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Fashion! Turn to the left!

Benny the Ball

12:34 / 11.04.07

Wheelies - look like fun, don't they? Wheeling about like some wheelie/Xanadu hybrid. But how much damage can these things do, in a physical sense? Will children's development be altered in anyway? Splayed toe bones? Raised heels? Arched lower backs?

Much like the talk of over-developed yoof thumbs from a while ago, in which it was suggeste that the over-use of texting and playing consul games would alter human kind and see us be left behind by the next evolutionary stage of mega-thumbed Homo Sapien Textualis. This thread asks two things;

How much damage can fads do in both the short and long term?

Can evolution really be predicted in this manner, or does this kind of stuff just make for fun, light science?

Oh, and feel free to have some fun, predicting what the next evolutional development might be based on fads.

charrellz

03:08 / 12.04.07

Most of these things (texting, gaming, wheelies, etc.) may result in slight shifts in a few people's anatomy or skill sets, but it will not effect evolution. No matter how crooked a kid's spine gets from wearing dumb shoes, there will be no change on a genetic level, and therefore no physical changes passed on to offspring. Lamarck suggested this same principle you are proposing, commonly illustrated with the idea of giraffes having long necks because their parents stretched for higher leaves.

However, there is always the possibility (though hopefully slim) that kids who wear wheelies and deform their bodies because of it will be seen as more attractive and have a better chance of succesfully mating while excluding non-wheelie-wearers from the mating game. In that way wheelies could effect evolution by spreading the trait of poor taste in shoes.

Evil Scientist

07:07 / 12.04.07

Can evolution really be predicted in this manner, or does this kind of stuff just make for fun, light science?

Not wanting to be the anti-fun brigade here, but I do think it's important to mention that it's inaccurate to call it science at all.

That said, fashions are extremely fleeting things and so generally aren't around long enough to exert any real kind of evolutionary pressure on the species to select mates with specific phenotypes.

jentacular dreams

10:30 / 12.04.07

Agreed - it's mostly fluff, though perhaps less so with regard to longer lasting 'fashions' (a debatable example might be the physical concepts of beauty). But as fashions go, few of them last longer than a generation, which is what would usually be required to make any major impact (unless the effect was extremely pronounced).

grant

18:38 / 12.04.07

ON THE OTHER HAND, there is the growing anxiety of actual fads having an actual evolutionary effect -- when the fads involve selecting genes for offspring, like tallness, blondness, problem-solving ability or whatever else.

I mean, if geneticists can create a glow-in-the-dark rabbit, what else can they do?

Quantum

18:49 / 12.04.07

But as fashions go, few of them last longer than a generation, which is what would usually be required to make any major impact (unless the effect was extremely pronounced).

I reckon it might take longer than a single generation... BY ABOUT TEN MILLION YEARS.

jentacular dreams

09:33 / 13.04.07

Sorry, miscommunication. For any 'event' (be it rooted in fashion, religion, politics, economics or some other nebulous aspect of culture) to make a noteable impact on the gene pool, it would have to affect a massive subset of the population for one generation or a much smaller subset/notably smaller effect over a number of generations. That's the minimum time required, were conditions optimised for such a change in the gene pool.

In all likelihood a scenario of many more generations than this is far more probable, as a number of alternate selective pressures would likely balance things out. But as previously said, most fashions don't last longer than a few years at best.

Obviously to generate new characteristics within a gene pool, many million years are required for the buildup of mutations, but selection for existing characteristics (leading to loss/major reduction of the allelic alternatives) could feasibly happen in a much shorter time.

Red Concrete

09:51 / 13.04.07

Maybe we need to go down one level from "fashion", then. What about clothes? They've been around many many generations. have we evolved to them? Is that why we're hairless relative to the other apes, or did the chicken come first (metaphorically)? A page from The American Naturalist.

Arguably walking upright is a "fashion" that we've adopted for a very long time, but I'm not sure of the evidence for that causing back problems. (i.e. it's a common claim in the popular press, but I haven't read any primary literature on it)

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