It’s All Relative


I remember this part in one of Richard Dawkins’ books where he tried to answer the question as to how gradual evolution can give any survival advantage. Citing the evolution of the eye, someone had asked him what good is a partial eye? Doesn’t it have to be a fully functioning eye or nothing at all? Why would evolution favour a partial eye? Dawkins went on to answer that by stating that a 2% eye is better than no eye (blindness), and a 4% eye is better than a 2% (even a slightly better chance of spotting the prey or predator can make all the difference when it comes to survival) and so on all the way to 100%.

I just got another example from a totally different domain recently. My 6 month old baby can roll over and swivel a bit. I was getting impatient and wondering when she would make some progress beyond that. I got my answer when my wife visited a friend with a baby that was a month younger than ours. That baby (being younger) could not yet roll over. So our heroine, when placed next to the other baby, slowly maneouvered herself into a position where she could grab the other baby’s nose and bite. Since the other baby couldn’t roll or swivel, she couldn’t take any evasive action and ours, despite her glacial speed, could still mount her offensive successfully.

So there you go, it’s not only always two extremes: ninja speed or no speed. Even turtle paced maneouvering has its advantage when compared to someone with no movement!

Comments

  1. KumarFebruary 9, 2012 at 6:46 PM

    Great!
    So, not only in physics but in biology too "relativity rules" :-)

    ReplyDelete

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