reply "the correct link is primates." When Simon mentioned "jumping DNA" I started swinging around like a monkey. Now I can't stop; instant genetic drift.
Fun fact: genes from retroviruses make up about 8% of your own genome. They're called ancestral endogenous retroviruses and they're the reason that we have such big brains. Over millions of years, various injections of genetic code into gametes from retroviruses acted to shape humans the way we are today.
Yeah, I was gonna bring up ERV's - due to the fact that the lineage patterns indicated by their presence in the genomes of most life-forms on our planet constitute what amounts to "smoking gun" evidence for the FACT of evolution.
@@steveb0503 yup, they would serve literally no purpose in an organism that was designed, and yet we can trace insertion points in lineages. There is no reason to share them between widely different species unless they descend from a common ancestor that also had it.
@@jameshall1300 There is no common ancestor, so the likely explanation is that we share a genetic code, so we shares genes, the same Designer was responsible for both. To me, the smoking gun is probably the sugar code. The sugar code is what makes a common ancestor practically impossible.
Eh suit yourself, I like em all. These are far more educational, don't get me wrong, but I love the tangent filled rants when I'm listening to something while I'm at work
The garter snake's resistance is interesting, in that it retains the poison in its systems. If a human were to eat the toxin-laced garter snake, the human would get poisoned. Garter snakes are, therefore, one of the only known species of poisonous snakes (not venomous).
Evolutionary Biology was my absolute FAVOURITE unit of my degree! I probably would have transferred to an entire course revolving around it if my uni offered it!
How dare you be right about my nation? 😂 Evolution actually is taught in good US schools like the ones I attended, but a lot of information is misunderstood because the teachers use the vernacular rather than the scientific definitions of scientific words. It's generally taught better in most nations.
Public school teaches evolution in a way that makes it seem laughable.. why i never believed it growing up until i started learning about on my own. A lot of people laugh at the questions people have about evolution, but they are often valid questions to the "evolution" that is taught in public school.
I recently had a comment exchange with a guy who summarized Darwin and Russel's original paper on the theory of evolution then followed up by stating it was not evolution they were describing. I informed him that he was full of Orwellian bullshit.
I’m not sure what lies I was told. I learned about all of this in high school. I guess this is what you were lied about to if you were taught creationism.
its very common in the US that creationist teachers will teach evolution wrong and actively push creationism. also happens in some european countries. i havent had high level education in school but i was never even taught the basics of evolution in school. im lucky i have always been interested in biology in my free time. otherwise i am pretty sure i would barely know anything.
@@theflyingdutchguy9870 Not in America anymore. Kitzmiller v. Dover put that to rest. I’m American, you’re Dutch. I went to school in America in the 2000s. You even said yourself you never went to high school.
@@ferretyluv i went to high school. well, the dutch version of high school. i never went tp university. amd wasnt taught evolution in high school, thats what i said.
@@ferretyluv some teachers, especially in the south, still push creationism as much as they can. It may be inference or the language they use, but they definitely do.
Except for all those people in Academia who have no issues with their belief systems and Science. So the obvious conclusion is that the issue is with your beliefs abd/or understanding.🤷♂️
@sgtbrown4273 they won't get grant money if they waste their time on unverifiable nonsense There's plenty of money for research out there, just not for gods
Pls feature how cancer cells develop in the DNA level & how to prevent or effective latest treatment methods .I'm sure millions wil be thankful if we get substantial info latest on this...
One common misconception is that an individual can evolve - it can’t! Evolution relies on the parents passing combinations of their genes to their offspring. Each offspring has its own unique combination. Good combinations benefit the offspring and it is more likely to survive and pass the combination on to its descendants. Bad combinations are more likely to lead to early demise with no descendants. The amazing thing is that over thousands or millions of generations, with small changes each time,very dramatic long-term improvements are possible.
@@ButUrWrongTho Yes, and also no. Only populations evolve over generations. But what for example is an individual human, dog or tree? Many, many cells. Populations of cells. Of course, complex multicellular life involves a lot of close cooperation between cells types for the benefit of the colony, but things like cancers are examples of evolution within an individual.
@@roberthunter6927 the process you're describing is not evolution. You could make an argument that the critters in our gut biome evolve, although it's a much more complicated process since they largely evolve in isolated systems (an individual) and go extinct when the individual expires. Mostly, anyways.
@@roberthunter6927 The growth of cancer is a self-repeoducing process guided by natural selection, sure, but it would be an awkward use of the word evolution to say cancer is evolution.
@@ButUrWrongTho The cells of the body, which are in trillions, plus gut bacteria interact with each other over time. The immune system adapting to new pathogens for example. if you had opened a PROFESSIONAL book or read any professional papers in evolutionary biology, you would know this. So don't embarrass yourself. Cancer is another aspect of this evolution within a body. if you can apply scaling to evolutionary biology then you will never understand it.
Two additional points. One is luck. Think of a male lion cub born with exceptional intelligence whose father dies shortly after it is born. A new male lion takes over the pride and systematically kills off the cubs before the exceptional cub can think a way out of the situation. He has to survive to have cubs of his own. A second question is how on earth humans have so many different talents. A baseball pitcher may owe his ability to ancestors who threw rocks at attackers a prey, but what environmental challenge is met by the ability to compose symphonies or play the piano?
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about 10-12K years back we started having shortened canines we no longer need them
Hi , do you mind if I repost your videos with Arabic translate?
It's called the " THEORY " of evolution , not evolution
@@JIMDEZWAV
A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of the real world.
THEORY OF RELATIVITY for example since 1915 has had many tests and todate is and has been proven to be correct
same with evolution
what your after isa hypothesis which is an idea that may stem from an observation that is not yet confirmed as fact ....
really hard to buy the whole "i only use sponsors products that i actually believe in and endorse" then this BS one always comes up. This is like those electro shocking belts that supposedly gives you a 6pack....
Junk DNA has other roles that aren’t coding…. Structure, spacing out genes, redundancy of old copies of genes that functionally “backups”
The idea of so called Junk DNA was a naive myth. We are discovering what was thought to be junk leftovers from a supposed evolutionary past is actually quite active in making mostly RNA. The so called junk DNA is now considered by geneticists as one of the greatest blunders in science. It hindered discovery based on a strange devotion to an evolutionary faith.
th-cam.com/video/75iGbLEQdeo/w-d-xo.htmlsi=ga1mBl7I5hZDHj7_
Therefor the interon DNA have function which was found out later.
It speaks to the attitude of scientists: We don't know what's there for, it has to have no purpose.🙄
The idea that my teachers were actively ‘hiding’ anything from me. They were lucky to get through their lesson plans, thanks to the kids that thought they were stars of the circus. There’s funny and then there are those people.
Only other kids can stop them. Together we can be stronger and smarter if we know each other.
In a Christian school, or other religion, they absolutely DO hide the facts of evolution and go so far as to lie about it.
We all know who """those""" people are.
@@Luckmann Trump voters.
I like how Simon is evolving into TH-cam itself; soon all channels will be only Simon.
Simon simon _simon_ simon?
Simon is the first AI.
I hope not. Simon is a horrible gabbler who quite clearly does not always understand what he is reading.
