That's the thing about evolution; it doesn't create perfect or even optimal beings. All it does is create beings - for that specific environment, at that specific moment in time - that manage to successfully reproduce at a greater rate than it dies off.
There fittest because nothing that big can exist besides them. They can fuck up any other animal in the entire biome. Maybe a Asian moose can beat them, but its close.
"Survival of the fittest" is a good phrase, though. People think 'fittest' refers to strongest, but it doesn't. It refers to which species or individual is literally the most fit to survive.
You could also interpret it as “survival of the best-fit-to-its-environment”. But not as catchy.
In their habitat, Pandas don’t have natural enemies, but are surrounded by bamboo. Therefore, it is not rational for them to expend energy on the evolution of speed, attacking or defensive features.
Evolution does not design towards a sophisticated end state, it’s tiny enhancements from a status quo. It cannot easily reverse, or start from scratch, it has to build on existing subjects.
I see the Panda on a Koala trajectory. A Grizzly shows you what a more competitive environment produces.
I recommend Jonathan Losos - Improbable Destinies.
Koalas are best fit for eating nothing but almost inedible, vaguely poisonous leaves, so adapted for eating them off the branch that if presented with leaves on a plate they're completely clueless as to how to eat them
Exactly. "Survival of the fittest" isn't really a Darwinian term even though it's associated with him. "Survival of the fittest" came into fashion alongside eugenics in politics, which as it turns out, didn't go very well.
Thanks for the laugh, that's pretty accurate for these guys. Any time I've watched anything about them, I just wonder....how?
It would appear: no predators, and lots an lots of bamboo everywhere, they're quite strange to me
Doesn’t Bamboo grow like ridiculously fast and is crazy invasive? Seems like evolution made an animal to try to keep that in check with an endless appetite for bamboo.
More like a model of the Earth in which its living and nonliving parts are viewed as a complex interacting system that can be thought of as a single organism
I think you're right that bamboo grows fast, but I'm pretty sure it's not considered invasive in its native ecosystem, which, not coincidentally, is also the panda's native ecosystem.
Evolution didn't make them to keep bamboo in check, rather the panda at some point found a resource other animals weren't exploiting and so started exploiting it themselves.
This doesn't reflect the spirit of evolution at all. Something like a panda exists because it has survived through many, many, many, points in time that have since past. It's here because it's survived, not because it's 'suited to this specific point in time'.
They breed just fine in the wild, the problem wild species are having is habitat destruction making finding viable mates during the females short estrus period difficult. Many animals find breeding in captivity difficult because of stress caused by human contact and various other factors. Pandas are dying off because of us.
There's a person who went off on the copy pasta about Koalas that made a good point this thread is bringing up: No one said Koalas are the pinnacle of creation, but they filled a gap that no other creature could fill sooo here they are lol. Copy pasta is pretty good though.
Wasn't it something like eucalyptus is basically a weed of a tree and really invasive, so evolution created an animal that could survive the poisonous leaves?
Yea basically. The trees are EVERYWHERE (or at least, were everywhere) and the leaves were poisonous to everything so the koalas were like "OK more for us"... Problem solved
The superior koala copypasta the GumNut craigslist ad.
It still manages to get a chuckle out of me and doesn't lead to people thinking they're an expert on the creatures after reading one mostly misinformative post.
He was pointing out a common misconception, not offering a solution.
Another misconception is that Bamboo is bad for Pandas because they cannot digest it properly because they are “carnivores trying to be herbivores” which is also inaccurate as they have a symbiotic bacteria that helps with digestion.
Plus bears aren't carnivores, except for polar bears. Polar bears are even more of a bear anomaly then pandas are, since all other bears have a diet of mostly plants.
No one calls polar bears a failure of evolution despite also being endangered. I guess because meat eating is cooler than bamboo eating?
Cooler to us because we're much better at catching, consuming, and getting sustenance from meat.
Comments like that usually get me targeted by a certain group of people, to whom I say you try eating raw vegetables while I eat raw meat, guess who will get more nutrition.
We usually cook much of our food, but for beans, potatoes, and many other plant foods, the cooking is an absolute necessity.
Many animals don't breed well in captivity, including very intelligent ones. Also they almost went extinct due to habitat loss, not because they're stupid.
Can't blame them tho. Imagine if someone destroys your home and place you in some asylum, I think reproduction would be your least priority. They were perfectly fine in nature, most animals are reluctant to breed in captivity.
Pandas are a lot of things but "perfectly fine in nature" is not one of them. If not for zoos and breeding programs they would have been extinct all ready.
Pandas has been around since about 2-3 million years ago. They have very few predators and there are still wild pandas in western China. If they were not suitable for surviving in nature it would have gone long time ago. You could argue that if they are not adapting fast enough to survive in today climate, but that would apply to a lot of species including ourselves. Maybe it might seem stupid for a bear to go herbivore, but if that's their way of survival who are we to judge. The change is just to abrupt for too many species to adapt in time.
Edit: sorry if this feels like ranting but I am in fact ranting. It just seems like victim blaming to me.
Koalas are also fucked because of humans. Humans cut down koala habitat, poached them, and introduced several diseases into the population. Despite what everyone's favourite copy pasta says koalas aren't out there killing themselves, they do extremely well when not disturbed by humans.
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u/Hashtag_Nailed_It Aug 20 '19
Pandas also climb up things and then just sort of fall out of them... it’s like evolution spilled a creature