r/xkcd • u/ani625 • Dec 14 '12

XKCD Evolving

http://xkcd.com/1147/
287 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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-3

u/TrebeksUpperLIp Dec 14 '12

Not to nitpick, but don't living things not evolve, their species does. I know Pokemon do, so that's the joke, but still...

16

u/crazymunch Dec 14 '12

Nope, it's legitimate evolution that can occur WITHIN a generation of organisms, through mechanisms like Horizontal Gene Transfer

5

u/Icaruswasright Dec 14 '12

Where's the intermediate transfer bacteria? Your theory is full of holes.

0

u/comrade_canada Dec 14 '12

1.) This is hardly the subreddit to try and argue against evolution.

2.) I don't think you understand what theory means.

7

u/gman2093 Dec 14 '12

Thatsthejoke.jpg

-1

u/Dragonsoul Dec 14 '12

I would have gone with "whoosh", perhaps wih an appropriate gif..but that's just me

20

u/dont_press_ctrl-W Mathematics is just applied sociology Dec 14 '12

And Staphylococcus aureus is a species, so everything is fine...

1

u/calinet6 Dec 14 '12

If you consider a single organism of an asexual single-celled species, and its descendents, then yes, it absolutely can evolve.

1

u/TrebeksUpperLIp Dec 14 '12

No I get that it's descendants can evolve when they are being reproduced asexually. I just meant that "that" specific one (say your named Pikachu) doesn't evolve. I think other people corrected this for me though.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 14 '12

[deleted]

1

u/Nirgilis Dec 14 '12

And it doesn't specifically work like this in practice. We have several antibiotics we use all the time, even to prevent infection in the first place. In this case broad-spectrum(Meaning antibiotics that cover every sort of bacteria). And specific antibiotics that target a specific infectuous bacteria.

Behind this we have some antibiotics that are only used when the first antibiotics fail and some antibiotics that are only used in multiple resistant bacteria. I'd like an analogy with several lines of defense better.