I know a Dave that has his own tv channel and he sucks! 🥹😢
Agent Simon. You'll know it's beginning when he starts wearing dark sunnies.
Great presentation. I remember many decades ago, discussions about moths in London with selected color changes due to use of coal, and subsequent coal pollution. I think an adaptation became a step in evolution when small birds [again in England?] learned to peck at the lids on milk bottles to get at the milk. And, here in Charleston, SC we have Monarch Butterflies that overwinter, and dolphins that are strand feeders. Those unrelated animals seem to be distinct species from their common cousins, newly identified either this year or within the past few years.
I think a subject you missed was epigenetics - that genes can be switched off and on depending on how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. This can be down to many things, like stress, famine or the climate.
And also some genes can be great in certain situations - speaking from experience of having the 'Celtic Curse' (hereditary haemochrotosis) which many people of Gaelic descent have. This genetic variation dates back to the Bronze Age - and latterly probably grew under English / British misrule of Ireland - protected against famine and blood-loss and boosted fertility, but now can be dangerous as too much iron is toxic and can lead to cancer, diabetes, kidney and liver failure, as well as a host of other bad stuff.
Interesting. I have half the hematochromosis genes. Didn't know it had benefits but it's obvious now you mention it
Or like how astronauts literally p%$$ out calcium as soon as they are in a near zero G environment. The body is like “well, I guess we don’t need bones anymore” and literally starts “evolving” in real time
@@jeninlight That is not evolution. That is adaptation.
@@ThomasD66 but it can lead to permanent change ?
@@mikev4621 "Can" is not enough. If the expression of a gene, or set of genes CAUSES that particular line of an organism, over other lines that do not possess those genetic characteristics, to persist then yes, it would be evolution. But IF and UNTIL those other lines cease to exist it is merely genetic diversity.
In other words, genetic expression in the absence of 'natural selection' is not evolution.
As a student of Biology for over 40 years you nail it buddy... The two things i want you to look at are the evolution of the spitting cobra and the honey guide. These are examples of commensalism and co-evolution with humans
it is also interesting to note that the Bajau people have developed larger spleens to help them breathe for longer whilst under water and as for rapid evolution - the cane toad that was introduced to australia (to supposedly eat sugar cane grubs) have literally increased the length of their back legs by around 25% over the past 40 years or so.
The cane toad is just one of many invasive species that have evolved rapidly. Another is the Australian possum that in New Zealand has changed from a cute endangered species into a series pest. They are bigger and tougher then their ancestors and a serious threat to New Zealand's native birds.
I think you confuse 'adaptation' with 'evolution'. It is still a spleen...
@kl0wnkiller912
In this case the adaptation is evolution. Amy adaptation that requires generations being selected for inherited characteristics IS evolution.
@@kl0wnkiller912 I don't think he confuses that. By which meachanism is the adaptation propagated? I would think it's by genetic change - and that IS evolution.
I'm wondering about other things: Spleens help to hold your breath longer? (I doubt very much it enables them to breathe ("longer"?) under water.) It might be possible that a larger spleen can help you staying longer under water, since it's storing blood. It sounds rather dubious though; I have to look into it. And I also wonder which evolutionary advantage these people could have from being able to stay longer under water - it certainly is an advantage, I wish I had it, but does it lead to more offspring?
UPDATE: Yes, a larger spleen helps indeed to stay longer under water. And apparently it indeed has been an evolutionary advantage for the Bajau people. Interesting.
The cane toad will always be a toad, this is what we should expect based on observation.
Thank you, Simon, for so many well-researched and interesting videocasts this year. We hope you and your family have a wonderful end of the year.
I think Simon should do more like this - videos on common high school science subjects expanding on what schools teach. Especially in the US, the public educational system has truly failed our children, especially in the sciences and social sciences!
That's because all our Midwest science teacher try and fit Bible study in where they can, hell I remember my chemistry teacher saying evolution was just a theory, like she'd never read the scientific method.
@@SkylerKPHDtrustmebroUNIIt's because it is a theory. We're constantly shaping how evolution works based on new modern studies. That whole "natural selection" thing doesn't tell the whole story. It's far more complicated than school teaches.
Your thinking hypothesis. Simon already covered this.
25 years ago: We unlocked the human genome and put a rover on Mars!
Today: FOR THE LAST TIME, THE EARTH IS ROUND!!!
ffs...
And teachers want to be paid more. For what? They’ve failed at their jobs.
Love this topic. I'd love a longer video or Simon to start a nature channel.
That would be good!
Yes a nature channel would be great ❤
Something you missed about transposons: it's possible they are the cause of retaining so much non coding DNA. If only 2 percent of DNA is genes, it's very unlikely that a transposon will relocate in the middle of a gene.
Also, I have a biochemistry degree and WTF genes were new to me, very cool!
Transposons are the remnants of viruses. However they have been repurposed. They are there to provide the potential for new genes to evolve.. If you have more code. Something might make a protein that actually works.. Then selection, you know the gig....
Same here. I have a Masters in human biology and I had not heard of them either. Though to be fair…it’s been almost 40 years since I graduated and I don’t work in genetics. LOL
I will then give credit to my both the British school and university system as the basics of this genetics and DNA were covered under GCSE, A-level and my microbiology degree all of which were 30 plus years ago.
@@ForgeMasterXXL That might be over reach as you were an MB major. Though I did study some MB and immunology as an undergraduate and grad student but those were medically oriented classes and my emphasis was largely on anatomy, physiology and chemistry. Shoot I only took one genetics class as a freshman.
I wouldn’t compare the British secondary system to the U.S. We have nothing comparable to A-Levels. We do have advanced placement classes and assessment tests like the SAT but the American system is an egalitarian system. If you graduate from high school you can go to University if you can pay the tuition and pass the classes. Also, last I heard, the U.S. University System is hardly secondary to the British.
Our secondary system is all over the place though and the quality of education you receive is largely dependent on the affluence of the community you live in. Which is definitely a problem here.
Just remember, evolution is essentially a mathematical probabilistic process, it will happen on anything that makes copies of itself with the potential of making errors in that copy. Be it in biology, physics, software, language or wherever. Hence it does not require "agency" or "decision" or "choices", it instead simply happens. I am surprised that this is not mentioned more often. Just as I am surprised that it wasn't discovered by some gifted mathematician at Renaissance.
Probably because in human environments most of the copying is mediated by humans and the there was the general assumption that spirits interfered all the time.
Basically no one observed things copying themselves.
This is correct
Yeah I'm making an revolutionary program for a personal project. It's always fascinating to me to watch them learn. I'll start with a population of 100,000 and they're all terrible. I take the least terrible 10,000 and start running generational breeding on them. The config is encoded in a string that has "genes" and I made it easy for parents to mix their genes and pass them onto their children. Plus a small chance of random mutation to keep things interesting.
Watching this population go from utterly incapable to actually getting good numbers is wild. It's just mathematics but it results in a system that can learn the most efficient way to accomplish whatever task you give it.
Yeah, pretty incredible how something without decisions or choices just so happened to put our thumbs where they are, caused us to have ears that hear, eyes that see, noses that smell, tongues that taste, fingers that feel, a planet that just happens to be the perfect distance from the sun, rotates exactly the right way to give seasons, has a magnetic shield to protect itself from the sun's harmful radiation, and on, and on, and on, and on. Pretty damned amazing.
