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Is this Evolution?
A farmer has a flock of white sheep. He puts a black ram in the flock and over a few years notices that the number of black and grey sheep in the flock has increased.
Is this evolution?
What are the sheep evolving into?
The consensus is: NO, it is not evolution; or not as Darwin envisaged it, as ascent of all living from a common microbial ancestor. Only if you reduce the definition to "change over time" or "a change in allele frequency" can it be called evolution.
8 Answers
- G CLv 74 years agoFavorite Answer
Shows kind after kind. For evolution to be true, they would have to be evolving into another creature, yet they were all sheep.
- Anonymous4 years ago
I'm not an authority on ovine genetics but it is definitely possible that there would be no grey sheep, they would be either black or white. Or maybe spotted
Since the allele frequency of the flock has changed, it would be biological evolution. You don't get to redefine it as "microevolution" to suit your own agenda.
- 4 years ago
The sheep are simply expressing a different phenotype. I wouldn't call that evolution at all.
- ?Lv 44 years ago
No. There is no Selective Pressure in the case as described. Now, if the farmer kills and eats only white sheep, then it is. In that case the flock is evolving into black and gray sheep. If the farmer kills and eats white and gray sheep, then the flock is, of course, evolving to black sheep.
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- SymosLv 74 years ago
An extremely limited version. Basically the genetics of black and white fur merging
