Common Evolution Myths Explained

 Evolution Myths: All is a product of adaptation

The common understanding that everything regarding organism development is a natural response to the environment is not always true. Many blame specific characteristics and abnormalities as an attempt at natural selection. However, evolution tends not to be changed or adapted if there is no pressure to do so. For example, the male nipple literally has no function at all. Some studies have suggested that the male nipple play a role in sexual stimuli. Therefore, the general assumption highlights the fact that if a nipple on a male is not required then evolution processes would eradicate the male nipple.

This would be true if losing the nipple would create an advantage. As it stands though the male nipple creates no extra energy to function and maintain as it would if the nipple gene were switched off. Plus, evolution tends not to backtrack to improve certain characteristic features or traits. This can be seen with the eye, which first came around in early sea creatures over 500 million years ago. If the eye evolved outside of water, it may have looked a little different. That is not to say the eye has not natural evolved through land species to the many varieties there are today, but that the evolution of the eye will not reverse back to make a better eye originally better suited for outside the water. Evolution will just naturally adapt to favoured traits.

Evolution myths: It is just a 'theory'

Image extracted from https://interestingengineering.com

Evolution is often attacked at the assumption of the word 'theory' in the 'theory of evolution. There are many scientific break throughs’ that have been excepted generally that are known as theories, for example, the 'big bang theory, or that of  'the atomic theory'.

However, regardless of the assumption, the general understanding of a ‘theory’ is a feeling of whim: clouds are made of candy floss because they are fluffy. In a sense, the idea does not have to make sense or even correlate to the natural understanding of the physical world to be classified as a theory.

However, in scientific terms a theory means something else altogether:

“A theory is a carefully thought-out explanation for observations of the natural world that has been constructed using the scientific method, and which brings together many facts and hypotheses.”

This tends to be the case with evolution, collated evidence for many years in many fields of science such as molecular biology, embryology, cytology, and palaeontology, plus many more.

Science does not support its whole understanding on a hunch, the evidence needs to strongly point towards a common understanding repeatedly.

Evolution myths: Humans could not have evolved from monkeys as monkeys still exist.

This myth seems to really highlight how the theory of evolution is misunderstood. The idea that a so-called primate that exists today just decided to leave the canopy of the rainforest and walk in the tall grass is clearly not the concept behind our own lineage.

All primates that are around today transgressed out towards their own lineage separating each primate and the history of evolution. The short answer is that we share a common ancestor with each primate today. In fact, the common ancestors of monkeys and apes diverged around 25 million years ago. This led to the onset evolution of the apes and great apes. It was not until around 8 to 6 million years ago whereby an early ancestor had evolved which emerged from the common ancestor that humans with the chimpanzee. Humans and chimpanzee are closely related due to their late divergence from a common ancestor. I guess at this time life on earth offered the environmental push for each ancestor to diverge on two different paths. 

Obviously, there were many more ancestors relating to hominoids that just didn’t make it, however, if they had we would have been sharing this planet with another closely related hominoid that may have been intelligent like homosapiens.