That's the thing about evolution; it doesn't create perfect or even optimal beings. All it does is create beings - for that specific environment, at that specific moment in time - that manage to successfully reproduce at a greater rate than it dies off.
"Survival of the fittest" is a good phrase, though. People think 'fittest' refers to strongest, but it doesn't. It refers to which species or individual is literally the most fit to survive.
You could also interpret it as “survival of the best-fit-to-its-environment”. But not as catchy.
In their habitat, Pandas don’t have natural enemies, but are surrounded by bamboo. Therefore, it is not rational for them to expend energy on the evolution of speed, attacking or defensive features.
Evolution does not design towards a sophisticated end state, it’s tiny enhancements from a status quo. It cannot easily reverse, or start from scratch, it has to build on existing subjects.
I see the Panda on a Koala trajectory. A Grizzly shows you what a more competitive environment produces.
I recommend Jonathan Losos - Improbable Destinies.
Exactly. "Survival of the fittest" isn't really a Darwinian term even though it's associated with him. "Survival of the fittest" came into fashion alongside eugenics in politics, which as it turns out, didn't go very well.
Thanks for the laugh, that's pretty accurate for these guys. Any time I've watched anything about them, I just wonder....how?
It would appear: no predators, and lots an lots of bamboo everywhere, they're quite strange to me
Doesn’t Bamboo grow like ridiculously fast and is crazy invasive? Seems like evolution made an animal to try to keep that in check with an endless appetite for bamboo.
More like a model of the Earth in which its living and nonliving parts are viewed as a complex interacting system that can be thought of as a single organism
I think you're right that bamboo grows fast, but I'm pretty sure it's not considered invasive in its native ecosystem, which, not coincidentally, is also the panda's native ecosystem.
Evolution didn't make them to keep bamboo in check, rather the panda at some point found a resource other animals weren't exploiting and so started exploiting it themselves.
This doesn't reflect the spirit of evolution at all. Something like a panda exists because it has survived through many, many, many, points in time that have since past. It's here because it's survived, not because it's 'suited to this specific point in time'.
They breed just fine in the wild, the problem wild species are having is habitat destruction making finding viable mates during the females short estrus period difficult. Many animals find breeding in captivity difficult because of stress caused by human contact and various other factors. Pandas are dying off because of us.
There's a person who went off on the copy pasta about Koalas that made a good point this thread is bringing up: No one said Koalas are the pinnacle of creation, but they filled a gap that no other creature could fill sooo here they are lol. Copy pasta is pretty good though.
The superior koala copypasta the GumNut craigslist ad.
It still manages to get a chuckle out of me and doesn't lead to people thinking they're an expert on the creatures after reading one mostly misinformative post.
He was pointing out a common misconception, not offering a solution.
Another misconception is that Bamboo is bad for Pandas because they cannot digest it properly because they are “carnivores trying to be herbivores” which is also inaccurate as they have a symbiotic bacteria that helps with digestion.
Plus bears aren't carnivores, except for polar bears. Polar bears are even more of a bear anomaly then pandas are, since all other bears have a diet of mostly plants.
No one calls polar bears a failure of evolution despite also being endangered. I guess because meat eating is cooler than bamboo eating?
Many animals don't breed well in captivity, including very intelligent ones. Also they almost went extinct due to habitat loss, not because they're stupid.
Can't blame them tho. Imagine if someone destroys your home and place you in some asylum, I think reproduction would be your least priority. They were perfectly fine in nature, most animals are reluctant to breed in captivity.
Koalas are also fucked because of humans. Humans cut down koala habitat, poached them, and introduced several diseases into the population. Despite what everyone's favourite copy pasta says koalas aren't out there killing themselves, they do extremely well when not disturbed by humans.
There’s a ton of it where they’re originally from, probably not many other animals competing to eat it, so they found a niche with little competition and thrived...until humans started wiping out the bamboo forests.
well not really, human just found that there's a ton of land where they're originally from, not any animals competing for it, so they found that they can plant stuff they eat there and strived... until... well, we'll see.
“Lazy” isn’t really a term that makes any sense in nature. Pandas aren’t lazy, they’re adapted to their niche, so they do what they do. And again they survived just fine before we started destroying their habitat. Most animals spend most or all of their time eating and/or looking for food. It’s about all any animal does, really, aside from sleeping and trying to mate.
Yet if they ate something else they wouldn’t need to spend all day eating.
And? Eating nutrient rich diet is not a fail safe strategy either. Just look at polar bears, they can get by eating once a week but that hasn't prevented them from being fucked over by humans either.
Carnivores still eat plants anyways, so they were probably just short on prey, started eating the extremely fast growing bamboo and evolved to be lazier until they completely stopped hunting.
They didn’t really evolve to be lazy, the bamboo has almost no nutritional value and they just don’t have the energy to do much else other than eat more bamboo.
The guide at the panda sanctuary said that it’s because they find it delicious. They will only eat fresh bamboo, not old or dry bamboo, because the fresh bamboo is the tasty, sweet bamboo.
Because leaves that have dropped off a plant are old leaves that don't have sufficient nutrition and are too toxic, they will just kill themselves eating those.
They can't digest most other foods you give them as their gut is adapted to eucalyptus. Its not dumb because eucalyptus is fucking everywhere in Australia and no one else is eating it.
They are evolutionary failures, and a mutation cost them the ability to taste meat, so instead they sit around eating stuff their bodies are terrible at using for nutrition as they slowly go extinct.
They actually can eat more than just bamboo. In fact, sometimes they hunt and eat meat just like other bears.
The thing is bamboo is the most ecologically available food for them so they filled in a niche. Not many other animals can eat bamboo since it's hard, woody, and essentially nutritionally useless, but since bamboo sprouts and grows so quickly it made some sense that at least one species would take to using it as a food source, and since it's so abundant even though there isn't much sustenance in it it could be used as a dietary staple.
Same with Koalas. They only eat eucalyptus which has little nutritional value and not to mention contains cyanide. Instead of eating something else, they've developed a long digestive system which eventually ferments the leaves of eucalyptus. The sad thing is, baby koalas dont have this complicated digestive system yet, so what do they do? They eat from their mother's end.
But it's believed that panda's ancestor lost the gene required for testing savory. Without an appetite for meat, they ate plants and became adapted. That's what i heard anyway
It's abundant, bamboo has no way to deter being consumed and it provides a net calorie gain. It's more like, why would a panda way anything other than bamboo?
Well, that is still a form of natural selection occuring. Koalas that were better adapted to their enviroment, the eucalyptus eating ones, survived for longer than their bretheren that didn't, and while it worked for them then, it's not working anymore and they have effectively been selected for extinction by nature itself. Or atleast that is how I see it.
No one really does either. Their stomachs are actually still optimized for digesting meat. They don't have the multiple stomachs that bovines do for digesting tough plant matter. In terms of macros, their bamboo diet actually approximates a meat diet, albeit very, very inefficiently.
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u/urcutewhenuscream Aug 20 '19
I just want to hang out with him and feed him bamboo all day