Winning War Through Artificial Selection

"The project was cancelled," said Nessus. "We found that the Man-Kzin wars put sufficient restriction on kzinti expansion, made you less dangerous. We continued to watch. "Six times over several centuries, you attacked the worlds of men. Six times you were defeated, having lost approximately two-thirds of your male population in each war. Need I comment on the level of intelligence displayed? No? In any case, you were never in real danger of extermination. Your nonsentient females were lar...

 Evolution in the Laboratory Occurs Very Quickly

One approach is to compare the rates of evolution in the fossil record with those seen in laboratory experiments that used artificial selection, or with historical data on evolutionary change that occurred when species colonized new habitats in historical times. If evolution in the fossil record were much faster than in laboratory experiments or colonization events—both of which involve very strong selection—we might need to rethink whether selection could explain changes in fossils. But in f...

 Dog Breeding and Evolution

Another familiar example is the sculpting of the wolf, Canis lupus, into the two hundred or so breeds of dog, Canis familiaris, that are recognized as separate by the UK Kennel Club, and the larger number of breeds that are genetically isolated from one another by the apartheid-like rules of pedigree breeding. Incidentally, the wild ancestor of all domestic dogs really does seem to be the wolf and only the wolf... [...] The main point I want to draw out of domestication is its astonishing ...

 Experiment is the Ultimate Test

The ultimate test of a scientific hypothesis is experiment. Experiment specifically means that you don't just wait for nature to do something, and passively observe it and see what it correlates with. You go in there and do something. You manipulate. You change something, in a systematic way, and compare the result with a 'control' that lacks the change, or you compare it with a different change. [...] If your hypothesis is that the non-random survival of random genetic variation has import...

 Everyone is a Choosing Agent

1 Humans deliberately choose attractive roses, sunflowers etc. for breeding, thereby preserving the genes that produce the attractive features. This is called artificial selection, it's something humans have known about since long before Darwin, and everybody understands that it is powerful enough to turn wolves into chihuahuas and to stretch maize cobs from inches to feet. 2 Peahens (we don't know whether consciously and deliberately, but let's guess not) choose attractive peacocks for bree...