Menelyv's seeds
For most of my life I thought that evolution was too complicated and only scientists could understand it. Imagine my surprise when I happened to watch a Richard Dawkins DVD and discovered that's not the case. The basic concept is so simple now I see it everywhere. Thank you Mr. Dawkins.
Most scientific facts are understandable by most people. Now them formalizing those facts and theories into mathematical formulas to derive new ideas, that's the difficult part. I contend for example that there's only ever like a dozen people on earth at a time who are truly capable of h derstandi g quantum mechanics, and they're not always the scientists you'd expect. A lot of scientists get by in quantum mechanics by being able to apply the math correctly, even if they'll never have the full understading of the quantum mechanics. I am definitely neither of the 12 nor of the hundreds properly applying quantum mechanics.
I found dog breeding the easiest to explain the concept.
Its not natural selection but selective breeding.
But if you understand dog breeding you can understand evolution.
Careful! The erroneous belief that science is too complicated for a non scientist to understand is a quick way to turn your science into religion
I see variation with limitations and evolutionary mechanisms as part of an obviously designed system.
Evolution is a design feature, and selection pressure is an absolute lie. Many different species adapt or migrate, if the fitness requirements are not met, there is extinction.
Thats the reality, thats why people think evolution is a difficult topic to learn,,
It makes absolutely no sense that new genetic information can spontaneously emerge, its an appeal to coincidence. A fallacy
@@jacobostapowicz8188
Both selection and mutation of DNA have been observed to happen though. Claiming it hasn't is either ignorance or lying.
12:15 y'know, I recall back in school our teacher was talking about evolution and she told a story about how during the industrial revolution there were moths that evolved to blend in better with the soot from the nearby factories and when the factories stopped they evolved to be lighter in color to blend with their surroundings. Could have something she made up, but sounded convincing enough to me at the time!
Great video, loved biology in high school and wish they went more in depth!
Hi Simon...
I'm Iysa from Nigeria and I've been following you for a few years now.
You do so much and I'm really happy and blessed to have learnt so much from you. From history to science to biology, to psychology...
Thank you so much man.
Hey Iysa! Cool name! I'm Kacey from the US. I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see that you guys are getting this information! I've seen a few videos recently about some absolutely amazing African inventors and entrepreneurs lately and seeing how much the quality of life that information has given your continent always puts a smile on my face! Have you heard of Zipline in Rwanda? A man named Abdul created an absolutely INGENIOUS system to deliver medical supplies to hard to reach places out in the field. Mark Rober did a video on it titled "Amazing Invention-This Drone Will Change Everything" that goes into it, and it just blows my mind how friggin smart that man is.
Knowledge is power, and open access to knowledge gives power to us all. 💜
Love this. Also, when it comes to the selfish gene, it's REALLY important (as you touched on) to understand that genes don't have a drive to be selfish, they are "thinking" "I need to be selfish to survive". That's putting the cart before the horse. It's just that genes that are better at replicating are the ones that get passed on. The genes that act in the preservation of themselves, will be the ones that survive. It's so interesting, please do more! :D
People mistakenly think that evolved somehow equals better. But in strict evolutionary terms "better" is only defined as "that which persists." So, depending on circumstances slower could be better, or less intelligent could be better. One could actually argue that circumstances - meaning the totality of the evolutionary predicament - is really all that matters.
@@ThomasD66 Yes, another great point! Sometimes evolution is a real son of a bitch lol
It's also important to remember that these clever game-theoretic models stop working the moment the genes exist within an organism which in turn lives in an environment and is subject to the accidents and vicissitudes of life
It will be 20 years before it is discovered that self thinking is directly responsible for changes at a genetic level. In other words willing your own changes in order to adapt to an environment.
@@ThomasD66Circumstance, and for "evolution" that the perfect "mutations" happen at exactly the right time, all synchronized perfectly to work with each other to produce the effect that allows the organism to persist, without mindful purpose or plan.
Love this Simon. I have a background in Historical Geology and keep up with research on Evolution and related areas. Speaking about Rapid Evolution, not that many fossils had been found and studied when Darwin took his voyage around South America. He felt that over time, as more fossils were found, it would show that species gradually change from one to the other. As the decades passed, it was observed that species tend to remain stable, until an external stressor acted upon them. Then in 1972, a paper called Punctuated Equilibrium came out, that explained the rapid evolution. It's now known that Punctuated Equilibrium occurs most often after an Extinction Event.
More evolutionary fantasy. By what mechanism is this massive orangement of finely tuned new genetic sequences supposed to have occurred by random chance?
@@marktapley7571 Books contain the answers to the questions you're asking. Read a book.
@@CornerCaseStudio I would be interested in what books have a detailed answer on that, or better yet a short form description here. It's a fair question that gets to the heart of the issue: the fossil record does not support the theory of evolution as stated. Distinct species (both now and in the fossil record), no intermediate gradations.
'Punctuated equilibrium' smacks of "our theory is unsupportable by the evidence, so we'll make a new one that maintains plausibility and pretend it's a modification."
@@oldgreg315 The fossil record has gaps in it due to the nature and rarity of fossilization - but the fossil record is not by any stretch of the imagination all there is as far as evidence for evolution. All of these topics are covered in depth in many modern college level texts.
If you're lacking this knowledge, it's not because the information doesn't exist, it's because you're looking in the wrong places and being guided by people with agendas other than finding the truth.
Go buy some college level textbooks from reputable authors and read them. And that means finding books written by people who are widely respected in the field, NOT just hunting down books that back up your current beliefs. If you won't do that, that's fine... reading dense material isn't for everyone. The only thing I ask is either 1) actually educate yourself, or 2) stop making unsubstantiated claims.
It's only a fair thing to ask, really - if you don't know anything about a subject, don't go around commenting about it. I'm not trying to be rude - there are many subjects I know nothing about... so I don't make comments about them.
The hard part is knowing when you have enough knowledge about a given subject to actually be able to offer an informed opinion. It can be a hard line to walk, to be sure.
I placed the actual book recommendations near (but not at) the end of this comment to see if you would actually read everything I said. I know you probably didn't actually want recommendations, and just asked for them as a gotcha, thinking I wouldn't be able to provide any... so here you go. They are below this paragraph. If you did actually read this far and didn't just skim the first and last sentences of my reply before reflexing typing a response, then you might actually have what it takes to read and comprehend a college textbook if you apply yourself.
book recommendations: you might check out "Evolution" by Doug Futuyma, or Evolutionary Analysis: Fifth Edition by Herron and Freeman.
Just so you know though, courses on evolution come later in college. usually after 3rd year. You should have a strong background in zoology, botany, microbiology, ecology, geology and basic genetics before directly pondering evolution.
If you're truly serious about becoming educated, I have given you a place to begin. if you're not, then I've just wasted 5 minutes... I know which one I would place a bet on, but every once in a while I decide to take a YT comment seriously instead of just dismissing it. This was one of those times.
Good luck.
