Darwinbots Forum

General => Biology => Topic started by: Houshalter on June 01, 2010, 08:33:19 PM

Title: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: Houshalter on June 01, 2010, 08:33:19 PM
Allright, you probably thought I was going to announce I was a creationist or something. No I just wanted to show a few cases where evolution created bizzarre effects. For years farmers bred their livestock for the most productive ones, and with chickens it was usually for egg laying. They would select for the hens that layed to most eggs. Now, years later, the desendents of chickens from these breeding programs have to have their beaks clipped and housed in seperate cages. The reason is because the chickens that layed the most eggs also happened to be more aggressive and fight their way to the top of the pecking order. A researcher tried a new approach to selective breeding on these chickens. By using group selection, after only six generations he had increased the productivity of the birds by more then double and increased the life expectancy by nearly 3 times. (source (http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~bmuir/behavour.htm).)

Once, a swedish researcher tried to increase wheat yields and picked the biggest wheat kernels to plant each year. After only 5 generations he had a strain of wheat that produced 6 giant wheat kernels per stalk.

When insects were damaging fruit trees, farmers expirimented with using cyanide to poison them. They put up giant tents over the whole trees and pumped in cyanide, killing the insects. Plants are immune to cyanide but no animal that uses respiration can be. And in only 5 years or so they had resistant insects. The resistant insects would -- when anything startling happen -- sit very still and hold their breath for half an hour or so.
Title: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: bacillus on June 02, 2010, 01:10:16 AM
It's not really that evolution fails to work-my opinion on this is that a population of animals is highly specialized in a niche, so that if we go and 'genetically engineer' or selectively breed, we displace them from that niche in both cases, and make them less fit. In the case of the insects, evolution does actually work, it just doesn't go the way we want it to.
Title: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: Panda on June 02, 2010, 03:49:16 AM
I agree with bacillus, but this happens with dogs. Breeding the least aggressive dogs, and you, at the same time, get more child and infant like faces. They have done the same to foxes in Russia, and the same thing happened.
Title: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: Houshalter on June 02, 2010, 09:57:55 AM
Quote from: Panda
I agree with bacillus, but this happens with dogs. Breeding the least aggressive dogs, and you, at the same time, get more child and infant like faces. They have done the same to foxes in Russia, and the same thing happened.
What do you mean "child and infant like faces"? I would be really creeped out if a dog had a baby face on it. I heard about the foxes. Didn't they change colors to?
Title: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: ashton15 on June 02, 2010, 01:05:19 PM
Floppy ears would be one...
Title: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: Numsgil on June 02, 2010, 02:11:52 PM
See Neoteny (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny).  There's an interesting idea that humans are in fact basically neotenous (ie: we're cute (exhibiting child-like features) compared to other hominids).
Title: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: Panda on June 03, 2010, 06:11:40 AM
The dogs have well, larger eyes, floppy ears, ect... The reason why they have also become like this, is because it creates a hormone in humans that make them want to care for them more, like what happens with babies. This creates a loving bond between them. Wolves also bark much less than dogs, because dogs use it to communicate their emotions to people. Dogs can also see emotions in people, that would make it easier for them to see if it was a good time to go to people. All in all, dogs seem to be parasites, they survive by being fed by people because they wouldn't survive well in the wild, but... I suppose everything is parasitic.

Edit: it also says some of that in that Neoteny page.
Title: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: Houshalter on June 03, 2010, 10:05:10 AM
Quote from: Numsgil
See Neoteny (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny).  There's an interesting idea that humans are in fact basically neotenous (ie: we're cute (exhibiting child-like features) compared to other hominids).

Lol:
Quote
Another theory suggests that humans' neotenous characteristics were an evolutionary strategy that enabled Cro-Magnons (Homo sapiens) to gain predominance over H. neanderthalensis (and possibly H. erectus and H. heidelbergensis) by appealing to these species' nurturing instincts through paedomorphic cuteness to avoid territorial aggression.

PAEDOMORPHIC CUTENESS!

