"Natural selection"

[muriel29@wavenet.com (MC2)]

>I think I remember a comment about giraffes having narrow snouts for
>selective feeding.  But is that really why their snouts are narrow?

        Their snouts are not narrow _because_ of selective feeding. They
can selectively feed _because_ of their narrow snouts.
        To massively simplify:  Lots of "proto-giraffe" mutations never got
anywhere because their particular form was not passed on through time.
There can be a lot of reasons for this, but the mutated form that could
successfully tap a resource--such as the leaves near the tops of thorny
acacia trees that narrow-snouted giraffes eat--ultimately would be the ones
that would bear the most like-mutated offspring.
        In this interpretation of natural selection, then, function
necessarily follows form, and not the other way around.
        List, I await your wrath -:)

        T.A. Curtis                         E-mail: muriel29@wavenet.com
        13980 Lyons Valley Road
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