keep dreaming...
Posted by anyman on Jun 01, 2003 at 19:45
(219.140.50.107)Re: Can humans interbreed with Chimpanzees? (Chimp)
from dawkins:
On the evolutionary view of life there must have been intermediates, even though, conveniently for our naming rituals, they are usually extinct: usually, but not always. The lawyer would be surprised and, I hope, intrigued by so-called 'ring species'. The best-known case is herring gull versus lesser black-backed gull. In Britain these are clearly distinct species, quite different in colour. Anybody can tell them apart. But if you follow the population of herring gulls westward round the North Pole to North America, then via Alaska across Siberia and back to Europe again, you will notice a curious fact. The 'herring gulls' gradually become less and less like herring gulls and more and more like lesser black-backed gulls until it turns out that our European lesser black-backed gulls actually are the other end of a ring that started out as herring gulls. At every stage around the ring, the birds are sufficiently similar to their neighbours to interbreed with them. Until, that is, the ends of the continuum are reached, in Europe. At this point the herring gull and the lesser black-backed gull never interbreed, although they are linked by a continuous series of interbreeding colleagues all the way round the world. The only thing that is special about ring species like these gulls is that the intermediates are still alive. All pairs of related species are potentially ring species. The intermediates must havelived once. It is just that in most cases they are now dead. dawkins' jazz"THE BEST-KNOWN CASE"?
give us a break, richard...as always, your best case scenario is worse than weak, it is nonsense...
the gulls are still gulls and will never be anything but gulls...they're not even going to become totally different kinds of birds, much less anything else :-)
intelligent design allows for considerable and rapid variation within various kinds, primarily determined by environmental stimuli, but the genetic boundaries will never be naturally crossed as the evolutionary postulation requires
but you welcome to try again :-)
Follow Ups:
- Re: keep dreaming... DA Morgan 02/6 14:13 (0)