In the name of scientific anniversary celebrations, it seems that today is Darwin Day. Since this year marks the 200th anniversary of his birth, it is somewhat special. To celebrate in the spirit of the silliness of the occasion, here below you can see how random mutations actually happen.
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/evolve.gif
I dreamt about meeting Darwin’s great^n grandson. Creepy on any day of the year!
I don’t understand the cartoon. What is a bue platypus?
Codger, Platypus is a flat-mouthed mammal living both on land and water but only in Eastern Australia.
“Bue” is a color similar to “blue” except that “l” is missing in the color.
Platypus seems to be the only non-extinct species in its family. In the cartoon, Nature apparently tried to create a new version of it, a blue platypus, but chance guaranteed that it apparently didn’t survive the semi-stochastic tests of natural selection.
The lesson of the cartoon is that diversity and multiculturalism are often not viable.
HI Artful:
Lubos is right. Bue is a non-spelled-checked version of blue. I drew the cartoon in a hurry (seeing as I have been very busy), but I didn’t have such a complicated lesson in mind… I just thought ‘nature playing with dice’ for random mutations would be funny.