Fruit Flies, Our Supposed Evolutionary Cousins

Before we start, here is a quick, humorous remark. Those of you who study logical fallacies with me can appreciate it even more: "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." It takes some people a while to get it. I think it is hilarious, and part of that is because I like humor with ambiguity. Here, we have two key words that flip meanings, flies and like. But apparently, we are supposedly related to the things via evolution.

Credits: Credits: NASA/Ames Research Center/Dominic Hart
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Being as how it's easy for researchers to do, they have been fiddling with making mutations in fruit flies for a long time. What do they get? Messed up fruit flies. Nothing changes into anything else, so there is no evolution. Those annoying bugs have a habit of defying Darwin. But there are genetic similarities between humans a many other things, including fifty percent of the banana genome.

So they commenced to doing that Making Things Up™ thing by conjuring up "deep homology". That is, they presuppose evolution so they can prove it on paper. Because there are similarities, things must have evolved from a common ancestor, never mind other possible explanations.

The only picture so far. I think I'm going to like this car quite a bit.

I got a replacement vehicle yesterday. My previous one was a 2000 Subaru Outback, and the one I purchased is a 2005 Subaru Forester. (There were many setbacks in getting it finalized. When everything was done, I said to my mechanic/dealer, "Looks like we're out of the woods on the Forester.") He pointed out that the engine is essentially the same on both vehicles. Well, of course. No need to reinvent the entire engine for each model a company is going to produce! The same sort of thing happens with genetic similarities. Instead of assuming evolution, we see the work of the Master Engineer.

There are around 152,000 named species of flies (the order Diptera) representing approximately 10% of all species on Earth. One genus in particular, the pesky fruit fly Drosophila, is found all around the globe. It’s used in fields of scientific research that include behavior, physiology, genetics, and development.

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Scientists have conducted over a century of detailed fruit fly research. If real evolution were to be observed, it would be in a lowly insect like the fruit fly.

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Developmental biologists know that in order for macromutations to affect body-plan formation in such a way that could change one kind of animal into another kind, the mutations must occur early in the animal’s development. Ironically, it has been consistently found that early developmental mutations damage a creature.

To read this article in its entirety, click on "Are People and Fruit Flies Related?" You may also be interested in seeing "Design in Early Fruit Fly Development".



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