libertarian_knight
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Diogenes said:
On thing you may not take into account, is actually, education. Even very small animals actually learn, especially social animals. I have seen video of monkey learning and teaching other monkies how to open nuts (or clams.) (Pretty sure they were monkies and not apes). Now some were VERY successful at this, so much so they would be efficient enough to open the shell for others. Others still would watch and then mimic the action. If they learned from a sucessful shell opener, they would be sucessful, otherwise, if they tried on their own, or learned from one that had a hard time or failed, they too would often have a hard time or fail.
Now creature that survive are those that can eat and get the nutrition they need. Say one groups of monkies, in the same troop, learns to eat hard shelled nuts, and the other learns to extract bugs from the ground, or a tree. One group get's the proteien from nuts rather easily, the others, from the bugs. SAME SPECIES here in this hypothetical.
Now, monkies that have, say finger shapes better suited for breaking nuts, and who also learn to break nuts, will survive, and within that group, may diverge. Because while others are hunting for bugs, some are bashing nuts. now, let me ask you, do you tend to be attracted to people you know, and who know things you know, or people in far off lands, with different cultures? (Culture means they way of doing things, and yes, animals DO HAVE CULTURES. Culture of nut breaking, and another of bug hunting). I would venture a guess, that 90 times out of 100, people tend to stay within there own culture. I would certainly say 51 times out of 100, people CERTAINLY stay within their cultures. otherwise all human cultures would be one culture by now])
So, the nut breakers tend, though not exclusively, to breed with other nut breakers, and bug hunters with other bug hunters. now, assuming both these groups of monkies, even in the same tribe, now both sucessful in the TECHNIQUE ALONE, prosper, they may move along the ground, or upwards in the trees, for better food, safety, shelter, whatever.
I really have no idea why i tried so hard, maybe I just felt like writing it all down, for my own clarily. But in essence, not only random biological mutations result evolution, but intellect, education, culture and familiarity may also be non-directly-biological impetus for evolutionary change, even within the same species, or even the same community of animal.
Very often, there are MULTIPLE, CONCURRENT and/or consecutive reasons for a thing occuring.
Understanding evolution requires more than knowing that a thing eats, shits, breeds and dies. It's also requires understanding how, how often, when, where, and with who. If you see gaps in evolutionary explaination, try studying humans, for all our grandure, pomp and circumstance, a little insight into the behavior of man will illuminate the behavior of a whole lot of other things, becuase we still do some stupid aminal junk.