[Jason Abbadon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CLASSIFIED

I'm not 100% sure we're talking about the same thing.

Our DNA knows what it is doing; shark DNA included.

I'm partial to blondes, but if there aren't any at the party, then I'll settle for the willing.

It is the same thing with sharks. The shark decides to mate with a different type of shark to insure its survival. Not because it randomly mutated a gene that compelled it to, but because its dna told it to because of the change in the enviroment.

To your point I first quoted; this is big news for evolution the way it is commonly understood, or more appropriately; the way it is commonly proffessed.

Generally though, instinct only goes so far- members of the same genus but different breeds in the wild dont crossbreed this way- keeping it within the breed allows for specialization over time- and the mutations are what give us stuf like Hammerheads or great whites instead of every kind of shark humping each other all day which (if it could work) would produce one kind of shark that was too much of a generalst to suvive in a range of environments.

Hammerheads cant survive in the arctic and the Greenland shark cant survive in the tropic- nor can/would they interbreed- the hyvrid in the article only works because the two breeds are only one step removed from each other- adapted to warm or cold waters, but much closer than a hammerhead.

It could also be that over-fishing has led to sharks ranging farther afield in search of mates- that "DNA telling them what to do" is exactly right, but it's instinct, not decision making - reproduce enough and you get a slim number of mutations which may help an animal survive long enough to pass it's genes on.

It's a lot of throwing paint against the wall and seeing what sticks- messy, bloody, unthinking progression, with no goal other that of continued existance.