• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Tribe in New Guinea evolved to be able to swim deeper than most people

Days like these...

Have a Blessed Day
I didn't know how i feel about it being called a mutation.

 

Trogdor1123

Member
I didn't know how i feel about it being called a mutation.

Why wouldn’t it be a mutation? Not every mutation gives you a third arm or wings or something like that.

Need a biologist to give us the proper definition.
 

AJUMP23

Parody of actual AJUMP23
Do they have gills?

waterworld GIF
 

kevboard

Member
I didn't know how i feel about it being called a mutation.


that is what evolution is. random mutations (big or small) that survive over several generations and become more and more prominent the more they are passed on.
 

Trilobit

Member
that is what evolution is. random mutations (big or small) that survive over several generations and become more and more prominent the more they are passed on.

I'm confused, I discussed evolution with someone on reddit and he was adamant about mutations not being random in evolution. So I read about it online and apparently mutations are no longer considered random by evolutionists?
 

Trilobit

Member
Here's a pretty good crash course at least for one "side" https://evolution.berkeley.edu/dna-and-mutations/mutations-are-random/

I think it might have been about something like this the user argued with:

“We always thought of mutations appearing solely by chance across the genome,” says Grey Monroe, an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences and first author of the paper. “It now turns out that the pattern of mutation is not only very non-random, but also that it’s non-random in a way that benefits the plant.”

I wonder if this is true then if a human were to live a million years his body could adapt itself to new environments without the need for natural selection. I'm talking about a hypothetical immortal person and adaptations like this tribe had.
 

BlackTron

Member
I think it might have been about something like this the user argued with:


I wonder if this is true then if a human were to live a million years his body could adapt itself to new environments without the need for natural selection. I'm talking about a hypothetical immortal person and adaptations like this tribe had.

Ok so, a few things about this. In this research, what they showed is that plants protected their most important genes from mutation. The mechanism of action is that the more important DNA was covered in different type of proteins than those the plant didn't "mind" exposing to mutations. The host wasn't actually able to steer the direction of those mutations, but by making a mutation in one area (for better or worse) more likely than a different one it becomes "non random".

This was possible to measure because they tracked hundreds of plants in a controlled environment. A single organism would not be able to adapt its own DNA in response to needs such as having to breath underwater. Exposing ones own DNA to damage is usually a recipe for cancer. They were able to track a pattern over hundreds of plants that the way they were protecting DNA wasn't random but preferred stopping damage to more critical genes.

If it were happening in humans -say the host dropped how protective it is with proteins over respiratory genes. A mutation happens that breaks it and gives you the ability of a chain smoker. Or another one happens that doubles how long you can breathe underwater. One of them is going to result in more survival and reproduction than the other, leading to the difference between a successful or stamped out mutation. While the process isn't completely random because we "asked for" the category to be less protected than another one, that doesn't mean we are just choosing mutations either. And it still happens over the course of generations.
 
Last edited:

DGrayson

Mod Team and Bat Team
Staff Member
From what I remember from my cultural anthropology course (this was 20+ years ago so things might have changed), was that there was a theory that genetic mutations are random, but ones that lead to culturally desirable traits are the ones that increase and are passed down.

So in this case this tribe leaves near the sea and does a lot of underwater hunting for hundreds or thousands of years. Randomly someone has a mutation that causes an enlarged spleen and the ability to stay underwater longer. This allows him to collect more fish, more resources for the tribe, and makes him more desirable for partners so he fucks like hell and his offspring also possibly get the enlarged spleen and this continues with additional mutations possibly adding to the chain effect.
 

llien

Member
At school, many of my classmates didn't grasp evolution, with dumdum questions like "why don't monkeys in a zoo turn into humans". I've struggled to understand what part they found so hard. Which is also dumb in some way, I guess.

So for me it goes like that:

Mutations are random. (makes sense, otherwise you need some insane mechanism of "nature" somehow "guessing" what you need)

Beneficial mutations stick (obviously, doh?)

So in this case this tribe leaves near the sea and does a lot of underwater hunting for hundreds or thousands of years.
Homo Neanderthals is about 500k old, our branch, with smaller brains, cough, is about 300k old.

The tribe in question lived over there for merely "more than 1k years".

Which makes the story rather peculiar.
 

Hookshot

Gold Member
The tribe in question lived over there for merely "more than 1k years".

Which makes the story rather peculiar.
1,000 years of people making it to 40 is 25 generations. That's enough to get the enlarged spleen gene passed around, especially when each kid with it adds to the number of people passing it on
 

Tams

Member
At school, many of my classmates didn't grasp evolution, with dumdum questions like "why don't monkeys in a zoo turn into humans". I've struggled to understand what part they found so hard. Which is also dumb in some way, I guess.

So for me it goes like that:

Mutations are random. (makes sense, otherwise you need some insane mechanism of "nature" somehow "guessing" what you need)

Beneficial mutations stick (obviously, doh?)


Homo Neanderthals is about 500k old, our branch, with smaller brains, cough, is about 300k old.

The tribe in question lived over there for merely "more than 1k years".

Which makes the story rather peculiar.

I think smaller populations can make such things much more pronounced, especially in polygamous (or where marriage isn't a thing) societies. The beneficial genes are more likely to be passed on.

There's also the nurture angle. Development is more foundational at a young age, so if these people dive from a young age, they are more much more likely to be good at it, with or despite nature.
 
Top Bottom