"Evolution" Animal Planet

ArmorPierce · Post by **ArmorPierce** » 2003-01-02 01:24am

Anybody here watched that? It assumes that humans leaves the Earth for some strange reason and everything is left on its own and it predicts how life on Earth will evolve. It also predicts that in 100 million years that all mammals will be extinct except for this mouse like small mammal that is being farmed by spiders.

I had a couple of problems with the show. One was that it acts like how life on Earth will be in the future but it is under the assumption that humans all left Earth to live somewhere else. Also, they act as if that's the only way life would evolve on Earth. What the show is really doing is showing what might evolve given circumstances and not what would deffinately would happen.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-01-02 01:27am

Complex systems with many interdependent variables generate a lot of unpredictability. The idea of forecasting evolution over significant biosystem changes is simply absurd.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-01-02 01:27am

PS. It is literally no less ridiculous than generating a weather forecast today for the date July 15, 2850.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-01-02 01:34am

I did not watch the show. I heard the commercials and even might have seen one but it sounded like a stupid show so I did not bother.

Did they say why mammals would do extinct? Did they have any background on selective pressures? ie) Has there been another global extintion via comet ?

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2003-01-02 01:37am

ArmorPierce wrote:Anybody here watched that? It assumes that humans leaves the Earth for some strange reason and everything is left on its own and it predicts how life on Earth will evolve. It also predicts that in 100 million years that all mammals will be extinct except for this mouse like small mammal that is being farmed by spiders.

I had a couple of problems with the show. One was that it acts like how life on Earth will be in the future but it is under the assumption that humans all left Earth to live somewhere else. Also, they act as if that's the only way life would evolve on Earth. What the show is really doing is showing what might evolve given circumstances and not what would deffinately would happen.

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. How the hell can they "predict" what will happen in the future, based on something that is almost by definition random?

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2003-01-02 01:48am

Master of Ossus wrote:That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. How the hell can they "predict" what will happen in the future, based on something that is almost by definition random?

By yanking it straight out of their asses. It's yet another cash in by the tree hugger network on the ignorance of the American public. They know that the average veiwer knows exactly jack shit about evolution so it's basically a gee-whiz show disguised as something educational.

Jadeite · Post by **Jadeite** » 2003-01-02 02:18am

Did anybody here watch it, or just bitch? I did, it didnt seem to have any education purpose, it was pretty evident to me that it was purely entertainment. I mean, the same channel shows the Pet Pyschic, how the hell can that be educational?! The CG in the show was ok, one of the creatures looked like a ripoff of the chocobo from Final Fantasy. Some of the creatures gave me ideas for my D&D campaign...

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2003-01-02 02:21am

ArmorPierce wrote:Anybody here watched that? It assumes that humans leaves the Earth for some strange reason and everything is left on its own and it predicts how life on Earth will evolve. It also predicts that in 100 million years that all mammals will be extinct except for this mouse like small mammal that is being farmed by spiders.

I had a couple of problems with the show. One was that it acts like how life on Earth will be in the future but it is under the assumption that humans all left Earth to live somewhere else. Also, they act as if that's the only way life would evolve on Earth. What the show is really doing is showing what might evolve given circumstances and not what would deffinately would happen.

It was mostly an excuse for some computer animation company to make ludicrous sums of cash and show off how good they are. The premise of the show is absurd though. You can no more predict the biosphere of the planet millions of years from now than you can predict the exact weather conditions over Baton Rouge, Louisiana at 8:53 PM in the year 2236. Sure there are some general trends that one might be able to guess at, but the whole thing is much too complex to make any real guesses at. For example, were there any sentient dinosaurs around 66 million years ago, there'd be no way that they would've predicted that the entire lot of 'em would be wiped from the face of the Earth, to be replaced by small fuzzy things, in less than a million years.

Post by **Lagmonster** » 2003-01-02 08:28am

Along the same vein, if you want to see something funny, go out and find the book 'After Man and the New Dinosaurs' or 'Man After Man' by Dougal Dixon, I believe.

It's a largely unserious book where they attempt to diagram how life could change in the coming millennia based on current geological and biological trends. It's silly, but it's neat just the same.

Phil Skayhan · Post by **Phil Skayhan** » 2003-01-02 08:41am

Well we learned two things:

Paris is the center of art and culture in the 21st Century and is known as "The City of Love". New York City is known for smog and congested traffic, that's it.

I guess only the French survived the exodus from Earth. Now how sad is that?

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-01-02 10:09am

Atleast the weather in 2850 is based on pure chaos math, if you subtract humans from the equation. Evolution, however, can change drastically by the choice of a single animal either saying "you know, im gonna fuck this person" or "nah, that berry looks kinda poisonous". Voluntary choices make predicting evolution near impossible (unless youre a culture ship and can simulate entire universe in a millisecond)

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-01-02 10:14am

--By yanking it straight out of their asses. It's yet another cash in by the tree hugger network on the ignorance of the American public. They know that the average veiwer knows exactly jack shit about evolution so it's basically a gee-whiz show disguised as something educational.--

the discovery network wasnt always about money. Back in the mid 90s they used to show almost nothing but nature and science documentaries (back when discovery channel was the only real channel in the network). Then they started showing home improvement shows and slowly thats what the entire network became. Even travel is little more then stupid ghost shows and shit like that. TLC is pretty decent, but even the higher dedicated channels like the Science Channel and Discovery: Wings are suck, often rerunning old shit and not producing new content. Oh how I yearn for those days when Wild Discovery was new and refreshing and the Answer Guys would tell us the near future of common technology.. *sigh*

IRG CommandoJoe · Post by **IRG CommandoJoe** » 2003-01-02 10:16am

I saw it. My father was criticizing it for these same reasons. I thought it was stupid too because there is no way to predict how the world will change like that. I thought that some of it made a little sense. I think the show was just made to show how evolution works and not exactly what will happen in the future. I like to think of it as a science fiction work and not a documentary.

