Aquatic Ape Theory

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by LIGHTBEING, Aug 22, 2002.

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  1. spookz Banned Banned

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    finally google (garbage in, garbage out!)
    gives me something to bolster my

    1- gut feeling
    2 - lost memories
    3 - logical reasoning
    4 - etc


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    If you remember your ninth-grade biology, you probably remember the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lamarck as one of the wacky also-rans of modern science. He was the predecessor of Darwin whose theory of acquired characteristics held that the stature of the giraffe came from generations of giraffe parents straining their necks ever farther to reach the leafy branches of the banyan tree, then -- and this was the wacky part -- passing their long necks on to their kids. For a century Lamarckism has been joke science, a notch below creationism, buried ever deeper under Darwin's theory of natural selection. But if a study published Monday in the influential journal Nature Genetics is any indication, Lamarck may be due for a rehabilitation, of sorts.

    In the work published in Nature Genetics, Emma Whitelaw and her colleagues at the University of Sydney did a set of experiments with a particular strain of lab mice. The odd thing about this strain, which had been observed previously, was that despite being genetically identical, some of the mice were yellow, others gray-striped, others a mix of yellow and stripes. The researchers found that the differences were caused by subtle changes in the mice's DNA during their fetal development.

    Whitelaw's even more surprising observation was that all the mice whose mothers had yellow coats always had yellow coats as well. In other words, the non-genetic change that occurred in the female mouse fetus was somehow passed along to her offspring when she became a mother. Even when the mouse embryos were nurtured in the wombs of surrogate mothers, their coat color was the same as that of the "genetic" mother.

    Whitelaw's work is apparently the first showing that mammals can somehow pass along acquired characteristics to the next generation. It isn't quite as remarkable as Lamarck's giraffes inheriting stretched necks, but it is, strictly speaking, proof of Lamarckian inheritance.

    The study is part of a growing field called epigenetics, a branch of developmental biology that investigates the mechanisms whereby certain genes are suppressed through changes in the chemical makeup and shape of the DNA in which they are embedded.

    We all know how genes are supposed to work in the classic Mendelian scheme of inheritance: You get a copy or two of the fat gene, depending on whether or not it's recessive or dominant, and that makes you fat. Complicating matters, many conditions don't fit into a neat Mendelian box. It's known that schizophrenia is largely inherited, for example, but after years of unsuccessfully trying to locate single genes for schizophrenia, scientists believe that many different genes operating in different combinations contribute to the ailment.

    Epigenetics adds yet a further complication to the picture. Instead of just a lot of genes operating together, it turns out, subtle, random changes in the chemistry of the DNA itself affect which of those genes actually fire into action.

    Just how prominently epigenetics figures in the overall scheme of things -- how big a role they play, for example, in human traits and disease -- isn't yet known. But epigenetics studies have multiplied in the past decade and there is already clear evidence of epigenetic effects.

    For example, many genes function only in men or women because of a gene-suppressing action called imprinting. Prader-Willi syndrome, a rare genetic disease, and Angelman syndrome, a neurological disorder, are both the result of subtle changes in the expression of a gene on chromosome 15. Prader-Willi manifests itself only when the DNA mutation is inherited from a father; Angelman syndrome from the mother.

    In the nature vs. nurture debate, epigenetics falls under the category "the nurture of nature." As billions of dollars are poured into the Human Genome Project, it's worth pointing out, as does Eva Jablonka of Tel Aviv University, that "DNA sequence information is not sufficient for understanding the intricacies of biological inheritance." It's not that genetic effects aren't important, or the genome project any less valuable than its hype. Rather, scientists working on the fringe of genetics are pointing to some of the other factors that impinge on the success of genes.

    So what does this have to do with Lamarck? It now appears -- Whitelaw's study is a good example -- that some of the alterations in gene function resulting from epigenetic changes can be passed along to the next generation. Ted Steele, another Australian scientist, made this argument strongly in a book he published earlier this year, "Lamarck's Signature: How Retrogenes are Changing Darwin's Natural Selection Paradigm."

    Steele argues intriguingly that the coding for the production of antibodies to certain viral or bacterial attackers might be transcribed into the DNA of human somatic, or non-sexual cells, then somehow transferred from somatic to germ line cells -- sperm and ova. Steele presents a plausible case for such a transfer, but no direct evidence for it.

