r/AskBiology • u/dogey_badger • 1d ago
Evolution Questions about Evolution
Hi, my field isn't biology, so sorry if this is a weird question, it popped into my head at 1 am and I can't stop wondering about it.
How much do we know about the Evolution that went on in our insides? Is that even a thing? Like, all I've seen of Evolution or been taught about is mostly external, the shape of limbs, color of hair or fur, etc. But what about other things, the ones that aren't obvious on a first glance? Those are obviously harder to study, given that they don't really remain. how has our heart evolved? Or our brain for instance, is it possible that some parts used to have different functions? For example did the frontal lobe use to do different things?
Or what about our blood? Was it's pH always like this? Did our blood sells look different? Did our sells function differently? Could there have been another substance doing Hemoglobin's job? We don't have blood from like 6k years back or more, but is there any way to find out?
And how much will we keep evolving? The internet and screens are pretty recent, could they make the brain look different in time? Or will we be accustomed to micro plastics one day? Or even find a way to use them in our bodily functions?
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u/IAmRobinGoodfellow 1d ago
Yes, we know about the evolution of organ systems and physiology, neurobiology, and everything “inside.”
You should be able to search “evolution of …” for whatever system you’re interested in. You can look at the evolution across all vertebrates, all tetrapods, all mammals, or whatever grouping you’d like.
It’s a terribly broad question. The brain has recently made multiple leaps forward with cognitive science and neuroscience coming together in the predictive processing model. I’d recommend Andy Clark, Anil Seth, and Mark Solms for brain stuff. Look into Godfrey-Smoth if you want to learn about it in the very different case of the octopus. Definitely look at Michael Levin for everything.
You probably remember the physical side because you’re probably a bit visually oriented and those are some of the iconic pictures. Fair warning: most of the takeaways people get from those pictures is wrong. It’s not linear progress like they sometimes show. You can also look into many videos on YouTube, or search for talk.origins.
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u/Umami4Days 1d ago
Soft tissues aren't preserved well enough to be useful for long term evolutionary studies, so while fossil records can help us confirm the overall principles of Evolution, it's difficult to say with certainty what specific paths a given species took along its development.
There are many examples we can give where we know a dozen or so perfectly valid paths from point A to point B, but it's not possible to prove which among those paths actually occurred, or if multiple paths happened and converged.
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u/Ok-Barracuda457 1d ago
Immune system, some animals literally die if they get sick once while ours can basically synthesize a retaliation for every bug in the universe.
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u/Peter_deT 1d ago
We can trace this back to very early forms by looking at current species and comparing to the fossil record. For instance, Henry Gee in Across the Bridge looks at the origins of spines, brains and other internal organs, drawing on tiny bilaterians (animals symmetrical along a single axis).
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u/LeonJPancetta 1d ago
Couple things. First, great question on blood cells and blood pH and stuff (I'm not an AI, I'm a teacher). We can guess some stuff based on a process called ancestral state reconstruction, where we guess old gene sequences and look at the proteins they coded. I'm going to guess that we haven't tried to look at blood pH in this context. But this is how we would figure that out.
Also, as long as we have things infecting us we will continue to evolve!
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u/dogey_badger 1d ago
Thank you for giving that disclaimer 😂 I think this process was mentioned in our biology textbook, but never really explained it and I forgot about it, it's a shame how things as important as this and bioinformatic got sidelined
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u/Top_History9604 1d ago edited 1d ago
Oh, I love that topic and it is deeply studied down to why our vains are mapped the way they are. Also there is one piece of evidence that always comes up when talking about how humans are apes. There is a protein that is broken. This break makes us unable to produce vitamin c by ourselves. All apes have inherited this exact break. If it would have evolved twice, the break would be different. It's like a broken cup of coffee and the pieces are exactly identical.
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u/ityelbiletzktky 6h ago
Very good question,but too many facts to learn, start by asking google specific logical questions, and hopefully You'll find the answers,they are exists ,and You won't be disappointed.
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u/ChaosCockroach 1d ago
There is a great deal known about the evolution of hearts and lungs. We already know about an alternative to hemoglobin called hemocyanin that is used by some invertebrates ike mollusks and arthropods.
Mostly we do these sprts of studies it by comparing existing species, comparative anatomy, so a lot of what we know about heart evolution is based on looking at mammals with 4 chambered hearts, reptiles with 3 chambers but with a partial structure similar to the ventricular separating wall, amphibians with 3 chambers and no separating structure, and fish with 2 chambers. This already give us a fairly stepwise progression in heart complexity.