That British Amateur Naturalist had it all Wrong

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I don't particularly respect newscientist unfortunately. They tend to exaggerate for effect. After reading that, for all I know these are things that biologists have thought for decades.

[Louis VI the Fat]

I don't particularly respect newscientist unfortunately. They tend to exaggerate for effect. After reading that, for all I know these are things that biologists have thought for decades.

And what if I genetically alter a pig to have a lion's tail and elephant ears? It seems not outside the grasp of science.

Wouldn't this undermine the phylogenetic tree? Show how evolution within one species decides the evolution of other species.

Of course, considering that a pig is what humans have left of its wild boar ancestor, this process has been going on forever. Ever since predators in the Cambrian life explosion, evolution has been driven by inter-species interaction. It is a network process.


If I can be allowed a metaphor, biology keeps adding a new dimension to our understanding of the order of the natural world. From the one-dimensional Cabinets of curiosities in Renaissance thought. A collection of losse species, ordered on a single plane. To the two-dimensional Darwinian understanding that ordered life in a historical-hierarchical scheme. To current three dimensions, adding a better understanding of network processes.