    However, Whitelaw's article does present evidence for such a transfer. The yellow-coat color apparently comes about by means of an epigenetic change caused when a particle called a retrotransposon -- a gene that moves around the genome -- settles during fetal development in DNA near the color gene. How the retrotransposon was passed along to germ line cells, and thus inherited, isn't clear.

    The patterns Whitelaw observed "seem heretical in their Lamarckian character," write developmental biologists Rosalind John and Azim Surani in an article accompanying Whitelaw's paper, "but they do occur and are therefore worth serious consideration."

    As it happens, this kind of gene change has been shown to be quite common in plants, and is probably also common -- though harder to observe -- in animals, says Robert A. Martienssen, a scientist at Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory who has an article about plant epigenetics in the same issue of Nature Genetics. "To the extent there is Lamarckian inheritance, it occurs through epigenetics," he says.

    Darwin, embarrassingly to the neo-Darwinians, was a great admirer of Lamarck (1744-1829) and incorporated his theories into work he published after "Origin of Species." The Stalinist agriculture czar T.D. Lysenko gave Lamarckism an enduringly bad name. Convinced that Lamarck was a better Marxist than Darwin, Lysenko gutted Soviet agricultural science and fruitlessly tried to improve grain harvests by experimenting with adult plants in the vain hope they would pass along the changes he made. Meanwhile, millions starved on collective farms.

    But now that the Cold War is over, perhaps a neo-Lamarckian rebirth is overdue. Bring on the giraffes - By Arthur Allen Nov. 4, 1999

    http://www.salon.com/health/log/1999/11/04/traits/

    lamarck

    Environmental Influences

    Personality
     
    Last edited: Aug 30, 2002
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  3. paulsamuel Registered Senior Member

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    reply to AUSSIEABORIGINAL

    Apes did not come from the sea. Primate evolution took place on land. Also, there are plenty of fossil links between chimps and humans, and more are being found.
     
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  5. paulsamuel Registered Senior Member

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  7. (Q) Encephaloid Martini Valued Senior Member

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    Is the Aquatic Ape Theory credible ???



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  8. AUSSIEABORIGINAL Abnormally original Registered Senior Member

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    Everything came from the sea, paulsamuel.

    In fairness to you, I understand what you mean sir. No, I didn't mean to say that apes came directly from the sea. Only amphibians could have made it across the barrier between land & sea. From these parent species of amphibians, all other forms of land based life evolved into the varieties of plants & animals that are present today. I was making the statement from this widely held assumption. Geez

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    That's a very general statement. It is most likely that it did, given the paleontological evidence found thus far. But I am not going to state that this is even a 100% absolute fact. I do however assume it to be true until someone has a better theory.


    paulsamuel, I never said that there was no connection between chimps and humans, as I am aware that humans and chimps share over 99% of the same genes.

    The theory is that some members of the primate family (apes) returned to the sea. Perhaps a population of primates didn't go to the jungles to become tree dwellers like most apes, but remained near the coastal areas living off of food gathered from the sea.

    In time, some decendants of these "coastal apes" may have developed physical mutations that allowed them to gather food more successfully, or to evade land predators better than the other coastal based apes. These mutations may have included webbed feet and hands, as well as a lack of hair to aid in swimming. Also, the extra amount of body fat in humans has also been long held as another possible piece of evidence for the aquatic ape theory. With the exception of humans, the average primate cannot swim.

    Physical mutations that do not hinder a living organisms ability to survive are usually passed on to the next generations. The successful decendants will inevitably interbreed, even if it is ten generations down the line. Thus the mutation of those genes increase, many times with offspring that cannot survive. But it is those that do survive and pass on traits that make such a thing as webbed feet/hands or increased body fat possible. These apes would have most likely been more like amphibians, living both in and out of the water. Perhaps not they or their following decendants ever did go any further than that. I am not suggesting that these aquatic apes further had decendants that lived entirely in the sea, but who knows. I am suggesting however, that some ape decendants would have become separated from the root family of primate with one branch heading for the jungles/savannas and the other continuing to live in/around the coastal waters.

    Perhaps gradual climatic changes or an increase in predators caused the amphibian ape & the jungle ape to remain successful, while some other primate variants may have continued to diminish in numbers until becoming extinct entirely. Many years later these amphibian apes may also have lost their ability (edge) to survive for the same previously mentioned reasons and their land adapting decendants gradually lost many of the traits of it's amphibian predessors as it became more land based again. Humans.

