how do darwinians explain how butterflies could evolve ?
Image by Kelly Colgan Azar
www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Ruby-throated_Hummingbird/id
A distant, tree-top shot heavily cropped. There were three, possibly four of these zipping together around an abandoned field. I attempted to get a ground level photo, but they were too fast, appearing and disappearing into the dense weed cover. I enjoyed the Star Wars effect though, at one point they flashed by my ear like tiny, dare devil fighter pilots. The one above was taking a break after running off a larger bird.
Member of the Flickr Bird Brigade
Activists for birds and wildlife
BTW, there’s a hair raising article in the July 26, New Yorker, entitled "Emptying the Skies," by Jonathan Franzen. It’s subtitled, "In the Mediterranean, songbirds are being decimated for fun and profit – and in open defiance of law."
One photo is illustrated with the caption, "Trapping birds – like this bee-eater – on a lime stick in Cyprus, or these robins confiscated in Italy – can be a good livelihood."
Question by mark b: how do darwinians explain how butterflies could evolve ?
the life cycle is caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly…inside the cocoon the caterpillar totally disolves etc and I cant see how it could evolve…this is a real question purely through interest and it’s a good question
Can you help? Leave your own answer in the comments!
10 Responses to how do darwinians explain how butterflies could evolve ?
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dunno
samcsamcsamcsamc
May 10, 2013 at 2:02 pm
http://www.darwinonline.com has the answer..MAYBE ?
barry bucknell
May 10, 2013 at 2:45 pm
The truth is- they cannot explain it, as they cannot explain a lot of things. Darwin purely “left out” animals that he could not comfortably fit into his theory. Which is why it remains purely a THEORY.
Personally I think it’s all utter tripe, try looking on google for some sites on anti-Darwinism- it’ll probably fascinate you and convert you to the dark side lol!
Humans from Monkeys- you have to be taking the p”ss Darwin!
Personal Angel
May 10, 2013 at 3:25 pm
Evolution is a natural change in the life process. At some point, not necessarily in the cocoon, a change will occur in the design of the caterpillar. It begins in the genes (DNA) and that is the basis of all beginnings of life. Everything starts out as a DNA sequence to design what it grows into. We have evolved from fish to land animals. And humans are genetically closer in DNA to monkeys than rats are to mice.
wzrdsndrgns
May 10, 2013 at 4:17 pm
The mistake is in thinking it all had to happen in one go. Insect species differentiated over thousands of years. Most likely, this was achieved by a number of mutations.
Many insects have a metamorphosis phase – house flies from maggots for example.
The question to ask is – what environmental factors drove the butterfly to mutate and develop the lifecycle we see today.
It’s true that we don’t yet know what factors forced this particular change – but lack of evidence isn’t a reason to jump to the conclusion that some higher power was involved.
Many things that seemed impossible to explain have turned out to have rational explanations once we fully understood the science. We no longer burn people at the stake for saying that the earth goes around the sun; and we understand that the eclipse is simply a shadow, and not the wrath of an angry god.
See the article I’ve linked below for more information.
abqdan
May 10, 2013 at 5:13 pm
Butterflies are insects. Many insects go through a similar life cycle. Bees for example, are raised as grubs that spin a basic cocoon within the wax cells that are produced by the adult bee colony.
Maggots turn into flies having gone through a similar process without the wax comb.
Its a much smaller step from fly larva to butterfly larva. and hence from fly to butterfly.
dave
May 10, 2013 at 6:04 pm
I don’t know,but i think the original name,flutterby,is best.
michael k
May 10, 2013 at 6:11 pm
Turning into a butterfly is not evolution. It is a stage change.
Adam T
May 10, 2013 at 6:28 pm
Science may not be able to explain every step of every stage of every animal, and this is seen by creationists as proof that evolution is incorrect. Darwin never claimed to have all the answers, neither do scientists today make that claim, but the theory of evolution is too compelling and logical to be simply dismissed just because it carries the tag of “Theory”. There are many current examples of the theory at work, including bacterial resistance to medication, locust resistance to pesticides etc.
The fact remains that each stage of the butterfly’s life cycle is suited to its requirement at that time. Caterpillars are suited to remaining in one place and eating, but diversifying the species required it to spread its wings, so to speak. All insects have different life cycles in a similar way. Wings probably evolved at a later stage in order to escape predators or to increase chances of finding a mate. They have had about 400 million years of evolution. What the creationists cannot explain is why the different stages exist, why not just create a butterfly which pops out of the egg as a butterfly?
The links below give a timeline of insect evolution. Remember, evolution is very, very slow, and is caused by minor random mutations which just happen to give the “mutant” a better chance of survival than his/her fellow insects.
Hope this helps.
labscimaster
May 10, 2013 at 6:57 pm
I don’t know how this life cycle evolved but it did!
Darwinians? You make it sound like we are some kind of religious cult! As far as I understand it, it is those who believe in some Intelligent Design that belong to a religious cult.
The unknown is unexplainable too but just using a “God” to explain it is even worse than not trying to find out
Ignorance is a lack of knowledge but blind faith is a lack of intelligence
xpat gary
May 10, 2013 at 7:20 pm