@@CornerCaseStudio
Paragraph 1: I find that an unacceptable excuse, and I think so would anyone following the scientific method. It's been the better part of two centuries since Origin of Species, and we've found plenty to draw conclusions from. It was reasonable that no evidence existed in Darwin's time since we hadn't looked. It isn't now, and what we do have is contrary to what the theory predicts. The suggestion that you're the scientist and I'm the ideologue is interesting given that you defend a theory that the fossil record actively speaks against. It makes it seem as though you've already decided what to believe and will only accept one explanation. Kinda like what you accuse me of.
P2: See above.
P3: I've already been through HS and college bio. Any reference limiting the search to 'reputable' or 'respected' authors is an Argument from Authority, a logical fallacy. My claim is actually supported, among other things, by the need for the punctuated equilibrium 'addenda' to explain the discrepancy.
P4: Bold words for a guy who can't answer the question posed.
P5: Yeah it's called the Dunning-Kruger effect and it doesn't really apply since I don't claim to be an expert in the field evolution, but I know enough to know it has issues that I haven't heard a satisfactory explanation for... a problem which you haven't helped remedy.
P6: Consider your elaborate test passed, wise one. ✅
P7: I'm not saying that I'll *never get around to reading $180 worth of your recommended reading list, but I am saying that it's not high on my list given that I've heard no reason to suspect the serious issues with evolution have been addressed, and we've got Roth contributions to make.
P8: This is a logical fallacy. Look up Secret Knowledge or esoteric knowledge fallacy. Also the fact that you can't/won't even try to summarize is not encouraging.
P9?! I guess it's more thorough than your first post which was basically just the Read a Book song by Lil Jon, but this basically boils down to the same thing.
Here's where we stand in my view: the fossil record, concepts like irreducible complexity, the unexplained mechanism for mutations to actually *increase* complexity (not just create variation within species but actually manufacture new ones), and the origin of life to begin with are all serious issues for the theory. The burden of proof remains squarely with evolutionists when a far better and more obvious explanation exists. Punctuated equilibrium and attempts to demonstrate these concepts in a lab (to my knowledge none successfully) are necessary but feeble attempts to maintain plausibility in my opinion.
God bless.
Impressed with your improvements for your videos. 😊
Let us all marvel at the evolution of Simon's beard.
Don't believe anything you hear and only haft of what you see 💯
All lies with a little bit of truth to make you believe
Oh, I thought his hair had just slipped off the top of his head and was making it's way downward, then a world takeover... those bloody selfish genes.
🍻 long live the beard.
The proof of gravity.
Rapid evolution is also called by the more technical term punctuated equilibrium as hypothesized by the late Stephen Jay Gould. Everyone thought the incomplete fossil record was the reason some new species suddenly appear in the rock, it was Gould that pointed out that gradual evolution is punctuated with periods of rapid evolution.
Gould added a punctuation mark to a footnote in a comment on _The Origin of Species_ and represented that as a major revision to the theory of evolution by natural selection. See Dawkins, _The Blind Watchmaker_.
SJG didn't understand enough. Not his fault, he was a brilliant thinker for his time. We know more now than we did 40 years ago.
Hey neat, you featured my old T. rex painting at the very start
Dawkins didn’t “first put forward” the gene-centred view; he stood on the shoulders of giants, and repeatedly makes that clear in the book. The ingredients were already there, and the cake was baked. What he did, and he did it very well, was to package the cake so beautifully.
I'm surprised you didn't touch on that semi-recent Florida study on the rapid evolution of snail kites. Something about showing measurable results of beak shape and change within only ten years.
The WTF4 gene sounds like an error correction mechanism.
If you presuppose that the nominal organism holds that gene, if some cell appears without it, then it must have mutated, possibly having a detrimental error. Such cells are removed by this mechanism.
It'd be interesting to see what genes are near the WTF genes too. It's possible they really exist to protect something nearby that is essential but not immediately lethal to be missing.
@@Virtuous_Rogue You have a good point, but it doesn't need to be necessarily relevant. In computers, we can detect errors in data with checksums which can be stored basically anywhere. Maybe the WTF4 signals an "hash" of a bunch of other unrelated genes.
@@diogoduarte369 The nearness (to either the WTF gene or the solution gene) would be required because of crossing over in meiosis. It can't be a useful "bodyguard" gene because genes that are more than a few percent of the DNA sequence away are statistically independent. The technical term is Genetic Linkage if you want to learn more.
Okay that makes sense. I was thinking it was some kind of protection scam. 😅
Medics do not refer to ‘stronger’ antibiotics. If a bacterium is immune to an antibiotic, then increasing the daily dose (a ‘stronger’ dose) makes no difference. What you have to do is find an anti biotic capable of killing this bacterium, in other words,a completely different antibiotic, which may have different, or worse side effects. Laymen often refer to these as ‘stronger’ antibiotics, but they are simply antibiotics with undesirable side effects.
American pronghorns evolved the ability to run extremely fast in order to outrun American "cheetahs", cats that co-evolved great speed along with their non-related African namesakes. The American cheetahs died out during the last Ice Age, over 12,000 years ago. Yet, pronghorns still run extremely fast; they're the second-fastest land animals after African cheetahs. This illustrates that neutral traits can continue to be expressed even after the environmental pressure that created them no longer exists.
Capybara came up in environment lacking predators, rich in food.
Even with all the big cats and caimans, they still have placid herbivore behavior.
@@pirobot668beta Capybaras are prey to jaguars, pumas, caimans, and anacondas. They are in fact pretty wary. OTOH they are easily domesticated and allow humans to pet them. This is not "neutral" behavior like the no-longer-needed super speed of pronghorns. It may be that since capybaras raise their young in communal herds instead of strictly by the parents, this docility is necessary to allow bonding with individuals other than their parents.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing
Evolutionary biology is a fascinating subject. I took multiple classes while studying for my undergraduate degree in Cell and Molecular Biology. I wish I had majored in evolutionary biology sometimes… There’s a series from the Discovery Channel made back in the early 2000’s called the Human Body. It’s four or five episodes and it explains the evolutionary processes that fuel our entire existence. I highly suggest watching it if you’re interested in things like this. It helped me ace my biology final senior year of high school lol
There is no evolution in biology is the problem. It’s nothing but conjecture. There’s never been evolution seen in the fossil record. There is no gradual progression of one species to the other in paleontology or in biology.
Love all the channels and the tangents. Heard about the US marine core outsmarting a darpa ai drone with some ridiculously funny methods. Could be a quick funny one for ya
Great video!
While we’re talking about unusual stuff in our history as a species, is the “uncanny valley” effect. It could just be a mistake in our mental makeup, but someone once said that perhaps it points out that once there was a genetic advantage to recognising something that looked human, but actually wasn’t. Nobody knows what that creature might have been.
As far as I know, uncanny valley is a survival mechanism to keep us away from corpses, ensuring we stay away from potential diseases and the predators that corpses would attract
A diseased human?
Things they don't teach you about evolution in a catholic school: evolution.
Mine actually did, pretty well actually. It's generally the more hardline protestant denominations doing the science denying these days in the US.
@@jameshall1300 oh interesting. I'm from Canada so a little bit different education system. It's not like my schools denied evolution, just wasn't part of the curriculum.
Lol -genetics was literally founded by a clergyman, Gregor Mendel.
I learned about evolution in the 5th grade. My teacher was a biologist who had published papers on evolution. She was also a Catholic nun. Please check your facts.
