Not An Example of Elvolution

“In a recent study, University of Minnesota biologist Emilie C. Snell-Rood found evidence suggesting that our direct changes to the natural habitats of animals (through technologies advances, antibiotics and revised food pyramids) have caused some animals to evolve with bigger brains. Dr. Snell-Rood studied dozens of individual animal skulls, some as old as a century, from ten different species including bats, gophers and mice. In two of the species, the white-footed mouse and the meadow role, the brains of the animals plucked from metropolitan areas or suburbs were about 6% bigger than those of the animals taken from farms or other rural areas. Dr. Snell-Rood's hypothesis after assessing the first wave of results was that brains become significantly bigger when they move to cities or bustling towns, where the animals must learn to find food in places that they're not biologically trained to encounter or expect.”

Again this is not an example of evolution, but another example of selective breeding.  None of these critters in the study evolved into another species, rather like we breed the miniature horse by choosing which horse to breed with each horse to get the desired results.  In this case the selective breading was forced indirectly upon the animals by humans instead of directly.  If you want to call this an example of evolution you have to call what breeders of all livestock, dogs, and cats do also an example of evolution.

I truly do not think that these biologist knows what the difference in evolution and selective breeding is.  Regardless of where man is forcing the selection or nature unless and until a new species comes into being it cannot be claimed to be an example of evolution.

Just as we breed horses and dogs to have smaller and then bigger heads, to be stronger or weaker, fasted or slower, so can change in wild animal's habitat by killing off the less adaptable, and forcing the remainder to breed with what is available to breed with, and pass on the charistics of the survivor. This is in principle what the breeder is doing when he culls his stock of undesirable charistics.  If you are going to claim one is evolution then you have to let the other have the same designation.

In a paper published Oct. 28, 2013, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Isbell; Hisao Nishijo and Quan Van Le at Toyama University, Japan; and Rafael Maior and Carlos Tomaz at the University of Brasilia, Brazil; and colleagues show that there are specific nerve cells in the brains of rhesus macaque monkeys that respond to images of snakes.  From the report: “The snake-sensitive neurons were more numerous, and responded more strongly and rapidly, than other nerve cells that fired in response to images of macaque faces or hands, or to geometric shapes. Isbell said she was surprised that more neurons responded to snakes than to faces, given that primates are highly social animals.”

Isbell originally published her hypothesis in 2006, following up with a book, The Fruit, the Tree and the Serpent (Harvard University Press, 2009) in which she argued that our primate ancestors evolved good, close-range vision primarily to spot and avoid dangerous snakes.  If Isbell really said this then she does not understand the Theory of Evolution at all.  I read stuff like this all the time, “…ancestors evolved good, close-range vision primarily to spot and avoid…” or “garaffs evolve long neck to eat the top of trees” or "The common ancestors of all primates evolved an opposable thumb so they could grasp branches."  These are all Back Assward.

If evolution works it is haphazard without purpose or plan.  If it is planed what it is doing then it is a substituted  for God.  When she "... argued that our primate ancestors evolved good, close-range vision primarily to spot and avoid dangerous snakes.".  Her words are saying that evolution planed this and executed it. 

There can be no reason for evolution to do anything, not to allow our ancestors to see snakes, or have to have a grasping hand.  What she has done is to find, "The snake-sensitive neurons were more numerous, and responded more strongly and rapidly, than other nerve cells that fired in response to images of macaque faces or hands, or to geometric shapes. Isbell said she was surprised that more neurons responded to snakes than to faces, given that primates are highly social animals."  And then assume that was something that evolution had done.

Had evolution did it, it would not be so that they could see snakes, rather because the ones who snakes better lived to make more babies that the one's who did not pick them out so fast, and their babies past the trate on down to their babies.  Isbell, et al, created a story to explain why the rhesus Macaque monkeys' sensitive neurons fired up more for images of snakes than it did for monkeys.  It's a good story if you believe in evolution.  Now to prove it she needs to show the same response in other primates, and also show that the primates' don't fire off the same "sensitive neurons" for other scary things.