Why doesn't evolution create fish that eat plastic?
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answers:
Sherwood Forrester say: First, fish are a complex animal that has evolved over hundreds of millions of years to take advantage of the food sources that have naturally been in their environment. Plastics have been in the environment only several decades, nowhere near long enough for such a major change in fish digestion.
Bacteria, on the other hand, have been found that are able to break down PET (the kind of plastic in disposable water bottles). But bacteria are *much* simpler, and are able to evolve more quickly to meet the demands of their environment.
Second, plastic is unlikely to be a sufficiently nutritious food source for animals with the energy demands of fish.
Now, it might be possible that *if* PET-eating bacteria become better at breaking down plastic and/or breaking down other plastics, and *if* the byproducts of their breaking down of plastic is biochemically useful to fish, and *if* they are able to colonize the guts of a fish without being themselves destroyed or killing the fish, then *maybe* a species of fish might develop the ability to digest plastic. However, that's a lot of ifs, and even *if* those aren't an impediment, it's not going to happen any time soon.
It's called evolution, not revolution. Changes are slow, incremental, and build up over time, not sudden and explosive. If an environment changes too fast, animals go extinct. They don't adapt instantaneously.
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Elaine M say: Because there's no protein or nutrition in plastic.
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The Donald say: That's what Billy Goats are for.
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John P say: Give it time!
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Donut Tim say: Some fish already do that.
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say: It already did. But the fish that used to eat plastic have gone extinct.
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say: Because plastic has no nutritional value and evolution wouldn’t waste its time creating an organism which was well -adapted to starvation, maybe? Just a guess
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Bill say: evolution takes millions of years ( that is why it is called evolution)
the question is why does the evolved human species make plastics in the first place
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D g say: lets teach the NON STUPID person all about evolution
SHALL WE ..
EVOLUTION consists of biology and since the food they eat has to be digestible and by that it has to be converted to energy easily ..
since the fish eat food that does this already they DO NOT NEED TO CHANGE ... THERE IS nothing to force them to change
the evolved animal trait comes from a change in the trait of the creature .. say for example a fish suddenly can breathe on land for a few moments would be helpful if the water it lived in was separated by areas of land and in order to move from a pond that didnt have any food to one that did it would h ave to cross the land then the fish that was able to do this WOULD live and be able to have babies and pass on this GENE that ALLOWS it to breathe outside of water ..
how do you propose that eating plastic is any benefit to a fish ..
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Cowboy say: Fish can't live on plastic - they need protein, fats and carbohydrates.
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Tom V say: It will. Just wait a million years.
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say: Bacteria that eat plastic and nylon evolved very recently, but bacteria evolve much faster than fish. If eating plastic doesn't _kill all the fish first_, that might happen. That's what natural selection means. It means everything else DIED.
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Robin W say: Fish haven't, but some microbes have.
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Warren G say: evolution take place over thousands of years..who knows, maybe several thousand years from now there will be fish that can eat garbage and plastic
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Henry say: Because it was a fake news based on Malthus fake news.
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alaskacub2002 say: because evolution dose not happen that fast
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Ambistoma say: Given enough time, I suppose it will, though I don't imagine that plastic has much nutrition. Bacteria would adapt more quickly.
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