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ROOTS
A cave can be a fascinating if strange place. But to early man, it was home. Some famous caves in southern France and northern Spain, most notably Lascaux (France) and Altamira (Spain), have walls adorned with a compelling extra feature: glimpses of a primeval world as seen through human eyes. These glimpses are in the form of beautiful paintings of animals, done in color more than 20,000 years ago. The artists were Cro-Magnon; the paintings are realistic, exhibiting even such skills as foreshortening and shadowing.
Their art work tells us that these people, of our own species (Homo sapiens), were observant, creative and talented. Yet life for them could not have been easy and was certainly much shorter and more precarious, day-to-day, than it ordinarily is for us. Still there were stars in their skies, and sunsets. And storms. And life and death, all around. They must have wondered about all this and, too, about themselves. "How did I come to be?" "Why here?" "Why am I as I am?"
Questions like these, however treated in those Cro-Magnon caves so long ago, have troubled mankind all through the ages and are sometimes asked even by small children, much to the amusement – or dismay – of their elders. Any serious search for answers on an adult level, in "modern" times, must begin by choosing a general avenue of approach: philosophy, theology or science. The searcher (or researcher) who chooses science, the only approach admissible here, must address the means by which entities form and evolve.
Not a simple matter. While the constitution of entities does conform to known rules such as those of valence and chemical bonding, evolution is a long-term abiotic and then biological process whose dynamics are far less restricted. Evolution proceeds in steps that are sporadic and are sufficiently rare and subtle, generally, to be imperceptible over a man's lifetime or indeed over a series of lifetimes.
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Although safeguards may provide decisive protection for a species, they protect the individual only incidentally if at all. A high reproduction rate, for example, can act as a potent safeguard for the species. Yet reproduction can jeopardize or even forfeit the life of a parent.
The salmon always dies after depositing its eggs, and the risks of human childbirth to the mother are well known. But in cases such as that of the praying mantis or the black widow spider, the parent at risk is the father, whom the mother-to-be often devours after mating. That can be a real disadvantage for him, but apparently not for the species, which seems to thrive anyway.
Various prey animals and plants are poisonous when eaten. Hungry animals that learn this the hard way (and survive) will then leave the species alone, but that does not help the poor individual who has already been eaten or bitten. So once again, the individual is sacrificed for the good of the species.
"Interdependence" (of different species or between members of the same species) is the fourth term of the Survival Equation. Prevailing throughout nature, it sometimes involves interactions on the grand scale. These interactions affect many or most species, as in the case of the carbon or nitrogen cycles.
The interdependence of two individual species may include intervention (however inadvertent) by which one species saves the other from extinction. For example, the savior species may destroy predators or parasites of the endangered species, or may modify a habitat in a way that reduces an environmental threat to the endangered species. Two species that are interdependent to the extent that their survival depends upon their symbiotic partnership might find that their evolution is interdependent too.
"Adaptability" is an endowment that is broad indeed. It includes camouflage so adaptable that body color or pattern changes to match surroundings. It also includes behavior patterns that adapt so that they can become suitable under a new set of conditions.