    I could write a ton more....and will if these points aren't understood or I haven't been clear. Actually I have just gone into a very general point of view regarding this. To go into even a fair amount of detail, with supporting evidence, I'd have to write my own book & porfiry is already getting depressed over the amount of webspace used so far

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    Great subject!

    ps....wet1...Is this the kind of serious science discussion that you said you have longed for recently?/?

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    ~~~Evolution Rules~~~!
     
  9. spookz Banned Banned

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    evidence of aquatic apes



    *a probable land to sea scenario

    "Vestigial structures are leftover, homologous, evolutionary, "baggage" with little or no current function. They are historical remnants of features that served important uses in ancestors. Stephen J. Gould calls them "senseless signs of history" because an organism shouldn't have them unless it has an evolutionary history.

    For example, whales and some large snakes have internal remnants of hind leg bones that reflect their evolution from four-legged ancestors.

    The young of blood-drinking vampire bats have molar teeth, indicating their derivation from ancestors that chewed.

    Vestigial features also strengthen the scientific basis for evolution because they permit us to make predictions, one of the basic components of the scientific method. For example, whales are warm-blooded, air-breathing animals that we classify as mammals. The anatomy of mammals in general suggests that, if evolution has occurred, the original mammals lived on land and whales became modified for living in the sea. Having found vestigial hind leg bones in whales, we predict that we should find whale fossils with better developed hind legs that show how whales might have evolved from land-dwellers to swimmers. Such fossils have been found."

    http://www.nova.edu/ocean/biol1060/evolution3.html



    "Confirmation:
    Probably the most well known case of atavism is found in the whales. According to the standard phylogenetic tree, whales are known to be the descendants of terrestrial mammals that had hindlimbs. Thus, we expect the possibility that rare mutant whales might occasionally develop atavistic hindlimbs. In fact, there are many cases where whales have been found with rudimentary atavistic hindlimbs in the wild (for reviews see Berzin 1972, pp. 65-67 and Hall 1984, pp. 90-93). Hindlimbs have been found in baleen whales (Sleptsov 1939), humpback whales (Andrews 1921) and in many specimens of sperm whales (Abel 1908; Berzin 1972, p. 66; Nemoto 1963; Ogawa and Kamiya 1957; Zembskii and Berzin 1961). Most of these examples are of whales with femurs, tibia, and fibulae; however, some even include feet with complete digits. "

    http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html



    "Scientists also rely on embryology and biochemistry to understand evolution. Embryology is the study of the early stages of an organism's development. Embryo's of related organisms develop in similar ways. All vertebrate embryos have folds of tissue in the neck region called gill pouches. These folds develop into gill slits in fishes. Mammals never develop gills but the pouches appear in their embryos. They are thought to be inherited from a common ancestor"

    http://mws.mcallen.isd.tenet.edu/mchi/ipc/Biology/bioch10htm/bioch10sec3.htm

    the last link can obviously work for both theories (conventional and aquatic)

    >pseudoscience

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    Last edited: Aug 31, 2002
  10. AUSSIEABORIGINAL Abnormally original Registered Senior Member

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    Damn!!!! spookz!!!!

    Well, I can forget about writing the book.....

    You pretty much summed it up right there

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    You should have posted this earlier. You would have saved me the trouble of muddling through my thoughts

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    To hell with this

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    , I've got to go mow the lawn
    !

    ps...edit note: Sorry wet1, I missed your quote in your previous post about reverse evolution earlier.
     
    Last edited: Aug 31, 2002
  11. paulsamuel Registered Senior Member

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    reply to AUSSIEABORIGINAL

    You said, "Only amphibians could have made it across the barrier between land & sea." This is wrong, fish do it, right there in Australia, mudskippers.

    You said, "I never said that there was no connection between chimps and humans," but, you specifically said missing link. There is no missing link and the phrase is very antiquated, over 150 years old. It has no meaning today.

    The aquatic ape theory is no theory at all, just a bunch of "just-so" stories with no supporting evidence. Some specious evidence used to support it is "With the exception of humans, the average primate cannot swim," which is just plain crap. The average human can't swim, unless taught, and I'd bet that primates can be taught to swim, just like us.

    You said, "Physical mutations that do not hinder a living organisms ability to survive are usually passed on to the next generations." This is wrong. There are inummerable instances where deleterious mutations are retained in populations, for inummerable reasons.

