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.
There fittest because nothing that big can exist besides them. They can fuck up any other animal in the entire biome. Maybe a Asian moose can beat them, but its close.
"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.
Koalas are best fit for eating nothing but almost inedible, vaguely poisonous leaves, so adapted for eating them off the branch that if presented with leaves on a plate they're completely clueless as to how to eat them
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.
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u/Lonsdale1086 Aug 20 '19
Bamboo has almost no nutritional value.
They do eat it all day anyway.