Re: Jurassic Intelligence (and time-scale for evolution)

[NEIL CLARK <NCLARK@museum.gla.ac.uk>]

> 
> Is this what you meant to say? Some bacteria have indeed evolved 
> intelligence; they did it by becoming multicellular organisms with 
complex 
> senses and interactions and brains...specifically, by becoming us. 
Other 
> bacteria have evolved in other directions, and of course bacterial 
lines 
> structurally similar (I presume) to the originals are still around. 
Maybe 
> they're doing better than their cousins (us) who diverged, in some 
ways.

Tom,

It really depends on your ideas on the mechanisms of evolution.  I 
don't believe that bacteria became multicellular organisms.  Once 
multicellular complex organisms of the kind you are talking about 
developed, they ceased to be called bacteria (using our taxonomic 
criteria).  The mutation sequence that allowed this complexity to 
evolve would contain several transitional, but none the less distinct, 
life forms that may, or may not, be represented in the fossil record.  
We may be more closely related to plants than some bacteria are to 
each other, but this does not make us plants, nor bacteria.  Taxonomy 
helps us cope with the huge diversity of life forms alive today and in 
the past and to say that we are just a load of evolved bacteria would 
negate the usefulness of taxonomy.  In my opinion it is more useful to 
say that we are a distinct group of mutant multicellular life forms that 
derived from unicellular life forms:-)

So it was not the bacteria that gained intelligence, but their mutations 
and derivatives that are taxonomically distinct enough to be called 
something else.  The bacteria themselves did not become intelligent, 
just as a fish never grew legs, no matter how much time you spend 
trying to educate or coax them.

Can we get back to dinosaurs now?

Neil