    I don't think you need to write "a ton more" on this subject. Next we'll be discussing the evolution of flying pink elephants.
     
  12. paulsamuel Registered Senior Member

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    reply to spookz

    good research!
     
  13. AUSSIEABORIGINAL Abnormally original Registered Senior Member

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    No I didn't say that man!

    Well damnit, what is an amphibian? Are you saying that the mudfish is not an amphibian because it is "called" a fish? Don't you see that you have provided a great example of what I was writing about before you decided to dismiss everything I have attempted to communicate because you think that you found an ill dotted "I" & an occasional uncrossed "T"?

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    Surely you don't think that all land animals began on land & then moved to the sea, do you?

    I'm sorry, paulsamuel, I don't mean to be cross.

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    paulsamuel, ...

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    .. I have sat here for several minutes, trying to find a way to say this, in a way that you can understand, & still avoid ......

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    ...ANYHOW HERE GOES

    .....unless every generation of every specie that has ever lived has a full & complete level of genetic documentation done-- presumably by modern human beings--then it is a missing link.

    I realize that you are assuming that I am living 150 years in the past, sir. I assure you that I am not. I do not hold with the old Lamarck theory & believe it or not sir, I also do know about indoor plumbing!

    paulsamuel, you just cut your own ass on that one, buddy. First, you disagreed with my saying that mutations that are not harmful will be passed on. Then you came right back & said these "mutations are retained" ....for inummerable reasons.

    A little advise.....this is a science discussion forum, not the "Gong Show." If it were, I would not be the contestant & you are not the "Unknown Comic."


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  14. paulsamuel Registered Senior Member

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    reply to AUSSIEABORIGINAL

    I'm not going to argue with you, if you want to call a fish an amphibian, go ahead.

    Fossil links between apes and humans are well established.

    I'm not sure how you're bringing Lamarck into this, but don't be so quick to dismiss the inheritence of acquired characteristics. There is evidence that, in some cases, it happens.

    Mutations, both beneficial and harmful, can be inheritied. These mutations are not isolated, they are passed on as a set.

    Take a pill.
     
  15. Joeman Eviiiiiiiil Clown Registered Senior Member

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    The so-called "missing links" is in fact also called "The Swedes"

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  16. AUSSIEABORIGINAL Abnormally original Registered Senior Member

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  17. Joeman Eviiiiiiiil Clown Registered Senior Member

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    It's a joke coz Benelina was reading it before.
     
  18. sinecure71 Registered Senior Member

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    This argument has been done to death (on the net especially).
    See the Talk Origins Archive wich contains the original usenet archive and a faq on evolution.
    http://www.talkorigins.org/
     
  19. photon girl Registered Member

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    Are You Credible?

    Are You Credible? What Are Your Credentials?

    And What Does Q stand for? Queerboy? or Quantumphallus maybe?

    TeeHee! ^ - ^
     
  20. (Q) Encephaloid Martini Valued Senior Member

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    And What Does Q stand for? Queerboy? or Quantumphallus maybe?

    I must confess, I've never been skewered by such rapier like wit. You must have stayed up all night preparing this well written response. Keep up the good work.

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  21. Frencheneesz Amazing Member Registered Senior Member

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    "quote:
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Is the Aquatic Ape Theory credible ???
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------



    Are You Credible? What Are Your Credentials?"

    Now, I don't usually appreciate Q's sarcastic responses, but you take the cake. Q is not a theory and thus does not need to have evidence. This ape theory needs evidence, so the question is: What evidence is there for this?

    Credentials are for employers who do not want to get to know you and how smart you are. Credentials are not important, i can give evidence for this, if Bush can go through Yale and become president, then credentials are bogus. The only thing that is important is that he gives good ideas and has accurate facts.

    I was particularly irritated with your remarks about his name. Those kind of low remarks only make you sound like an idiot. So you called him queer. Why do you feel you have to make yourself sound stupid just to insult him, huh?

    grow up girl.
     
  22. Merlijn curious cat Registered Senior Member

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    Aaaaahh now I see. queerboy was meant to be an insult.

    In what sense is referring to someone's gayness an insult?
     
  23. Frencheneesz Amazing Member Registered Senior Member

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    "In what sense is referring to someone's gayness an insult?"

    Uhh, don't get down on me! It is in the derogetory sence as calling someone a female dog is an insult. Surely you can understand the simple workings of a crude mind such as this "photon girl" 's.
     
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