I learned a lot in this class, it was stuff I have heard vaguely but never looked into. This class taught me how much humans evolved in the past hundreds of years. Based on everyday life I could tell that humans are still evolving from what you hear in the news and experience in life.
I think there is a lot of ways humans are still evolving, we are always going to evolve slightly probably every year or less by small unnoticeable changes. Week seven lecture was talking about the journey continue and that is true!
A noticeable and most common trait in my opinion would be natural selection. I especially think this because natural selection is based on surviving based on your makeup and survival makes an induvial able to reproduce and pass on those “dominant genes”. I think this plays a huge role in environmental factors and where that person is living depends on your length of survival mostly and other factors such as how that individual evolved. For example, many diseases are becoming prevalent and they are only location based which is mostly foreign countries, so not everyone is getting this disease because they may live in a different environment which doesn’t play in role in this primarily. Africa for example has a huge ongoing issue with malaria compared to rest of the world. This shows aside from natural selection they are evolving to be resistant to malaria slowly and some are already because of another gene mutation that leads to sickle cell anemia which protects them from malaria. It is crazy that where a certain individual lives and then grows up can lead to that person having different resistant to certain diseases and even allows them to outlive other members of their community for example.
Going off natural section, I think it ties with gene flow/evolution for many reasons and this would be biological. Natural selection takes its course and the remaining people have evolutionary changes with their genes in order to survive. The earth itself is changing and places are getting warmer/colder. In order to survive these humans, have to evolve just like we did many years ago in the ice age in order to survive. Genes also have to evolve with the stuff we eat also as mentioned in lecture. Lecture quotes “changing the nature of those foods through genetic manipulation of the foods themselves” since we have access to more food and different types of food. An example of this is lactose, there are many foods that contain lactose and our genes have changed over many years to be able to even consume the lactose. This would have never happened if humans were still not evolving to be able to consume many different types of food.
There are many more different evolutionary changes I could name, because there are so many us humans will be seeing different changes for as long as we live. There is always going to be something new daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, etc. In order to survive anything that is thrown our way, we will have to figure out a way to adapt as the people who came before us did with little resources. Luckily, we have many resources now!
Great post Kelsey,
Your post was very detailed when it came to natural selection. Like my post, I also felt that Natural Selection contributes greatly to human’s evolvement. I like how you made disease a key point in your post. I to touched on diseases and its effect on society. I didn’t realize until I read your post that most diseases are based on location, and due to your location, that typically tells how strong your immune system is toward that disease. You mentioned that the people in Africa is becoming immune to malaria due to developing gene mutation called sickle cell anemia. Like you said, this is very shocking to discover that some becomes immune to diseases ultimately out living most people. This is just a unique way our bodies adapt to the environment and I’m glad you mentioned this because it makes a lot of sense now.
Hey Kelsey!
I talked about natural selection in my post too! I agree with you when you state, “natural selection is a noticeable and the most common trait”. I like how you mentioned the idea of dominant genes that allow a human to survive and reproduce while passing on those genes. Additionally, by using the example of malaria, it really emphasized the point you were trying to make. There are certain diseases that present more in one location versus another and the high level of the presence of these gene causes the residents to become more immune. I think is a very interesting concept. In general, I think it is fascinating how we are constantly changing and adapting to the environment around us. But as we adapt, we are also coming out with new technology and medical advancements that protect us from certain diseases. 100 years ago we did not have as many solutions. I wonder, what will we have 100 years from today? Overall, I enjoyed reading your blog post and think you did a great job!