As periods of adaptation go, my sudden dietary shift is fairly straightforward; no crawling about in the muck for years trying to breathe, no flapping my fins uselessly, and very little slithering has been required - just a lot of avoiding carbs in general and beverages composed largely of high-fructose corn syrup in particular. Perhaps I'll grow a tail; the endocrinologist doesn't think so, but I'm hopeful.
But I am one of the lucky few, ostensibly at the apex of evolution on this quaint little tilted, eccentric dirtball. I have only genetic diseases and maybe the prospect of a new sensory ability to anticipate. If anything, I am losing what little remnants of a tail my ancestors left me, along with my appendix and other vestiges of the trial and error of human physiology. It is the much less personal evolution of the rest of the planet that intrigues me now, particularly the speculation of how I and my fellow apex apes may be inadvertently influencing the evolution of of other species.
Certainly we do a number of things to influence the evolution of other species deliberately, ranging from the mildly absurd to the positively brilliant (with the occasional foray into dangerously stupid), but that discussion doesn't need my sponsorship. Engineered medicine and food, biofuels, and organic industrial compounds may be miraculous or catastrophic when the score is tallied, but even if they are the product of hubris they were considered.
I'm far more concerned with lawn care and generations of dwarfed pets, two examples of the ecological and evolutionary impact that is derived from human aesthetic appreciation. We enjoy the look of well tended Agrostis Palustris, and as we cover golf courses and lawns with it we acknowledge that it is a pain in the ass compared to the less attractive grass that it replaced. It requires maintenance, significant watering, and the manual removal of other species that threaten to usurp it from within. We enjoy small, cute little yipping hypertense dogs, so we have bred them to fit into purses and laps over centuries of careful, controlled eugenics. We have created countless hybrids over millenia of agricultural experimentation, both primitive and modern.
And I propose that we are inadvertently teaching the species of the world to please us, slowly but surely. The concepts of camouflage and mimicry already exist in nature, so it isn't much of a leap to consider that as human beings become more and more the controlling force in the survivial and prosperity of a species, and as that decision is based more and more on our own aesthetic considerations, that a species will simply begin to evolve without interference to be more attractive to this capricuous control mechanism of the new ecology called 'man'. Our ability to influence the genetic makeup of pretty much everything around us has essentially made our collective opinion a concrete force in the development of the ecology, as significant as physics and as pervasive as climate.
And even the byproduct of our inhabitance, the machines and cities we construct in order to adapt our environment to our own ends, will no doubt become an evolutionary spark at some point, driving species incapable of that tool-making ape's trick to themselves adapt to our new jungles. If stray dogs begin to compete with us for a spot on the commuter line, such as the case in Moscow, I fear it won't be long until the little bastards stop honest begging and stealing and actually enter the work force, learning to tie a leash in a poor simulacrum of a single windsor, feign interest at social gatherings, and steal sidelong glances at bitches and studs while on the clock. Fifty years ago the job market would have judged them harshly for being illiterate quadrupeds, but in this economy being able to parlay their natural gifts of loyalty, intelligence, and the modicum of restraint all domesticated animals show intuitively even prior to training puts them at least one or two steps ahead of a newly graduated ivy leaguer douchebag with a BusAd degree. I suppose the dogs will be behind the curve in the easily entertained, ass-sniffing, and boot licking departments in comparison, but something tells me they'll catch on.
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