HomeWork HELP
 

Yeah. It's homework.

Can you guys think of examples of biological human evolution that has taken place in the last 200 years?

I said height and weight are greater. What else? and it has to be biological. Not cultural, etc.

thanks.

:)

IQ?

Thanks to so many vaccines, anti-bacterial soaps, etc., we are not as able to handle diseases as we used to be.

These are not evolutionary... and I wonder if 200 years is enough to see actual evolution. That's like ten generations.

My thought too, some animals make evolutionary changes on a short timescale (insects or such), but I don't think humans do.

Height and weight, aren't they dietary, therefore cultural.

not helping here much :yelsick:

Yeah, I suspect the point of the homework is for the teacher to shoot them all down.

There might be some plague survivors whose genes became more prevalent in some country. But with the dramatic increase in the interconnectiveness of the world, any evolutionary pressure is hugely diluted, into areas without that pressure.

You could look at those disorders for which genetic counseling is offered and see if any rates have been reduced over time for those disorders because couples are not reproducing if they have high risk. There's also the question of screening for disorders and terminating pregnancies. I imaging any changes would only be visible in first world countries.

Maybe foot could just shoot them down. We're still waiting for him to evolve.


(I'm KIDDING! Inside joke.) :lol:

Stem cell therapy?

How strictly is evolution being defined here? Any useful mutation could be considered evolution, when considered at the individual level. And if we're talking species wide adapation of particular traits...well, 200 years is too short a time span for anything to have spread that quickly.

When in doubt, critique the question, if it looks suspiciously flawed. Because if it is, then it probably was done on purpose, and it means there are marks to be picked up. Especially if this is, say, undergraduate level or so.

Collectively, our vision is getting worse. Some people think it's because we're using too many screens close to our face, but I think it's because corrective vision treatments are keeping some of us (like me) alive when we should have blindly walked off a cliff long before puberty.

Also, I've read somewhere that our toes are getting shorter, because good running/balance are no longer needed for hunting.

Isn't this how evolution happens? Changes in environment, etc. begin changes in us.

Yabbut it takes a lot of generations to get differences you can identify...

Since this is OHIO, DEVOlution is more likely.

Are we not Ohio?

We are DEVO!

See - you guys are smart.

I think the question is flawed, too. It IS undergrad work - junior level.

My son's bio prof asked that they write up a paragraph on how bio evolution has changed in the last 200 years. 200 years is NOTHING in bio evo. terms.

He's pretty frustrated with the question.

I'll give him the heads up on DEVO, though. ;) might at least make the stupid prof smile.

Ginger boy is still at home and you still love him?
Not a pointed question, I just need to keep up with your life.

I don't watch soap operas y'see :)

Over the past 200 years, I'll bet that the women of Africa have evolved to almost
superhuman ability to make long, long trips barefooted with their babies
on their hips with little to no food or water...

All due to the internecine wars with modern weapons available over the internet.

Dawin did know what he was talking about.
.

How humans have evolved in 200 years, or how humans' understanding of biological evolution has changed in the last 200 years?

X-men.

Investigations about the physical aspects of prehistoric men and women tend to show that their weight and height were similar to ours.

Yet, we're still evolving. May be this will help you.

Sometimes evolution takes a giant leap.

I've heard that the conditions on slave ships (extreme temperatures, no water/food) caused the people whose bodies did not retain salt well to die more frequently. Subsequently, African-American populations descended from slaves tend to retain salt well, resulting in a predisposition towards high blood pressure.

I've never taken any steps to verify if there's any truth there.

Maybe you should just shoot him down and explain that biological evolution does not occur unless there's some kind of cultural need and then show how our cultural evolution has led to biological evolution such as height and health issues?

Just a note here. max has a way to go on his cultural and biological evolution. He just whacked himself in the head with a guitar. Nice. lol

Not Ginger Boy (who, yes, is at home and driving me crazy with his issues) but Son Number One who is at OSU in Columbus.

As already noted, we have used our inventions to shield us from the effects of savage nature and our own individual defects. We have cleaned our water, defeated predators, immunised our young, worn glasses, used insulin, used IVF, and treated other diseases as they arose.
As a result, people who would otherwise have died before reproducing can now live and breed, and so our gene pool has become more varied and less "fit" in the sense of surviving without such support. Since we have such support, we are "fit" for our present environment.

While we have introduced a large number of new risk factors (obesity, corn sugar, tobacco) these generally don't bite until after you've had a chance to breed, so their selective impact is minimal.

Especially during WWI and WWII, we sent millions of our healthiest males off to die, and the physically imperfect were kept at home and are more likely to have bred. This would be outright disgenics (opposite of eugenics) but the numbers of deaths in those wars (say, 50 million total) isn't really that much in a world of billions.

Especially in the last 50 years, there has been more mixing of previously (relatively) isolated gene pools. Afro-Italian, Chinese-Hispanic, etc. I don't know if this makes much difference.

In the last 20 years, genetic counselling may have reduced the occurance of some genetic conditins, but only for the wealthy and I suspect the overall effect of this would be minimal.