@@WTDoorley alright no need to be a dick. Your experience was not my experience...
What really need to know though is how many different TH-cam series is Simon on? 10 or 20? Simon has probably been watched by nearly everyone on the planet. Even the North Koreans are like, 'Simon Whistler? Yes yes we know him. The Great Leader writes all of his shows and has to teach him about everything before he films a show' or something like that.
He just recently launched a new channel called Places, and Astrographics is pretty new too
If he has a new channel other than astrographics he has 11 channels. Astro made 10. Places would be 11
Great stuff. Keep up the great work.
You're a true hero for keeping your ads short and concise.
Artificial selection IS NOT the opposite of natural selection, it's the same process. We call it artificial because humans chose the traits instead of nature. The reason it is mentioned here is that artificial selection produces such a strong selective pressure that it often carries unwanted alleles with the desired alleles (like stowaways). It is similar to the bottleneck effect.
Finally, a comment with some sanity.
Yes, I think opposite was a poor choice of words. It could be understood the meaning merely meant "not by nature". Although if we have no free will, we are most likely just as part of nature as any other creature, perhaps proving your point.
@@patrickpaganini I do think it just meant "not by nature" and they used clumsy wording (I had to point it out because it was too big). My other point was more about WHY the authors chose artificial selection as an example of concepts that are not taught in basic genetics classes. Not only is this pretty easy to understand, it is commonly used as examples of evolution in beginners classes. What happened (I think) is they opened up a Genetics textbook in the evolution section and fell upon the chapter on genetic drift, which would include examples of bottleneck effect, founder effect and artificial selection. So artificial selection allows "favorable" alleles to be selected, but these alleles are physically attached to other genes and random alleles that can cause deleterious effects. Like breeds selected for coat color, but end up having poor reproduction (inbreeding also plays a part here, as the deleterious alleles become homozygous). On your point about animals and free will: yes, we are only very smart apes who think they have it.
@@benoitguillemette7562 btw do you think there are important mechanisms that cause evolutionary change we haven't discovered? I've always been puzzled why some species can stay the same for 10s of millions of years.
@@benoitguillemette7562 Also the building blocks seem so insanely complicated, I wonder whether DNA arrived on earth (like Fred Hoyle thought), and perhaps the universe is older than we imagine atm.
Please. Always finish your antibiotics
No
Amen.
new house
Yes!!! It is very important!
@Adroit1911 like i said before, "NO!"
Misunderstanding evolution is the entire basis for all arguments against it. Everyone who denies evolution either doesn't understand it, or is pushing lies based on misunderstanding to others. It's sad but true.
Common ancestory is a fairytale.
@jaysmith6863 only those who don't understand it think as such. It is a proven fact with no room for argument.
@@zogar8526 It is not even close to being a proven fact. That means it is observerable and repeatable, which it is not. There are so many holes in the theory.
Those who believe it is a science fact have been duped, and likely have never studied it from an objectional viewpoint.
Let's do a test, what is the percentage similarity between chimp and human DNA?
@@zogar8526 nothing has been proven
@Rich-mw9ye yes it has. Your inability to understand doesn't change the facts. Evolution is observed and known for a fact. It is not up for debate, anymore than the shape of the earth or the fact gravity exists. Sciencecis never done, and we always learn more. But it starts with observing something, then figuring out how it works. Evolution is the observed fact, and can not be denied.
Very interesting video, thank you
I wasnt subbed to this channel but got it recommended for some reason I glad that I did tbh
Just so you know. The double helix in the thumbnail photo is rotating the wrong way.
GODDAMN IT!
Number 5: Traits that evolved for one environment can sometimes prove advantageous in a completely different environment. Camels have wide splayed toes that help them walk over soft sand. It turns out that the ancestor of the camel actually evolved in a snowy environment and originally evolved those toes to act as natural snow shoes.
I have a hard time with the evolution of the bot fly. It catches mosquitoes and lays eggs on the mosquitoe's belly that when the mosquitoe's belly gets warm and full with blood. The eggs drop off onto the bitten host.
How did that process even start ???
Lovely video! Thank you!
As usual, stellar work, guys.
I don't recommend thinking about evolution in the context of lab controlled experiment in determining survival fitness. To put it simply, lab conditions are very ideal in comparison to the wild, so a lot of things we think are "beneficial" is not necessarily so in wild. For example, we tend to screen functionality by mutation which favors genes that lifts limits on growth to be discovered while under-estimating genes that limits growth that might be crucial to stress-survival in the long run. Natural selection is about fitting into a defined niche, hence why when niches disappear (aka bottleneck events) happen, a largely random drift can happen, but is it random by chance is still debatable. Lastly, I hope people especially science communicators stop using "rapid evolution" as a term, since evolution is just evolution, mutation + selection. the rate of which a trait dominates a population is in direct correction to the weight of the selection pressure; hence there is no concept of "rapid", just whether selection is applied more heavily or not. Also note that selection pressure doesn't not necessarily improve survival fitness.
When I was at school the nearest we got to evolution was explaining the rise of man - none of the DNA, genes, etc. And who thought up the name for the WTF gene (that presentation must've been a wow of a session)
The early days of gene discovery were a bit of a Wild West. A lot of genes got silly or rude names e.g. DKK meaning Dickkopf i.e. dickhead because fly geneticists made fruit flies grow their genitals on their heads. Another is Sonic Hedgehog (SHH), which means we all have to talk about the Hedgehog signaling pathway because it turns out that it's incredibly important. There are lots more out there to find, but finally, the Human Genome Organization's Gene Nomenclature Committee came along to standardize and approve the naming of genes and other features. Dull? Yes. But try telling a pregnant woman that her developing fetus has holoprosencephaly and will be severely disabled, that the gene causing the defect is called Sonic Hedgehog. It's insensitive to say the least. So we try to be as sober and descriptive as possible these days. I sometimes find it helpful but other times gene names can be a pain to pronounce - such as the TNFSF superfamily. I never can say it correctly, and I've been working on inflammatory bowel disease, where TNFSF15 is an important risk factor, for over 12 years.
damn. altho most anti evolution schools will likely even deny that humans evolved at all. never mind that we are and evolved from animals. even less that we are apes.
Don’t forget. Selective breeding brought us the pug, a poor animal with a tortured existence
I know, I see pug puppies and I swear that every new one I see has his face more smooshed in than the last one :(
Yeah but it never made a cat. 😊
Thanks: informative and well presented video's.
Super interesting topic!
Forget about some face rock Simon, I think you've reached the point in your success where it's mandatory to have two people follow you around with palm tree fronds & incense to ensure the air you inhale is rarified. ;) In all seriousness, thank you & your team for the great content, every time I look at your channel there's more interesting topics that you've covered. And your side stories and tangents honestly add to your excellence. Thank you to both you & your team for all the hard work - You deserve that palm frond!
Happy Holidays to everyone, all my best!
You, I would love to have coffee with. What a lovely comment.
If you want to witness evolution pick something that has a very short lifespan. The shorter the span the more generations that will pass in your lifetime.
Also you could say viruses evolve hence why we need new vaccines for the flu. Also super bugs that are resistent to medicine.
Blue eyes have evolved twice.