XaLEv · Post by **XaLEv** » 2003-01-02 11:06am

I watched it. It was good from a pure entertainment standpoint.

It basically said "this is how it's going to be" without actually coming out and saying it.

Majin Gojira · Post by **Majin Gojira** » 2003-01-02 11:17am

Yes, it was all BS, but nice looking BS. Basically, I looked at it as someone's fantasy world and thought: Well, that's pretty neat.

One of mymajor gripes was that no new type of animal evolved on earth. Nothing like Birds appearing in the Jurassic of Archasaurs in the Permian. No. we only get to see the organisms we know today evolve!

Bah, the book "After Man" has cooler beasts in it. I like cool beasts.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2003-01-02 11:22am

I find it interesting that they took us out of the equation. Could it be that man can affect evoltuion on a global scale? Does our mere presence (urban sprawls, pollution, chemical spills) somehow affect or impact the way species would evolve? Are we then an X Factor in the evolution in most species' development? Has any other species ever had that sort of impact on the biosphere?

I don't know, but I find these to be cool questions.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2003-01-02 11:28am

PS. It is literally no less ridiculous than generating a weather forecast today for the date July 15, 2850.

$50 American says its Partly Cloudy with a Chance of Rain in the entire US
(And if I'm wrong your collect how?

)

Predicting the Future is easy as long as you predict things long after your dead

Always forcast vaugly and always 100 years or more into the Future, where they can't say HA your wrong to you in person

InnerBrat · Post by **InnerBrat** » 2003-01-02 11:32am

Stravo wrote:I find it interesting that they took us out of the equation. Could it be that man can affect evoltuion on a global scale? Does our mere presence (urban sprawls, pollution, chemical spills) somehow affect or impact the way species would evolve? Are we then an X Factor in the evolution in most species' development? Has any other species ever had that sort of impact on the biosphere?

I don't know, but I find these to be cool questions.

Yes.Yes.What?.Yes.

IRG CommandoJoe · Post by **IRG CommandoJoe** » 2003-01-02 11:38am

Stravo is asking with the "X Factor" question that if the evolution of other species will change based on human actions, such as a nuclear war. And the answer, IMO, is yes. Virtually all animals' evolution depends on whether or not we kill them off or screw them up.

Post by **Lagmonster** » 2003-01-02 12:06pm

Stravo wrote:I find it interesting that they took us out of the equation. Could it be that man can affect evoltuion on a global scale? Does our mere presence (urban sprawls, pollution, chemical spills) somehow affect or impact the way species would evolve? Are we then an X Factor in the evolution in most species' development? Has any other species ever had that sort of impact on the biosphere?

Think: PLANTS.

I'm not fully versed on it, but as I remember it the first plants (algae) destroyed their environment, creating (among other things) the first pure oxygen which rusted metals, turned ammonia and methane into nitrogen and carbon dioxide and created an ozone layer to filter out cosmic rays. The plants paid for this pollution. Things evolved which breathed oxygen and ate plants; the first animals.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2003-01-02 12:24pm

Damn, I thought that this would be what Charles Darwin would think of Steve Irwin (Does Dawin Awards give out a "Lifetime Achievement catagory?"

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2003-01-02 04:19pm

Absofuckinglutely hilarious!

irishmick79 · Post by **irishmick79** » 2003-01-02 04:21pm

The show did go from a hypothesis that there was a mass extinction at some point that wiped out most of life as we know it. That explains the disappearance of the mammals, at least in the writer's eyes.

InnerBrat · Post by **InnerBrat** » 2003-01-02 05:59pm

Lagmonster wrote: Think: PLANTS.

I'm not fully versed on it, but as I remember it the first plants (algae) destroyed their environment, creating (among other things) the first pure oxygen which rusted metals, turned ammonia and methane into nitrogen and carbon dioxide and created an ozone layer to filter out cosmic rays. The plants paid for this pollution. Things evolved which breathed oxygen and ate plants; the first animals.

Algae aren't plants. Anyway, what you wanted were cphotsynthesising bacteria, which aren't algae either.

PLus, any animal that affects the evolution of plants. Think insects and angiosperms in the Cretaceous (my lit project last year); and massive animals like sauropods and elephants that keep forests in check.

Every organism interacts with other organisms - Coevolution. Humans interact with more organisms than most, and have a bigger effect. We've created some species, for Bob's sake.

Captain Jack Frank · Post by **Captain Jack Frank** » 2003-01-02 06:02pm

I thought that genes mutate randomly. How can they predict what's going to happen, if its totally random? Am I wrong?

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"Evolution" Animal Planet

"Evolution" Animal Planet

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