Natural Selection
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MONSTERS AREN’T real…. Are they?
Outer space. Toxic radiation disasters. Mad scientists’ labs. These are the places monsters come from. Or so we’ve been told…
But aren’t dinosaurs, crocodiles, lions, and sharks really monsters? Of course they are. And they come from right here on earth, and evolution made every single one of them.
So could evolution make another monster? Today?
It might be difficult for some to picture. Evolution is arguably the most powerful force in the earth’s history, but paradoxically, it is also irrelevant to daily human life. Although the expression survival of the fittest is still used colloquially, the literal meaning no longer applies. For the human species, real life-and-death struggles, where the strong survive while the weak perish, have long since vanished.
This is not so in nature. Nature is an entirely different world, where there are no easy meals. When an animal in the wild is hungry, it must find, catch, and kill its prey, or risk dying itself. This harsh and brutal reality plays out daily, and evolutionary adaptations are a natural result. In just the past hundred years, literally thousands of such adaptations have been recorded: house finches in the Gal pagos growing longer beaks, army ants in Brazil doubling their body weights, blind gourami fish adapting “feeler fins” in place of eyes, just to name a few.