Re: Plants The sixth sense
- Subject: Re: Plants The sixth sense
- From: A*@aol.com
- Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 08:59:31 -0600 (CST)
Selective breeding is incredibly detailed.
There is a crab in Japan which has the design of a very detailed medieval
Japanese helmet on its back. It is known that fishermen habitually threw back
the crabs with helmet-like markings. As time went on, the fishermen got more
picky, because more and more of the crabs started to have more and more
detailed helmet designs. Eventually the design became startlingly detailed.
So, there was natural selection for nodules, and then there was natural
selection for yellow nodules-- or perhaps by chance, there was a plant with
yellow nodules that survived, thrived, and multiplied.
Natural selection is every bit as tough as a plantsman who culls his
seedlings.
In a message dated 2/1/2 3:57:03 AM, ptyerman@ozemail.com.au writes:
<< My thoughts on that were..... I know that the fittest survive and therefore
go on to reproduce, but the natural chances of a particular vine producing
nodules that mimic the eggs of their only predator is phenomenally small.
There has to be some way that they register the presence of these eggs and
more importantly their COLOUR. Nodules occuring naturally on a wine is
"relatively" possible I suppose, but then colouring the same colour and
shade as the eggs? How is this explained? I cannot see any other
explanation than that they have some method of sensing their surroundings
in a far more thorough method than we realise, including colours. >>
