There are insects which have ‘mutated’ and evolved to a specific tree, I would think of such mutations as a kind of ‘amorphous searching’ [or fluid change] of conditions and growth according to requirements. Further up the evolutionary tree the way animals think and react can also make a difference [in epigenetics], cultures can be arrived at e.g. like the monkey which has learned to crack open shellfish on a rock. Such things are not initially genetic but become genetic if kept up for long enough.
Sure but a giraffe is not arrived at in one go, there would be a very long period of change with the neck getting longer with each generation continuing the advantage in tiny increments ~ probably hundreds or thousands of generations.
Interesting. Seems a bit strange that you get a less able [in the former sense] hominid from the mix and not just another variation of the same ilk. Perhaps it has more to do with tool usage and hence differing hunting techniques. Again none of this would have occurred overnight, the MYH16 mutation [or transformation resultant of many smaller mutations] may have resulted from the weaker but slightly more intelligent hominid, having to find a way to survive beyond what its predecessors had achieved.
I thought I wasn’t arguing against evolution, so perhaps I should just butt-out here. I am going by previous debates where people made arguments against mutations being the primary factor ~ that is without the environment determining what mutations are successful.
The first image looked like a modern human so I assumed you were talking about a far more modern change in the brain, sorry.
Could you sum up where you are going with this in relation to the thread? Seems to be an argument based on genetic change without environmental influence [your suggestion], or genetic change ‘with’ environmental influence [my position]. As I say creatures are very sensitive to their environments and that would surely have an effect upon how successful they are at running away or hunting.