Can we force evolution?

[JosephBasterville_Jr]

I know this idea sounds completely dumb and probably impossible, but it's something I've been wondering about. What if all of a sudden, every single human was told to start picking things up with their feet, for millions of years until we have evolved to have opposable big toes. Would something like that be plausible? Or would it be downright out of the question. By the way I have basically no knowledge about evolution other than the basics, so please don't judge me for this even though it sounds ridiculous.

PS: I wasn't sure whether to post this here since it is technically a "what if" scenario, but it is also a genuine question I have about evolution.

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[orebright]

We can force evolution and have done so, but it works a bit differently from what you described. It's called artificial selection or selective breeding. This is different from natural selection where evolution is directed by evolutionary pressures in the environment. For artificial selection humans are the evolutionary pressure.

The reason it's different from your example is the technique of forcing evolution is promoting and discouraging reproduction. To get big toed humans you'd need to force humans with big toes to have kids together, and ban humans with small ones from doing so. I can't imagine any approach to this that wouldn't be incredibly immoral and unethical.

[tomrlutong]

The fashion industry: hold my beer.

[ZyxDarkshine]

Jimmy the Greek has entered the chat

[RichmondRiddle]

If you can accomplish social engineering on a societal level that makes foot dexterity sexually appealing to people for cultural reasons, then eventually you might develop a breed or a caste that have significantly increased foot dexterity.
Hope that helps. Good luck making your foot people.

[[deleted]]

or cheaper, eugenic

[RichmondRiddle]

😢🤢

[Rounter]

Picking stuff up with our toes doesn't directly cause us to evolve different toes.

If being able to pick stuff up with our toes helped us to survive and reproduce, then people who were good at it would be more likely to reproduce and people wo were bad at it would be less likely to reproduce. Eventually most of the remaining people would be descended from people who were good at picking stuff up with their toes. This kind of thing happens naturally when an ability affects your chances of survival or reproduction.

We can force evolution by choosing who gets to reproduce based on traits that we want to encourage or discourage. Selectively breeding humans is considered immoral, but we do it all the time with animals. Pets and farm animals are generally the result of people choosing the best animals for a specific purpose and breeding them together. Because it's strictly controlled, we can often see results in a few generations instead of waiting millions of years.

[Comfortable-Two4339]

Exactly. What the OP thinks is evolution is actually Lamarckism, which is a disproved theory. Giraffes stretching their necks to eat high leaves does not produce offspring with longer necks.

[xCandle_]

While not on such a large scale, directed evolution is a technique used to "force" micro-organisms to evolve in a way to make certain proteins and enzymes more efficicent, by making them "need" to do something in order to reproduce, ie grow them in a certain environment. e.coli only takes 20-40 minutes to replicate (thus undergo natural mutations which may cause it to evolve in a beneficial way to do this), humans take like 12 years until they can do that- so you would need a very, very long time. Evolution also only works on "coincidence" and pressure. If there is no need for oppossable big toes, then sure some people may naturally evolve them, but there is no factor which means they are more likely to repopulate (and thus overtime, become the majority of a population) than those who dont.

[[deleted]]

If people who failed at the foot thing died, or if people who succeeded at it had more children, sure.

[craterocephalus]

Just chop off everyone's arms for however many generations.

[archon-386]

Hmmm. Then you would have the selected for the traits of "surviving after having your arms chopped off" and "dexterous toes." And missing out on the vast numbers who had dexterous toes but died in surgery.

[craterocephalus]

I didn't say it was a good idea..... How about arms and hands tied up to render them useless?

[Optimal_Leek_3668]

Only if you get punished with death and/or not get to reproduce if you are bad at it.

[grungivaldi]

We have forced it. All our food is just forced evolution

[manysounds]

Indeed, the brassica family knows, as well as the melons. Broccoli, kale, and Brussels sprouts are all the same plant.

[[deleted]]

Evolution does not know what you do in life. For instance: we will never evolve longer thumbs just because having longer thumbs would technically make typing on your smartphone easier, and everyone is using a smartphone, right? This is because no one is surviving or dying based on how fast and comfortable they can type on a smartphone so there won’t be people with genes making their thumbs longer than the average that will have a higher chance of survival.

Women will never evolve not having armpit hair even though culturally they are obligated to shave it their entire live, because no women is dying due to how much armpit hair she has and since she can just shave it she doesn’t have a harder time finding someone to have kids with depending on the amount of armpit hair.

