Love Across Borders

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Who is the brain?

Evolution is in short; when species of plants or animals change over time to be better fit to changes in the environment they habitat. The change is possible due to a broad range of genetic properties inherited from the ancestors. Different environment and different requirements from the environment stimulates and develop, over time, the different genetically inherited properties.

In other words, if I had been born in Ethiopia (instead of Sweden) and had had to run barefoot, 25 kilometres one way, to get to school everyday, my body would most likely had developed differently.
Either my body had adapted to the running and used the genes making me slim and light, with two big lungs, brown skin to protect me against the sun rays and thick skin under my feet. Or if my body lacked these necessary genetic properties I might have stopped going to school or even worse died from sun burn, dehydration and exhaustion.

Evolution can be slow, it takes quite some generations for the human body to adapt. If the environment changes to fast, we might not be able to catch up and we may die.
On the contrary some insects may adapt very quick from one generation to another. That’s why it has been so difficult for man to terminate insects we don’t like, even if we have used strong poisonous chemicals. Or take the new dangerous bacteria’s that are resistant to antibiotics.

Evolution is interesting but it doesn’t explain everything.
For instance it doesn’t explain where the first form of life started or where the first inherited genetic properties came from. Who was our first ancestor? Why not Adam?

Many times evolution is described with storys about animals, like the fish who needed more food and had to develop the fins into legs to be able to climb up on the shore to get food. Or was it the Lizard who wanted more seafood and developed the legs into fins and the lungs into gills?
These are scenarios I and most people can picture and understand.

Think about a tree instead. The tree stands in the same spot for 50-100 years. Every year it drops its seeds on the ground to multiply. Pretty soon there will be lots of tree-babies around the tree-papa/mama (trees are asexual they multiply without having sex, or?). If the tree is lucky, one of the seeds stuck on a bypassing animal’s foot and gets a lift to a remote location which hopefully has enough soil to grow in.


We all know that trees have no brains at all. But some trees have a smart solution to the problem being stuck at the same spot. They develop nice berries. And in the berries they hide the seeds. Then they lure the little birds to eat the berries and also the seeds. Then the birds fly 10-30 kilometres, in any direction and plant a new tree by passing out the seeds!! That is extremely smart isn’t it? Because these tress will be spreading faster over a larger area. But trees aren’t smart at all; they have no brain, have they?

Who is the brain behind this?

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