During my pre-university days I did read about Darvin's theory on evolution but at that time my focus was getting better marks than appreciating and understanding theory. Though I understood it then, I did not appreciate it. Now I can appreciate it !
I have been visiting rocky mountains in places like Ramnagar and Savanadurga. Close inspection of these rocks reveals an eco-system which has beautiful adapted to those rocks to survive. I am sure this has happened over millions of years. Look at this image of grasshopper above - what a camouflage ! How did grasshopper develop those colors and patterns of rocks ? Darvin's theory on mutation and natural selection can beautifully explain this. Mutations of genes causes changes in characteristics which may be heritable. This results in a new offspring with different characteristics. Success of this offspring in passing on its gene to the next generation is governed by natural selection - survival of the fittest. So my guess is over millions of years mutations caused changes in appearance of these grasshoppers - those inheritable characteristics which resembled patterns on rocks got passed on to offsprings which then had better survival rate. This continued and today we have a grasshopper which just can't be found when sitting on these rocks ! Nature has found a global optimum !! Here is another image from Ramnagar -
Though not as camouflaged as the grasshopper my feeling is in a few thousand years this too can't be spotted on the rocks. Here is one more from Savanadurga -
Interestingly nature is solving an optimization problem of arriving at life forms which can survive in its habitat. Scientists took this clue and arrived at an optimization technique based on this principle to solve real life optimization problems. This is known as Genetic Algorithms(GA). It is observed that GA has a tendency to settle down at a local optimum. My feeling is nature can't tolerate local optimum (look at the grasshopper!). If this assumption is true then GA is an inferior imitation of what nature does. I think nature knows best about how to cause crossovers and mutations which eventually results in global optimum. As we speak nature is working on finding a global optimum for we humans - going by current trends in all probability it may be our extinction...
- Ganesh H Shankar (Nature Lyrics - My home)
(You may click on the above images to see larger versions)
7 comments:
Wonderful thoughts Ganesh. Talking about mutation, doesn't it also make you remember about "Survival of The Fittest"? :)
May be these grasshoppers were threatened by predators and eventually as you said, over millions of years, just to survive and thrive, they transformed themselves.
Darwin, another great thinker!
My 2 cents.
BTW, did you intentionally missed about survival of fittest or you are indeed coming from the same thoughts in teh background?
Pramod, I guess you missed this line above - "Success of this offspring in passing on its gene to the next generation is governed by natural selection - survival of the fittest."
- Regards,
Ganesh.
One thing i would say is i really like the way you "think into an image" and afer clicking you think "beyond the image". Normally we tend to stop at a point telling -- wow what a camoflage... but i really appreciate to the extent you have gone to describe your thoughts and share info with us.
Thanks sir.
A very nice article Ganesh!
nicely written article ganesh.
Wonderful article Ganesh. The thought process behind all your images is just amazing. Thanks for sharing this.
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
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