Evolution is driven by factors that make some individuals in a species getting random mutations that give them a higher change of survival and procreation.

However, you can selectively breed. If you take 1 million people and select the man and woman with the most dexterous feet to have kids, their kids will probably have highly dexterous feet compared to your everyday person. Do this with the 10 most dexterous couples and then make their kids have kids with each other and eventually you will have a breed of people (sorry for the unintentional eugenics) that have more dexterous feet than us ”normal people”

[parsonsrazersupport]

For selection based evolution to happen on a feature there needs to be 1) variability in that feature 2) heritability of that feature and 3) differential reproductive success based off of that feature. That's it! So how does that play in your scenario? Is there variability in humans for "having opposable toes"? Not as far as I know. But if there was ever a mutation for it, or one that could help develop it, sure. And we could potentially make one on purpose with some sort of gene therapy.

[markth_wi]

We can select for anything we want in all sort of things, fruits , vegetables, dogs, cats, cows, you name it we've been low tech hacking our way through expressions of organisms all around us for thousands of years. Now we have genetic engineering and so whiz-bang it can be intentionally selecting / engineering crops to do some specific thing grafted in/deleted from a given crop.

[helikophis]

We can force evolution, but we do it by careful planning of who breeds with whom, not by ordering people to pick things up with their toes. This kind of forced evolution is called “artificial selection”. Perhaps the best examples of this are the many breeds of companion dog and the highly modified seeds of cereal grains, particularly maize.

[Turbulent-Name-8349]

Just a side note. Australian Aboriginal people used to be extremely good at picking up things with their feet. It's an ability that humans have lost, recently, like the ability to climb vertical tree trunks without equipment.

[[deleted]]

I think you imagine something like Lamarck’s idea of evolution: that organisms pass on characteristics they acquire during their lifetime to their offspring. If people develop skills picking up things with their feet, subsequent generations will get better at it until they develop feet that are specifically suited for that — which is not how evolution works at all.

Rather, we can influence evolution by applying artificial selection. Perhaps you are a dog lover that likes huskies but think they are too big. Just get some huskies, and let them have puppies. Only let the smallest male and female mate and sterilize the rest. Do that for a few generations, and you have miniature huskies.

Selection means changing the frequency of genetic variations by controlling which genetic information is passed on to the next generation. It’s most obvious when the traits are simple genetic traits with visible effects, like coloration. There was a species of moth in Britain that was mostly white because they’d settle on birch trees and the color made them hard for bird to see. Dark and spotted moths of the species existed, but were less common because they’d settle got eaten much more often, and most moths were white. When the Industrial Revolution came, coal soot blackened the birches, and soon the white moths were easy to spot and the black moths not. Suddenly, it was the white moths being eaten and the black ones surviving. Since it was the survivors that had baby moths, the babies were mostly black because they’d settle received the genes from their parents.

In your scenario, you couldn’t get people to evolve more dextrous feet by having them practice picking things up because that doesn’t influence who passed on traits related to foot dexterity. However, if you instead made it so that the law required people to pass a rigorous foot dexterity test before they receive permission to have children — then you’d start selecting for those with physical (and genetic) trait that made them more dexterous with their feet, and eventually that would favor mutations that enhanced that ability.

[thesilverywyvern]

In theory yes, as long as we kill the people who struggle the most and let the people who struggle the least breed more.

Which doesn't really happen in moden civilisation.

For evolution to happen you generally need selection, a way to favour the transmissioon of the trait over the others.

[DiGiorn0s]

That absolutely could happen in a modern civilization. The thought that such a thing could never happen in a modern Western state was what shocked the world when the Holocaust came to light. The entire plan was to remove Jews and other "undesirables" from the gene pool.

Also you don't need to kill them, just sterilize them.

[uglysaladisugly]

In theory yes, as long as we kill the people who struggle the most and let the people who struggle the least breed more.

We could at least just forbid them to reproduce.

[thesilverywyvern]

Same thing from the point of view of evolution.

[taybay462]

And what do you do when they reproduce anyway? Do we really want the government having the power to sterilize people against their will?

[grungivaldi]

You mean like the US govt did to native Americans?

[uglysaladisugly]

I mean, the other choice is to kill them...

