I’m not much of a biologist, but this is worth a mention if you hadn’t already heard about it. 36 years ago Italian wall lizards were moved from their home on the South African island Pod Kopiste, over to the neighboring island of Pod Mrcaru. Now they can report that they have adapted remarkably to their new environment despite only staying for such a short time.
The lizards are said to have a striking difference in head shape and size, as well as increased biting strength and having formed new structures in their digestive tracts. The island they were originally on was well suited for hunting and eating insects, while the new island had an abundance of plant-life to feast on, causing the change in head-size. To quote the researchers:
As a result, individuals on Pod Mrcaru have heads that are longer, wider and taller than those on Pod Kopiste, which translates into a big increase in bite force. Because plants are tough and fibrous, high bite forces allow the lizards to crop smaller pieces from plants, which can help them break down the indigestible cell walls.
Like i said earlier, i’m not much of a biologist, but it seems to me that people that criticize evolution the most, usually say that all the evidence is circumstantial (fossils) and only small scale evolution is observed (bacterias evolving to become immune to antibiotics etc). But assuming all this holds up to scrutiny, it would appear to me that this is evidence for evolution that is not only close to impossible to deny (although i don’t doubt many will), but it is also something that is compelling and easy to understand.
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April 21st, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Intelligent design is a weak argument at best. While this is a fantastic of science working in real time, Creationists would dismiss this as a hoax, or as God’s will. It seems ridiculous to me that they will say that evolution is a lie, while using medicines that were made using this same theory.
If the big media companies were to give science as much screen time as Paris Hilton we wouldn’t have to deal with things like this.
Just my bitter 2 cents.
April 21st, 2008 at 7:31 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more. But i still think a lot of people believe creationism because they find evolution to be improbable based on their intuition, and most evidence produced to them is based on DNA and fossil record, something they might dismiss as scientist mumbo-jumbo. Something like this has the potential to be an easy to point to example of large scale evolution on a rapid timescale, to perhaps open some eyes and make it seem feasible to them. But you’re right of course that most of the hardcore ones will simply dismiss it like everything else.
Btw on the medicine front, many creationists seem to think that micro-evolution, such as in bacteria is possible (it would be impossible to deny), but feel that the order of complexity in a full living animal, especially humans, is way too improbable to be true.