Bold of you to assume we were taught evolution at school
Minor correction: The Theory of Evolution which involves evolution by natural selection is about 150 years old. The idea of evolution by who knows which means (one popular old one was the will of the creatures themselves) is much older and as far as I know has not been traced back to any specific origin.
It's also interesting to note the differing testimonies of people in comments - who was and wasn't taught the basics of the modern science in k-12. There are clearly regional or even more local differences, and sometimes differences within the same religion or culture.
We need more like this here in the US. I was fortunate to be raised and educated in a 'blue' state and was taught this but too many people have not been taught real science and even don't believe bacteria can evolve. The number of people who don't understand evolution is WHY antibiotics need to be used responsibly is staggering.
Chubbyemu did a recent video highlighting the issue with resistant bacteria. Scary but important. Look for "A Mom Ate Chicken Burrito From A Suspicious Restaurant. This Is What Happened To Her Gut."
I live in a red state. I was also taught this in high school....I feel most probably are. There are just to many people who don't actually learn what they were taught. They just brain dump it after the test.
I grew up in that most blessed of things in America, a swing state (not really- I'd definitely describe my "home" state as severely cursed). Almost all American States have taught the theory of evolution in public school since the 19th century. A small handful of states were able to ban the teaching of evolution in the 1920s mostly on religious grounds (likely influenced by the legitimate horror of eugenics in America in the early 20th century, which was directly influenced in turn by the widespread acceptance of the theory of evolution and the idea that it should be forcibly "helped" and "accelerated" in humans, giving pundits very reasonable ground to cast the theory in a severely negative light; I could go off on like three different historical tangents here to try imparting more perspective, but I'll spare you, especially since I'm pretty sure it would be falling on deaf ears for one who seriously believes that if they go over state lines from California to Arizona they'll find themselves in a bizarro world where people still think babies come from the stork and that 1+2 is 12 because they want to be taxed less more than they want comprehensive welfare systems (or they recognise that their taxes are mostly not going to welfare anyway) or have a different opinion on the extremely nuanced issue of whether the moral good is defined as personal agency or the preservation of human life and they vote accordingly), and the Supreme Court overturned all of those bans in 1968.
Teaching the theory of evolution has not been banned in American public schools (in any state) since 1968. The theory of evolution has been a part of the core curriculum of most American schools since 1968, and this went into full effect in all states by 1970. Only recently has the concept of home schooling actually come into vogue. Private schooling is too expensive for most of the sorts of families that have vehemently opposed the concept of the theory of evolution since the late 1800s. Since the late 80s (with the last stragglers catching up in the mid 00s), even red states have been making evolution education explicitly mandatory, though it was already ubiquitous before that; this was merely the law codifying that. You most likely would have been taught about evolution growing up in America _even_ if you grew up in rural Alabama with a father who was mad the Bush family wasn't conservative enough and a mother who was also your cousin and who wasn't allowed to have an opinion either way because she was a woman. The fact is that in the most extreme cases you would have been taught Creationism _alongside_ the theory of evolution in a public school, but even that is rarely practiced despite being _allowed_ in some (but not all) red states. Every attempt by far-right enclaves (in red and blue states) since the 1970s to make creation education mandatory or to make the ridicule of evolution theory compulsory (or label evolution as "controversial" in schools) has been shot down.
Here's a shot in the dark, but I wouldn't take it if I didn't think it had a fair chance of being an accurate cold read: There's no "illiteracy epidemic" in America either. No, statistics derived from deliberately selected small sample sizes stating in a textual survey that they must be capable of reading to even answer that they have read fewer than 5 books in the past year does not mean that most American adults are incapable of reading. That's some classic "blue" numbers-massaging.
Your blue state comment is quite funny. Your obviously naïve.
@@vitriolicAmaranth Uh, yes there absolutely is a literacy epidemic. The problem with it is that a lot of folks assume illiteracy means you can't read at all. That's wildly inaccurate, however. The issue is too many schools teach only to do the bare minimum the standardized tests require. That leads to terrible outcomes overall.
A seemingly minor deficit in reading comprehension has significant effects in one's ability to properly understand what they're reading. It is actually a very real issue and requires a solution. That solution absolutely is not denying it exists. Many more folks are functionally illiterate than most realize. This manifests in various ways but if anyone who's ever worked in retail has likely run into folks who are. They tend to bluster their way through things when a system they've carefully memorized changes rather than admit they can't actually read very well.
Somewhat more concerning, I've seen this in folks with office jobs as well.
Simon is less creazy version of vsauce
very nice content here. just last week stumbled upon article about bacterial memory that is inherited for several generations. how cool is biology? 😎
Way cool!
I find it easy to see how one species of animal can change superficially over time into another. Dinosaurs into birds, for instance. What is harder for me to contemplate is how a dinosaur came into existence in the first place. By this, I mean, look at humans. We have a heart that beats, sending blood throughout the body, picking up nutrients from the digestive system, oxygen from the lungs, etc. So, what came first? The heart? Blood vessels? Blood? Lungs? Digestive system? Kidneys? Pancreas? Liver? All these organs work together to keep us alive. I'm not saying anything other than my apparently little brain can't visualize how this all came about naturally.
Cool question. 1) The heart predates dinosaurs by hundreds of millions of years. As for which came first, the chicken or....I mean the heart or the blood, I would love to hear what an actual evolutionary biologist would have to say on the matter.
2) My guess would be "heart", or at least the distant precursor to it.
When a life form is simple enough, it does not need to actively move nutrients around itself, nutrients can be distributed by simple diffusion (the thing that causes the smell of perfume to be smelt on the other side of the room that a bottle is opened in).
This would be a huge limiting factor though in how large it could grow. If it got past a certain size diffusion and osmosis could not spread the nutrients fast enough to keep individual cells from di ying.
So perhaps this was the limit for 10's or hundreds of millions of years. But eventually, enough beneficial mutations accumulated in a population that some pulsating mechanism was formed. That would help distribute the nutrients incredibly, giving that population a huge survival advantage and allowing it to grow larger. From there. It just grew more and more refined.
Life is weird and incredibly varied. Even today, insects have hearts but do not have veins or arteries. They have what's called "an open circulatory system" meaning, (over-simplistically) that their inside goo just gets pushed around in the cavity of their body as the heart pumps. What it pumps is doing the equivalent job that blood does, but it's not blood, so even today many animals do not have veins or blood.
(More accurately, but still over-simplistic, insects have a "dorsal tube" that acts like a hose, the heart pumping it's inside goo to the front of the insect and that pushes other goo toward the back of the insect to be taken in by the heart again and pumped to the front)
Oh, and to answer your specific question, of the ones you listed, the digestive system came first because even single celled life forms have one (an eating cell just surrounds and engulphs a smaller one, then releases enzymes that break the eaten single celled critters into smaller nutrients that can then diffuse through the swallowing cell - it's a process called phagocytosis)
Simon: we went from literal wolves to chihuahuas
Me: oh, mini wolves
The main thing they don’t teach about evolutionary theory in secondary school is what the theory actually tries to explain and what it doesn’t explain.
To phrase it concisely; Evolutionary theory tries to explain the biological process of speciation. What evolutionary theory does not try to explain is the origins of life.