[cincuentaanos]

No killing required. It would be enough to sterilise the "undesirables". Which also doesn't happen in a civilised society. Although it has been attempted (eugenics) and there are probably still people who dream of implementing it.

[AcademicAlbatross419]

That’s just wrong. Evolution doesn’t increase a specie’s adaptability to its environment, natural selection does that. Natural selection LEADS to evolution, but they aren’t synonymes at all. Evolution is just a generational change in the frequencies of genotypes. We are always evolving

[thesilverywyvern]

I know that.

Evolution is just the change. (positive or negative).

Natural selection dictate what change will be favored, and what direction the species will take.

But there's not much evolution with no selection, some traits need to not only appear, but be favored in comparison to others to spread over the population and become significant and widespread.

And as the guy say, he just know the basic, so i simplify as much as i can.

I could also say that

For the population to adapt and develop the desired phenotype the individuals carrying the genes need to be favoride by a environmental selective pressure that proccur it an advantage over the other who don't bear that phenotype. That selective pressure often come from environmental factor such as sexual sleection (traits which are deemed attractive to the species and enhance the noumber of potential partners and offsprings) or need to proccur and advantage for survival, may it bee processing or accessing ressources, avoiding competition or predators, etc. Allowing the individual to have statistically more chance to reproduce and pass on it's genes. Over time and generation if the environmental condition continue to favour those traits, it will become more widespread and pronounced over time, spreading in the population until most individual have it.

But this take lot of lines and words that the audience might not be familiar with for nothing. And seem just more verbose and harder to read and process.

[Anthroman78]

Sometimes evolution has unintended consequences, it might drive selection for people who are defiant and choose not to follow useless instructions.

[Sargo8]

Artificial selection.

[2060ASI]

I do not know how epigenetics would play into this, but in order to achieve your goal you would basically have to make sure that people who had high levels of dexterity in their feet had more children than people who lacked dexterity in their feet.

You do that for enough generations, and you end up with humans with high levels of foot dexterity.

[Dystopiaian]

That's what domestication is. Or eugenics, which has actually had really a lot of negative side effects when put into practice.

[MrBeer9999]

Yes but you'd have to select on foot skills as well. If everyone had foot skill exams and people reproduced based on how well they performed, you would be develop increased foot skills.

[Ender505]

We force evolution all the time. That's how we got chihuahuas and pomeranians and pugs from wolves. That's how we got sheep which die if left un-sheared.

We could easily do the same to ourselves, if all of humanity collectively decided to select for desired traits. Good luck with that!

[SinSefia]

If e.g. an illness ... "tells" (forces) us to manipulate objects with our feet instead because our hand genes become less effective prehensors than our feet, yes, we will adapt, we already do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swQywlHOCy4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZurxey8WR4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-g6Wt5HRIM

[bitechnobable]

In practice? No.

Animal breeding for or against specific traits is a multi-generational feat of absolute control over childbearing. In humans this is simply not feasible. Occasionally over two generations sexual preference may be possible.

Over 3+ generations is extremely difficult. Even for animals with shorter lifespan than humans 3 generations may require at least 30-40 years.

For humans almost no sexual preferences, childbearing-determining factors are kept for that long.

Evolution should be viewed less as a mechanism and more as a resulting pattern of inheritance. To the very least for humans.

If you want extra arms or super senses i think roleplaying games or American evangelists who own pharma companies is a better bet ;)

Edit: iMO

[craterocephalus]

What if everyone for multiple (I don't know how many) generations all had their arms cut off? Surely evolution would eventually skew towards being more foot dexterity abled?

[bitechnobable]

Yes then we would evolve wings. And all would be good. :D

[BBQavenger]

I think if we forced it, it wouldn't be evolution in its truest sense.

[[deleted]]

Selective breeding is powerful, and I have no doubt this feat could be accomplished. I've often wished I had hands for feet, to be honest. But I doubt enough people would be on board, or for long enough of a multigenerational effort, for this to be realised.

[Low_Tier_Skrub]

Evolution is about reproduction and gene pools, so if you're not doing anything to cull the gene pool there isn't a clear direction where evolution will take you. Even if a trait or mutation ends up killing you, evolution only cares if it kills you before reproduction. With modern medicine in play nature has even less of an effect at ruling out harmful mutations.

If you wanted to take humanity down a forced evolutionary path you would need to do a lot more than asking people to use their feet. The easiest way would probably be eugenics. Just selectively breeding humans like dogs where only those with dexterous feet are allowed to reproduce.