Quote from: Panda
The dogs have well, larger eyes, floppy ears, ect... The reason why they have also become like this, is because it creates a hormone in humans that make them want to care for them more, like what happens with babies.
Those little tricksters!
Title: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: Numsgil on June 03, 2010, 12:51:50 PM
Quote from: Panda
All in all, dogs seem to be parasites, they survive by being fed by people because they wouldn't survive well in the wild, but... I suppose everything is parasitic.

Not parasitic.  They provided valuable services to neolithic humans up through modern times.  eg: sheep dogs, watch dogs, seeing eye dogs, drug sniffing dogs, etc.  It's a very symbiotic relationship.  Most domesticated animals are like this.  There are billions of cows in the world, and you can bet they would be extinct if they didn't provide benefit to humans (no wild cows anymore).
Title: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: peterb on June 03, 2010, 01:23:00 PM
Quote from: Numsgil
Quote from: Panda
All in all, dogs seem to be parasites, they survive by being fed by people because they wouldn't survive well in the wild, but... I suppose everything is parasitic.

Not parasitic.  They provided valuable services to neolithic humans up through modern times.  eg: sheep dogs, watch dogs, seeing eye dogs, drug sniffing dogs, etc.  It's a very symbiotic relationship.  Most domesticated animals are like this.  There are billions of cows in the world, and you can bet they would be extinct if they didn't provide benefit to humans (no wild cows anymore).

Maybe not dogs but cats must be parasitic, i never see them do anything good.
And a lot of cats seam to be in control of their owners.
They do everything the cat demands, give food, cleanup, open doors etc...

It might be that cats are on top of the evolution pyramid, next below them humans to serve them
Evolution might not prefer humans to be on top...


Now that i type this suddenly my garden is swarmed by cats making strange noices, appertenly an angry mob, must hide..
Title: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: Panda on June 03, 2010, 03:09:28 PM
Quote from: Numsgil
Quote from: Panda
All in all, dogs seem to be parasites, they survive by being fed by people because they wouldn't survive well in the wild, but... I suppose everything is parasitic.

Not parasitic. They provided valuable services to neolithic humans up through modern times. eg: sheep dogs, watch dogs, seeing eye dogs, drug sniffing dogs, etc. It's a very symbiotic relationship. Most domesticated animals are like this. There are billions of cows in the world, and you can bet they would be extinct if they didn't provide benefit to humans (no wild cows anymore).


Actually; yes I do agree with that .

@Houshalter: I have two cats, both of which seem to treat us like they would treat their mothers. They bring things back to show us, like mice and things like that to please us, like they would do to please their mother.

Title: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: Houshalter on June 03, 2010, 04:27:09 PM
I have 4 cats and they don't do anything. Well, some of them can hunt if they had to, but they don't because they get food from us. I wonder how on earth they were domesticated and why and from what. I can't immagine early humans trying to breed lions for smallness.

This kind of reminds me of a creationist video where they claim cats are a "kind" of animal that can change over time to "fit into your wife." LOLWUT?!
Title: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: Panda on June 03, 2010, 05:09:59 PM
Yes I agree. They don't give us "presents" much any more but they just stand in the way in your kitchen "miaw"ing for food.
Title: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: Numsgil on June 04, 2010, 04:38:37 PM
Domestic cats came from wildcats (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat).  Seems sort of obvious

The primary role of early domestic cats was to eat rodents.  Rodents have been a major parasite to humans since the invention of agriculture.

Obviously modern house cats aren't really used for that purpose anymore.  They mostly fill a psychological need in modern households.
Title: Re: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: SlyStalker on March 07, 2013, 03:27:34 AM
I think that 'evolution' works best with minute changes to organisms over thousands if not millions of years. Yes, sometimes it requires a great leap to spawn something new and amazing (like the first cell with a mitochondria (internal power station)), but overall, minute changes and natural selection deliver more consistent results. By the way, I don't really find the DB evolution to be very effective, as when you put two species of bots in, one wipes out another before they get a chance to evolve to a higher leve (although I guess you could just put in two species with the exact same DNA in :/ )
Title: Re: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: Botsareus on March 07, 2013, 10:26:06 AM
I have to point out that all the robots are trying to achieve by evolution is Eco-stasis.
So even if you put two species of the same robot but let just one evolve there is a good chance that the mutating species will simply die.
I did a workaround on this but it will take me a while to submit (it is one of the last things on my todo list)

Your best bet to see something happen is to load a single species and (mess with different vegy configurations or make the species vegy) and mess with dynamic costs. The coolest thing I have seen evolve is a tangly-like robot from a zerobot.