Evolution also doesn't set out to explain how the Universe arose
Unfortunately, too many people conflate the two ideas to be one in the same.
And it fails at even that.
"Speciation" is the pruning of variability to a reduced subset with specific outcomes.
As breeding demonstrates, there is lots of variation within the wolf. When we selectively take certain traits (i.e. short) and keep reinforcing those genes, we severely reduced the options to favor short.
However, it was always a dog and will always be a dog.
However, it certainly prompts the question of what came before. Precellular metabolism and prebiotic replicators are interesting areas with a lot of long-standing concepts such as Eigen's "metabolic hypercycles" and Prigogine's investigations of self-organising chemical systems. RNA autocatalysis got a lot of attention from Sjostak. That was just the 70's through the early 90s. Lots more work done since.
There is so much not taught in school about this subject. One of the unintended consequence of evolution vs. creationism fights has been that a huge amount of interesting information is suppressed for fear that anyone discussing details of the topic often gets labeled as a "crazy nut job creationist idiot"
"Crazy nut job idiot" and "creationist" are redundant. Questions can easily be phrased in a way that shows you're genuinely curious and not being a jackass.
Evolution is something alright
USE not UTILISE.
When you "utilise" something, you are using it in a way which is against its intended purpose.
So, you use a hammer to drive a nail but you could utilise the handle of a screwdriver to do the same job.
Who first warned against excessive antibiotic usage: Alexander Fleming.
Not a geneticist so I can't be sure this is still current science, but I've heard that a lot of the non-coding DNA is at least suspected of being the programming that determines when proteins are made - for example, when a fetus is developing, there's a point at which cells go from being stem cells to being specialist cells, and by and large they seem to know when in the sequence of development that change needs to happen (which varies based on what is being developed) and what they need to turn into (ie: the stuff that will wind up forming the interior of the skull becomes neural matter, not muscle). There are occasionally some alterations to the standard pattern but even in those cases, the vast majority of what is supposed to happen develops as expected. There's a reason no human comes out as a chimpanzee despite the fact that we've got pretty much all the DNA required to make that happen. Logically there must be some system for explaining that, and one of the leading candidates for why was, at least at one point, non-coding DNA.
It was a bit misleading when he confused junk DNA with non-coding DNA, they are not the same thing. There is non-coding DNA which controls gene expression but this is likely to only account for ~10% of the genome. The rest is likely to be junk DNA with no function, other than some sections which require a certain amount of DNA but are not too picky on the actual sequence.
We share I think 70% DNA with chimps, it's actually not 90%+ as the claims, the 90%+ has been debunked. So the reason we don't come out as chimps is because we are a different species and our DNA is very distinct from chimps.
@@rakuengrowlithe4654 Actually the ENCODE project is exploring what the non coding part is for and the number I heard last was 60% of the DNA they have found a purpose for so far, so it's not 10% at all, that was just people making stuff up because they didn't understand.
@@DavidJJJ Actually no, that figure (72% iirc) came from a creationist funded paper that deliberately undersold how comparative genetics works in order to undermine common ancestry.
@@nealjroberts4050 it depends on how you measure it, but either way, I think the point you’re trying to make is that we all came from a Designer who created everything, hence the similarities and complexity in the design of all living things, and I totally agree with you 👍✨
Bacteria can also evolve without reproduction. Two bacteria can meet and exchange DNA between them. They have to be from the same species but any E. Coli variant can exchange with any other. This is what scares me most about overuse of antibiotics in livestock. One strain of a bacteria that only infects cattle for example can develop a resistance and then trade that resistance to a variant that infects humans.
No. Bacteria can evolve without sexual reproduction, but unless a trait can be passed on to offspring, there is no evolution. Individual bacteria can acquire new traits without reproduction, but that is not Evolution in the biological sense of the word.
Sadly in America a lot of places talk about it as little as possible because somehow it's still controversial here.
Yeah, it's pretty embarrassing. The ones raised that way aren't as bad as the ones that know there's evidence against creationism but still try to convince themselves it's true anyway.
...or they're to stupid to even understand it...
My schools had no issues teaching on this subject. Perhaps is as much about limited time combined with an overall lack of focus on any STEM subjects as a whole.
Its not as if this particular subject was being avoided,.as the truth is .most of your "sciencey" subjects decreased in high school as well as your time honored vocational courses as well. NO more wood shop or home economic or anything practical were you'd work with your hands. Everyone was being told to get "cerebral"jobs and thus here we are two generations later and those plumbers, painters, carpenters and sanitation specialist everyone looked down on are now earning doctor and lawyer money,.LoL
Its easy to see why the post WW2 generation wanted their kids no be more successful and thusly more "cerebral" but it was an over-correction,.not some vast freaken conspiracy .
Yes,..people whom consider themselves "religious " or "spiritual" exert some influence on American culture ,.but they are far far far from steering the ship. Because f they were,.wed have had MANDATORY prayer in all US schools since 9/11
@@terryshrk the speaker of the house is a young earth creationist. 2nd in line for the presidency. We are literally one successful assassination plot away from having one of them in charge of the country. It's far worse than you think.
Great content and presentation. 🇦🇺 😊
Shout out to Mrs Whistler. She must be a patient woman.
Fascinating. Personally, I was always fascinated by "sexual selection". There are so many tiny details which have emerged in this area (e.g. pheromones). I'd love to see a video on that by you.
We hijacked human sexual selection with the invention of the contraceptive pill. It eliminates women's ability to successfully select the perfect mate based on pheromones.
Bold of you to assume we learned about evolution in school in the US deep south
I live in the US. Christian extremists made sure evolution was not taught in any school I ever attended until I went to college. I am so happy for the internet and the ability to learn everything I didn't have a choice in when I was a child.
Wondering if you are in some Mormon cult? I went to 12 years of Catholic school and learned about evolution there
Jehovah's Witness, but close.@@nickinurse6433
Went to public schools in the US and we were taught evolution and not creationism. Where did you go where the opposite happened? Must have been a private Christian school? If so, that would be why and not exactly because in the US the "Christian extremist" made you, your parents made you by way of putting you in that particular school. Or at least that's how your comment reads to me. Maybe I need some clarification but an interesting comment all the same. Also I know, I have poor grammar, punctuation and all that, hence my public school education. Lol hopefully you at least got a better education in a private school if that is in fact where you went.i really would like to know if I guessed correctly?
@@CdoGtheGreat I went to public schools in a small town in WY. Our text books had evolutional studies in them but they were marked out with red sharpie. The internet was not a thing until I went to high school, at which time I looked up the text books and was able to read about evolution at that time. We were not taught religion in school either just to be clear. When I went to college I took as many Science classes as I could, which was were I learned about evolution in a formal settings, as well as genetics, Neanderthal and other humanoids and DNA. My children also attended school in WY. They did not learn evolution in their Science classes in public schools either. I don't know if its the whole state or just the extreme conservative area I grew up in.
I grew up in a Christian town where teachers had bible verses on the walls, looks like I’m twice your age, and we learned about evolution. And back then Christians were burning heavy metal albums. You from Idaho or something?or Utah?
Simon. Your voice can be very difficult to follow, in particular, the way you modulate your volume up and down etc as part of your cadence of speech. It would be very helpful for we listeners if you could use a microphone or sound software to even out the volume of your voice so we can hear you more clearly. Thanks.
