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Tasty meat - biological advantage?

BlueScreen

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When I first read the title, I thought it was about animals who were tastier getting eaten first. I think we are meant to be one of the tastiest.

I could see a species who was a tasty morsel dying out though, because everything would eat them first, or as snack food.
 

CrystalViolet

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NZ moa's were hunted to extinction because they were just so tasty.
 

EcK

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Corn is a pretty good example of this. The stuff bends over backwards to adapt to human needs. Such a wonderful plant. It's fuel! It's bread! It's sugar! It's cooking oil! It's a hundred other things! It grows at absurd densities!
Yeah but we cultivate corn, it's like bees spreading pollen. The key is superior relative reproduction rate. But it's obvious and I'm bored of people being braindead. And corn is an easy example since it's a primary consumer (sunlight). It gets more 'tricky' for secondary, tiertary and so on consumers (herbivors, predators balblabla). But it's always the same idea.
Limited energy, adaptation allowing one subgroup to over time get more energy by extracting it more efficiently, reproducing more efficiently, surviving longer in some species.
If some specie is not 'tasty' btw, the predators consume less, get less energy, the predated population grow, then some predator who find them tasty emerge, and replace the former predator etc.
In the case of corn, we find some corn tasty, and allow it to spread and reproduce. The point is not the survival of the individual but the survival and transmission of the genome, which is in every seed making plant, spread by predators in their fieces, wings etc.
Such principles can be found in human cultures with what we call empathy, by puting the survival\welfare of the group\other individuals before our own we make it more likely for the species genome as a whole to be transmitted.
You also have vampire bats falling in that social sacrifice category, they'd share blood with the individuals that didn't get lucky hunting, and those individuals would give blood when they hunt.
How did it evolve? Well the bats that shared excess food had some genes defining the behavior, those individuals had a better reproductive rate compared to 'selfish bats' as a group.
So the empathic bats replaced the selfish bats over time. (I say bats but for all I know it could have happened before bats were actually 'bats', titles aren't important, genes are ).


How would you feel about explaining people how to open a door?

Well, that's my life. ANd that's why i prefer to talk shit most of the time. Saves me a few headaches.
You have to understand a problem from everyside instead of focusing on one limited aspect and calling it knowledge.
 

CrystalViolet

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Eck,
If you're gonna be all serious about it...BTW obvious is no fun.

Noigmn,
I'm having issues taking this topic seriously after your post, LOL. Too many hilarious mental images....tasty morsel snack packs.
 

CrystalViolet

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Okay,
Taking the topic more seriously...what you are talking about is survival of the fittest. Yes it does, have evolutionary advantages, having weaker members of a herd being plucked out the genetic pool. Any characteristic being deemed highly desirable in a predators eyes (being highly visible for instance or slower because they have shorter legs) isn't really going to last long in their prey, because those characteristics will eventually die out in the herd, because the individuals carrying those genes for those characteristics would be hunted down theoretically before they contributed to much to the gene pool.
So essentially that dynamic is the absolute fundamentals of evolution.
A good example of survival of the fittest is the comparison between Australian and New Zealand possums. New Zealand possums have longer legs, than Australian possums even they come essentially come from the same stock. It turns out in New Zealand, Possums have a tendency to frequent near country roads. The Possums with shorter legs have the disadvantage of not being able to run across the roads fast enough before they get hit by cars. So of course this characteristic was slowly culled out of the population, hence the significant difference in limb length. The longer limbed possums are more likely to survive walking across the road.

Happy now, Eck?
 

EcK

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Okay,
Taking the topic more seriously...what you are talking about is survival of the fittest. Yes it does, have evolutionary advantages, having weaker members of a herd being plucked out the genetic pool. Any characteristic being deemed highly desirable in a predators eyes (being highly visible for instance or slower because they have shorter legs) isn't really going to last long in their prey, because those characteristics will eventually die out in the herd, because the individuals carrying those genes for those characteristics would be hunted down theoretically before they contributed to much to the gene pool.
So essentially that dynamic is the absolute fundamentals of evolution.
A good example of survival of the fittest is the comparison between Australian and New Zealand possums. New Zealand possums have longer legs, than Australian possums even they come essentially come from the same stock. It turns out in New Zealand, Possums have a tendency to frequent near country roads. The Possums with shorter legs have the disadvantage of not being able to run across the roads fast enough before they get hit by cars. So of course this characteristic was slowly culled out of the population, hence the significant difference in limb length. The longer limbed possums are more likely to survive walking across the road.

Happy now, Eck?
Do you really want me to say obvious again ?:D

It's good to keep in mind that it's 'fittest to reproduce' and that individuals have to be seen as parts of a genepool, we tend to "anthropologize" what being 'fit' means and what the 'advantages would be to an individual' otherwise.
 

nozflubber

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Did anyone actually read Eck's posts? what's he gonig on about? he's whining about us not understanding but explained nothing
 

nozflubber

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Eck man, you need to take more philosophy or biology classes before you can bullshit us (on this topic). I'd give you B+ for effort .... (a non-ENTP would get an A though)
 

EcK

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Right, say the guys who don't get a shit about biological systems or philosophy past the pretty pictures.

Discuss if you want, but really, the "we intx are so much smarter because we are and I will use big words like philosophy because it works with the rest of the herd" is beyond lame.
 
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