Built For Another World

A long running tragedy of life is that our environment changes faster than our instincts. In technical terms this is called an evolutionary mismatch. A species evolves for a certain landscape, weather, predator - then the world changes and all old weapons are useless👇

Here's a definition of an evolutionary mismatch from a 2009 Journal article: "The demands of the environment for an organism’s success shift, making behaviors that were once optimal now suboptimal and sometimes pathologically maladaptive." Evolved instincts lead to bad outcomes.

Mama sea turtles lay eggs in beach holes. The baby turtles climb out with bad vision - can only tell light from dark. Throughout history they've gone for the ocean as its brighter. Now artificial land light pulls them in the opposite direction. They die dehydrated and hunted.

The Dodo bird lived on an island in the Mauritius with no predators. It lost the ability to fly (nothing to fly away from) and the fear response (nothing to fear). Paradise - until humans landed with rats and snakes. The Dodo bird was extinct in less than a century.

Moths. English conditions selected for white moths with black dots - until the Industrial Revolution blackened all trees with smoke. The white moths stood out, got hunted - the rare black ones survived, multiplied. Then an environmental movement greened the trees again...

Giant jewel beetle. Male jewel beetles in the desert go for the shiniest and biggest females. But now the desert is littered with beer bottles, the smallest of which is bigger & shinier than the biggest female beetle. Males prefer mating with beer bottles than with females now.

Rare enemy effect. Worms have evolved to sense their predators, rats, digging into the ground. They rise to the surface just then. Now humans drive a wooden stick into the ground, the worms come to the surface, and get used as hook bait on fishing expeditions - rare enemy effect.

Humans evolved in a pathogen-rich world where food availability was uncertain. Sugar was rare. We feasted and starved. Now we just feast on endless sugary food and get fat. Due to our sanitized world, our immunity isn't tested and people get allergies their ancestors would never.

A counter-point: Jordan Peterson, a best-selling writer, says that the essence of the environment never changes. There are always areas under our control - the orderly realm - and the strangeness outside - the chaos. This dichotomy is constant while superficial details change.

Bottom line. Is there such a thing as built for a different world? The evidence from the animal world - and our own experience - says yes. But if anyone is flexible enough, adaptable enough, to update in real time to change, it's the Homo Cognitas - the thinking monkey, us.