Is devolution posible?

Question

is that stuff that devo is talking about true, or just a gimmick?

Answer 1

Devo? Wasn't that a punk band band in the 80s? They wore funnels on their heads. Their big hit was "Whip It!".

Answer 2

Reaquistion of a lost trait is called an atavism.  Sometimes people are born with tails, or horse might have many toes.  Atavisms are generally maladaptive and would therefore tend to get weeded out but there is no reason that it might be retained if it proved useful again.

Answer 3

nope.

Answer 4

Of course devolution is possible.  Everyone responding "no" knows what it means.  It means evolving to lose things gained in evolution.

Answer 5

Yes. We will devolve if we do not need a certain part of the body or our thinking.

For example we humans do not climb trees.

So we do not need a tail to climb trees.

We evolved from monkeys in terms of intelligence and whatsoever. But we devolved from monkeys in terms of agility and that tail..

Answer 6

Hum. Take a look at our current society. Getting dumber by the day.

Answer 7

As the other posters said, the term devolution assumes that evolution has a direction or a purpose.  It doesn't.  All that matters in evolution is whether the individuals in a population can survive to produce offspring.  The population evolves because the ones carrying useful genes have more kids, and those useful genes are spread.  It also evolves because those carrying hurtful genes die before they can pass them along.  So when we lost our tails, we didn't "devolve".  Sure, they were useful when we were swinging from the trees, but our bodies are no longer suited for that lifestyle.  I don't know why we lost our tails, but perhaps they were a waste of energy to grow, energy that could better be used by our growing brains.  So really, we evolved to lose our tails because that helped us to fit our environment better.  That'd be true for most major traits.

Answer 8

Strictly speaking evolution is not a moving up or down thing.

So devolution can't exist defacto.

Answer 9

well the theory of evolution rests on something called punctuated equilibrium which means as the world changes, life adjusts to the change. If the conditions in nature could be reversed, then reticent genes that still held attributes which are no longer used, could be triggered by outside conditions and change not back but use similiar genes in new conditions.

Answer 10

I don't believe it is. Evolution is defined as the process of change over time. (or any change in realative frequency in alleles, but I won't get into genetics and Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection and all that good stuff.) Any change in a species, including humans is evolution. Even if we lose a trait, it is considered an adaptation or evolution because if we lost that trait, it was becuase we didn't need. Our species therefore evolved to have better evolutionary fitness. Again, I won't go into genetics, if you're interested in evolutionary fitness and all that, look it up.

Answer 11

There's no such thing as devolution, just evolution.  I suppose if it was beneficial to reproduction (in the long run, not necessarily directly), an organism could be "simplified" but that's still an evolutionary path, not a "devolutionary" path.

Answer 12

Evolution has no direction; so, not possible by definition.