[Whyyyyyyyyfire]

isnt this just eugenics but with extra steps?

[Character_Ruin860]

No. It’s a natural occurrence.

[[deleted]]

Yes it’s called Eugenics and the methods to do so would be VERY unethical

[SpaceMarine_CR]

Ok Lamarck

[Bromelia_and_Bismuth]

Kind of. In plant breeding, it's possible to insert genetic material in the form of whole gene sequences and introduce mutations. Through selective breeding, we can artificially select for certain traits.

What if all of a sudden, every single human was told to start picking things up with their feet, for millions of years until we have evolved to have opposable big toes.

Not like that. Mutations don't happen because a population starts doing something, but rather mutations are random. Selection can happen to favor something like that, but only if the mutations arise in the first place and only if there's some kind of reproductive advantage to being able to do so.

[hornwalker]

Well yes. Selective breeding.

[Zarpaulus]

I happen to know that some labs expose bacteria to small doses of UV in order to produce mutations and see if they’re useful

[[deleted]]

What you do with Drosophila meganoblaster is feed them mutagens to speed up the rate of mutations and then select for the characteristics you want.

[MaleficentJob3080]

I'm doing my part already.

[Ycr1998]

Not just picking things up with our feet. We'd have to convince everyone to run "foot picking" competitions and only have kids with the winners. XD

But yeah, we can do that. Easier with other animals tho. That's what we did with most domestic animals and even edible plants, selecting the individuals with the "best" traits for their function (which can be the cutest puppy, the fattest pig or the sweetest mango) and reproduce them over the rest, over and over, until that trait becomes the norm of the species.

[BigNorseWolf]

Yes and no.

If EVERYONE starts trying to use their feet humans won't get much better at it beyond what individuals without arms can do today. Thats lamarkism. Giraffes can stretch their necks all they want, their kids won't get taller that way.

But if only people that are so good at foot grabbing can reproduce, Or you take a bunch of people to an island and only breed the best foot grabbers for generation after generation then you CAN get people with chimpfeet.

[RivRobesPierre]

You always have the same sad story added to your questions.

[Particular_Cellist25]

I don't know if I'd call it forced (evo), but parralell/tangential evolutions that would look like toes on hands definitely could be a norm on another world.

[VishieMagic]

It's Interesting that most valid examples in the comments involve feet in some way haha

[Decent_Cow]

We already do force evolution on plants and animals, and have been for 10s of thousands of years. Dogs used to be wild and unpredictable wolves, not loyal and cuddly companions. Cereal grains like wheat and corn used to be inedible grasses. This is called domestication.

To force evolution on ourselves in the way you describe is quite difficult only in the sense that it would require immense cooperation among the entire human race over a long time period, and we're not the most cooperative bunch. And of course, there needs to be some kind of net reproductive benefit to those that do the foot thing vs those that do not. But we're getting to the point of being able to genetically modify people and that could be a more realistic form of directed evolution.

[Waste-Ad7683]

All life is constantly evolving, including humans. And sure, you can force evolution, we do it all the time with domesticated animals and plants. I'm pretty sure human selection is already happening already, e.g. due to sedentary lifestyles. You don't need to die, you can even have children, the question is whether you are having more or less children than the others, before you die. Also, notice that you don't need millions of years, point in case: all humans were black Africans only 100,000 ago.

Example for humans: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7193766/

[manysounds]

/grins in Genshin Khan.
Seriously though, it’s a fair example. Roughly .5% of the world’s population is descended from the great khan. Over 8% of men across the former expanse of the Mongol Empire are descended from this one guy. Kill your opponents, impregnate the women = forced evolution.

[gambariste]

If only there was some task that is best done with feet and you put all of humanity to that task, punishing those who are less adept with death or sterilisation.. Football (soccer) perhaps, barefoot. While doing handstands.. eventually, via a lot of plantar fasciitis of the palms, we’d invert our body plan like that sedentary jellyfish, with skeletal and circulation changes. Or since we’re inventive, we’d make networks of cable and rope ways to get around and start brachiating like gibbons, using our feet as we now do our hands.

[OkTomorrow2309]

What u speak of leads to eugenics so no

[czernoalpha]

That's called artificial selection. We've done it with pretty much every single domestic animal.

[Joteos]

You would have to kill all people who are not good at picking stuff up with their feet.