I honestly think humans evolved due to the complexity of our environment.

Another thing is you can only extract the robot as organism because epigenetic memory is not part of the DNA.
Title: Re: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: Numsgil on March 07, 2013, 11:27:17 PM
The environment in DB is simple enough that there's really only one niche (well, two if you count veggies), so complex food webs can't really develop.  I actually don't know of any ALife sims that allow food webs with multiple species to arise naturally as an emergent property of the simulation.
Title: Re: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: Botsareus on March 08, 2013, 02:27:34 PM
Hey Numsgil, think about this picture. This was stuck in side my head for a while. I think it may be possible.

So I will implement my 'workaround' and make sure it works the same as it did in my 2.44 experiments.

I wait until non mutating species die as I do now.

Then, instead of running 'find best' as I do now, I will run the following algorithm:

Repeat 15 times:

Find best * genetic distance -> save this robot, remove all robots from the search query within 5% of genetic distance.

Now I got 15 reasonably unique robots (although can be less if I run out of query)

Instead of restarting with one specie like I do now, I restart with all 15 (they will be all named the same but within different folders so the program internally handles them as one specie) so there will 30 total robots (hopefully producing there own chloroplasts at some point, therefor 2 species)

Cool, there is your basic model for eco-system evolution.

Then we can add Internet mode where all users can run this simulation with different settings (global controllers (my workaround) will locally remain the same by checking if the global settings mach in the .dbo file being transferred)

And wala, you got eco-system evolution.

I am also looking into (when I get to it) If I can start 'eco-system' evolution from a zero bot.
Title: Re: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: SlyStalker on March 09, 2013, 01:09:04 AM
i think humans evolved because of environmental change. the pressures forced the human race to 'sink or swim'
Title: Re: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: Botsareus on March 09, 2013, 04:11:23 PM
I guarantee you it was more complex then that. We have to start with the fact the our environment is complex enough to support natural emergence of species. Something I propose (above) to emulate somewhat artificially by restart selection. But you guys did not see this thing even work yet,
if you spend some time to set it up you can:

http://wiki.darwinbots.com/w/Botsareus%27s_Vision (http://wiki.darwinbots.com/w/Botsareus%27s_Vision)

unfortunately you do need vb6 to set it up, I will have to figure out a way to make all these processes run seamlessly w/o any extra work from the end user...
Title: Re: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: SlyStalker on March 10, 2013, 01:03:20 AM
I think DB would do well to add more depth to it but you have to make it that beginner programmers dont have to worry about the extra depth as soon as they start so they can learn faster. this way, we can get complex artificial life forms from evolution but the programming is still easy to learn
Title: Re: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: spike43884 on December 21, 2014, 06:49:55 AM
Again to the final post in this thread as well.

This is WHY WE NEED NUTRIENTS AND CHEMICALS IN THE ENVIROMENT.
(as well as a .shape sysvar)
THEN BOTS CAN'T JUST MOVE AROUND, WE DON'T LIVE IN A STERILE WORLD DO WE NOW! SO WE NEED NUTRIENTS AND CHEMICALS...(Anyway, then waste can be improved upon)
Title: Re: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: elisa on June 21, 2016, 02:09:16 AM
Domestic cats came from wildcats (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat).  Seems sort of obvious. The primary role of early domestic cats was to eat rodents.  Rodents have been a major parasite to humans since the invention of agriculture. Also the 6 Minutes To Skinny on fitnessbond (http://fitnessbond.com/6-minutes-to-skinny-reviews/) can help. Obviously modern house cats aren't really used for that purpose anymore.  They mostly fill a psychological need in modern households.

But they still come in as handy mouse and rat catchers in rural areas, beside as household companions. The predatory instinct is still there.
Title: Re: Evolution doesn't work?! D:
Post by: Botsareus on June 23, 2016, 05:39:37 PM
Emm.... Welcome to Darwinbots!