Humans are evolving again?

Question

-Texan woman falls 150 feet after she drives her pickup truck off the side of a cliff and survives

-Tightrope walker plumets 150 to the ground and survives with no broken bones

-Pregnant skydiver and fetus survive parachute malufunction

-4 year old boy lives after falling from a balcony 11 stories high

-10 month old girl survives 8 story fall after being hurled out the window by drunken father

-Canadian man survives without food or water after being chained to a tree for 6 days

-Maryland girl falls 25 feet from an amusement park ride and lives

-Pennsylvania man survives after being struck by lightning twice

-Teenager falls 6 stories from hotel balcony and walks away with a few bumbs and scrapes

I'm not saying people are going to be walking around like Claire Bennet from "Heroes" re-growing our fingers and repairing broken bones in a matter of seconds, but it seems like something is happening with the human race.

What do you guys think?

Answer 1

Actually we are devolving due to shows like Heros and other c**p on TV.

Answer 2

Sorry' but I just think some people are lucky. compare how many survived these acts. to the ones that did not survive. what will the total be for each side.

Come on think about it. there has to be some reason they survived, right? maybe one fell into a deep swimming pool, so they lived. I will bet, that if you check deeper into the stories, you will find,  that there was another thing or object involved, that saved their lives.

You make it sound like a News Paper head Line. that makes things sound strange or wild. so they can sell them. but if you read the story, you will find the real reason, and true facts involved.

I am not saying you are lien. I am saying that you are only printing the head lines, and not the whole story.

But I would, like to know how this would have anything to do with, evolving? they were just lucky people is all.

But Good Luck, on what ever you are looking for.

Take Care,

Answer 3

There is no stopping and starting to evolution (and there for no evolving again but rather still).  There are theories of macro evolution but this usually occurs in small isolated populations and is known as the founder effect.  If you get a small population with all blue eyes, you will continue to have all blue eyes because of the recessive nature of the genes controlling eye color (there are exceptions to this but are too complicated to detail here).  

The other issue is one of biased case selection.  You chose all the cases where someone fell a great distance and lived but ignored the hundreds of others where the people died.  If you looked at all cases of 150  foot falls you would find a high incidence of death and broken bones.  How many people are struck by lightening and live?  How many twice?  These are not representative cases but exceptions which in this instance do not prove a rule.

Answer 4

actually the frontal lobes of European men are getting bigger for the last 500 years or so.

Answer 5

We are not evolving -again-.  We never stopped evolving.  If you believe in evolution at all you have to see it as a continuous process.

I think it's just possible to fall a great distance and survive. It has to do with stopping slowly enough.  If you fall through a tree, for instance, it's possible the branches of the tree could slow you down enough that when you hit the ground you wouldn't break every bone in your body.  It's not likely, and it's not very probable from a statistical point of view. But if enough people fall 150 feet there will be a few who survive.

I live near San Francisco and in my lifetime there have been two people who have jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, meaning to commit suicide, and lived.  They both landed not in the water but in the mud!  It slowed them down just enough.  Speculation is that some people have hit the water and weren't killed but lost consciousness and drowned.

Answer 6

Humans are still evolving, but not the ability to survive falls.  What you are referring to here is probability.  Drop enough water balloons from 10,000' into differing environments & you will find some that survive the drop.  I suspect the man chained to the tree would not have lasted long in the Nevada desert. The man struck twice by lightening simply beat the odds & should buy a lottery ticket.

Because those with an IQ of below 90 produce 3 times the number of children as those with an IQ above 110... we may not be evolving toward higher intelligence.  Something I do not like to think about.

Answer 7

I think human used to be more surable and stronger in the past tha nowadays sounds like good luck. They probably all landed right If we are evolving physically cool but i dont think so.

Answer 8

Evolution is a continual process. the advent of culture has enabled us to circumvent a lot of the natural selection process.

Answer 9

I think with 5 Billion people in the world, you're bound to have some people/events that are statistical anomalies.  Humans can be tough to kill sometimes.  Always have been.

Humans are done evolving.  Evolution requires three things:

1. A mutation which renders a reproductive advantage to the bearer,

2.  A small enough population that such an advantage has a chance to have a disproportionate distribution among descendants

3. A population that is under stress, thus weeding out the strains that do not carry the advantageous gene.

In our current civilization, we might get the occasional #1, but there's little chance of #2 and #3 coming together.  The disadvantaged are still allowed to breed and pass on their non-advantageous genomes.

Darwin's theory of slow gradual change has been debunked by mitochondrial DNA analysis.  Punctuated equilibrium is the more current theory.  Under this theory, our brain has more or less placed us in a perpetual state of equilibrium.  We can think our way out of evolutionary problems faster than we can breed our way out.

Answer 10

We have reached an evolutionary dead end.  There is no need for evolution (or change) in a race where technology can provide the needed changes.  We have not evolved since one of our ancestors started using stones and fire.  We will not evolve any further till there is a need.   The things you listed are just odd things.  Media can't list all the people who die from falls.  They can list the ones who survive.

Answer 11

These are impressive, but by no means do they involve magical cheerleaders. People survive things they shouldn't all the time. In the past, they were often burnt as witches or hailed as gods; now we chalk it up to physics and luck.

This doesn't mean you'll suddenly be able to fly or alter spacetime. And yes, every living species is in a constant state of evolution; Homo sapiens included.