I always laugh when some religious person screams at me "so you think we came from monkeys." To which I reply "the correct link is primates." When Simon mentioned "jumping DNA" I started swinging around like a monkey. Now I can't stop; instant genetic drift.
Fun fact: genes from retroviruses make up about 8% of your own genome. They're called ancestral endogenous retroviruses and they're the reason that we have such big brains.
Over millions of years, various injections of genetic code into gametes from retroviruses acted to shape humans the way we are today.
ERVs are also one of the methods that can be used to trace lineages and divergence points.
Yeah, I was gonna bring up ERV's - due to the fact that the lineage patterns indicated by their presence in the genomes of most life-forms on our planet constitute what amounts to "smoking gun" evidence for the FACT of evolution.
@@steveb0503 yup, they would serve literally no purpose in an organism that was designed, and yet we can trace insertion points in lineages. There is no reason to share them between widely different species unless they descend from a common ancestor that also had it.
@@jameshall1300 There is no common ancestor, so the likely explanation is that we share a genetic code, so we shares genes, the same Designer was responsible for both. To me, the smoking gun is probably the sugar code. The sugar code is what makes a common ancestor practically impossible.
@@DavidJJJ the willful ignorance is palpable.
I like this format, where Simon doesn't provide 3 minute long personal anecdotes to the script every 30 seconds.
Eh suit yourself, I like em all. These are far more educational, don't get me wrong, but I love the tangent filled rants when I'm listening to something while I'm at work
Just watched a flat earth debate and had to come here to palate cleanser from the idiocy I just witnessed. Thank you
The garter snake's resistance is interesting, in that it retains the poison in its systems. If a human were to eat the toxin-laced garter snake, the human would get poisoned. Garter snakes are, therefore, one of the only known species of poisonous snakes (not venomous).
Correction: "lower hemoglobin levels" should be "higher hemoglobin levels".
Evolutionary Biology was my absolute FAVOURITE unit of my degree! I probably would have transferred to an entire course revolving around it if my uni offered it!
I went to school in the USA. Bold of you to assume evolution was taught.
How dare you be right about my nation? 😂 Evolution actually is taught in good US schools like the ones I attended, but a lot of information is misunderstood because the teachers use the vernacular rather than the scientific definitions of scientific words. It's generally taught better in most nations.
I had bacterial pneumonia twice I can categorically state that it’s not fun
Public school teaches evolution in a way that makes it seem laughable.. why i never believed it growing up until i started learning about on my own. A lot of people laugh at the questions people have about evolution, but they are often valid questions to the "evolution" that is taught in public school.
Evolution is not about reaching perfection, it is about reaching "good enough".
Yes! Where good “good enough” is “at least as good or better than your nearest competitors”.
"Survival of the fittest isn't about outrunning the bear. It's about outrunning the other guy."
I recently had a comment exchange with a guy who summarized Darwin and Russel's original paper on the theory of evolution then followed up by stating it was not evolution they were describing. I informed him that he was full of Orwellian bullshit.
I’m not sure what lies I was told. I learned about all of this in high school. I guess this is what you were lied about to if you were taught creationism.
its very common in the US that creationist teachers will teach evolution wrong and actively push creationism. also happens in some european countries. i havent had high level education in school but i was never even taught the basics of evolution in school. im lucky i have always been interested in biology in my free time. otherwise i am pretty sure i would barely know anything.
@@theflyingdutchguy9870 Not in America anymore. Kitzmiller v. Dover put that to rest. I’m American, you’re Dutch. I went to school in America in the 2000s. You even said yourself you never went to high school.
@@ferretyluv i went to high school. well, the dutch version of high school. i never went tp university. amd wasnt taught evolution in high school, thats what i said.
@@ferretyluv with high level education i meant college and university btw. not high school.
@@ferretyluv some teachers, especially in the south, still push creationism as much as they can. It may be inference or the language they use, but they definitely do.
🙋🏽♂️.. OH... and also that it's an absurd LIE concocted by the "ANYTHING but God" types in Academia.
Except for all those people in Academia who have no issues with their belief systems and Science. So the obvious conclusion is that the issue is with your beliefs abd/or understanding.🤷♂️
People in academia don't waste their time on unverifiable nonsense
@sgtbrown4273 they won't get grant money if they waste their time on unverifiable nonsense
There's plenty of money for research out there, just not for gods
9:05 that example of yours is also natural selection
Hey Simon! Are you sure that the hemoglobin levels in people from tibetan plateau are lower?
They should be higher :)
Sounds like an incredible level of complexity which is highly unlikely to have come about by random mutation.
the part of the video about Volcanoes and Rabbits was cool!
Bold of you to assume that my school taught evolution in the first place
What theocracy do you live in? Afghanistan? North Korea?
@@Backpfeifengesicht45 Texas
@@pennykettle same thing.
Pls feature how cancer cells develop in the DNA level & how to prevent or effective latest treatment methods .I'm sure millions wil be thankful if we get substantial info latest on this...
One common misconception is that an individual can evolve - it can’t!
Evolution relies on the parents passing combinations of their genes to their offspring.
Each offspring has its own unique combination.
Good combinations benefit the offspring and it is more likely to survive and pass the combination on to its descendants.
Bad combinations are more likely to lead to early demise with no descendants.
The amazing thing is that over thousands or millions of generations, with small changes each time,very dramatic long-term improvements are possible.
You're right - individuals don't evolve, populations do.
@@ButUrWrongTho Yes, and also no. Only populations evolve over generations. But what for example is an individual human, dog or tree? Many, many cells. Populations of cells. Of course, complex multicellular life involves a lot of close cooperation between cells types for the benefit of the colony, but things like cancers are examples of evolution within an individual.
@@roberthunter6927 the process you're describing is not evolution. You could make an argument that the critters in our gut biome evolve, although it's a much more complicated process since they largely evolve in isolated systems (an individual) and go extinct when the individual expires. Mostly, anyways.
@@roberthunter6927 The growth of cancer is a self-repeoducing process guided by natural selection, sure, but it would be an awkward use of the word evolution to say cancer is evolution.
@@ButUrWrongTho The cells of the body, which are in trillions, plus gut bacteria interact with each other over time. The immune system adapting to new pathogens for example. if you had opened a PROFESSIONAL book or read any professional papers in evolutionary biology, you would know this. So don't embarrass yourself. Cancer is another aspect of this evolution within a body. if you can apply scaling to evolutionary biology then you will never understand it.
I just reread "The Selfish Gene" first time since reading it in college 12 years ago.. Still a beautiful book.
Two additional points. One is luck. Think of a male lion cub born with exceptional intelligence whose father dies shortly after it is born. A new male lion takes over the pride and systematically kills off the cubs before the exceptional cub can think a way out of the situation. He has to survive to have cubs of his own.
A second question is how on earth humans have so many different talents. A baseball pitcher may owe his ability to ancestors who threw rocks at attackers a prey, but what environmental challenge is met by the ability to compose symphonies or play the piano?
Great video except for the portion where you began explaining how much you love facials😂
The WTF 4 gene...... That was one of those times when someone came up with an epic name for something in science.