About Me and Evolution

 Convergent evolution occurs when two distinct species that have a very distant relationship develop the same characteristic as each other through means independent of one another. My example is the octopus and human eyeballs. Our last common ancestor was a flatworm about 750 mya, which is a long time to evolve apart from each other. Despite the fact that we are terrestrial beings, and octopuses are subterrainian beings, we both evolved the same type of eyeball: a camera eye with a lens, photreceptors, an iris, a retina, a cornea, and vitreous body.  Both of our reasonings for developing camera eyes was to have a motion-based vision that takes in light easily, as both species are predators or hunters that must capture our food (as far as meat goes), but the evolutionary distance between is is so grand that our hunting needs vary in other aspects of our characteristics. Octopuses must be able to swim very quickly to catch up to their fishy prey, while our prey is mainly on land...

 A mutation is a change in your DNA that may or may not have an effect on your body. The most common mutation that happens everyday is called a point mutation. This is where one nucleotide (A,T,G,C) in your DNA code is changed. Every three nucleotides makes up a codon, and each codon makes up an amino acid, so a point mutation can completely change your amino acid makeup. Let's take for example Jiangshi sanguina, a type of carnivorous, nocturnal rabbit. This rabbit usually has black fur, but if a point mutation occurs in it's genetic code that changes the amino acid sequence, the rabbit will have light fur. This is disadventagous as it is a noctural creature that needs the ability to blend into the night in order to hunt it's prey.  Because rabbits are so small, and are neither venomous or poisonous, these creatures are fairly defenseless against larger predators such as wolves or large dogs. If the ability to blend in is lost, this puts the rabbit on a silver platter for l...