That’s an important distinction to make, since microbes evolve so fast that we have a hard time keeping up with their antibiotic resistances. Plants and animals change all the time, but it is a lot slower due to slower reproduction cycle. Humans, elephants and whales change too, but it just takes a while for us to notice it.
Not necessarily. We have found some preserved remains of smaller animals, and we also have some current animals to compare to. For the simplest example, we can compare dog breeds to wolf breeds to find out that dogs have had an increased amount of pancreatic Amylase genes since domestication (which is also one of the factors behind them getting more cases of diabetes).
The problem for humans tho, is that there’s no longer any intermediate species around to compare to, and our best preserved individuals are from the last 5000 years or so. For the record, a few years back a cryopreserved domesticated dog was found in siberia and it’s 4 times older.
Do you mean in humans or animals?
If you mean plants I’d say it would be pretty hard to tell what wasn’t the result of some form of selective breeding at this point.
I’ll edit the post, I meant humans
That’s an important distinction to make, since microbes evolve so fast that we have a hard time keeping up with their antibiotic resistances. Plants and animals change all the time, but it is a lot slower due to slower reproduction cycle. Humans, elephants and whales change too, but it just takes a while for us to notice it.
Not necessarily. We have found some preserved remains of smaller animals, and we also have some current animals to compare to. For the simplest example, we can compare dog breeds to wolf breeds to find out that dogs have had an increased amount of pancreatic Amylase genes since domestication (which is also one of the factors behind them getting more cases of diabetes).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4329415/
The problem for humans tho, is that there’s no longer any intermediate species around to compare to, and our best preserved individuals are from the last 5000 years or so. For the record, a few years back a cryopreserved domesticated dog was found in siberia and it’s 4 times older.