Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Albinos and Giants

"I know right? Fucking weird." - Gregor Mendel
Not so many years ago a man-made lake was stocked with fish. Not so many years later the original fish had evolved into three separate species specialized to operate at different depths within the lake. Lowfat/uninsulated fish at the top, medium fatty fish in the middle and fatcat well insulated fish in the depths. That's always been a cool story to me... A WOW story.. In the course of one human lifetime those fish figured that lake out. Good on you fish. It finally occured to me that these fish didn't tabula rasa evolve the genes required to specialize into different habitats - the fish had the unexpressed genes all along. The genes simply needed the new environment to encourage them.

When you see a freakishly hairy guy you can say... WOW, that guy must be Greek. On the other hand you can ponder over the idea that you have those genes too... They may not be expressed but they are probably inside you just the same waiting for an ice age to come around. Crazy eh?

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