• Question: how migh evolution affect us over the next few million years?

    Asked by paige101 to Ben, Dave, Ed, Sam, Susana on 18 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Benjamin Hall

      Benjamin Hall answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      One thing that’s already happening is that humans are losing their wisdom teeth. I’ve heard a figure that suggests that as many as 35% of people are now born without any wisdom teeth. We simply don’t need them.

      I think we’ll continue to become more intelligent. Or at least I hope we will.

      What I think is a really interesting idea is what might happen if we are ever able to colonise other planets. How might we adapt then? And what would we end up looking like?

    • Photo: David Briggs

      David Briggs answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      Not sure. It will affect us though – if the planet changes or we change planets, we may adapt to our new environments!

    • Photo: Sam Horrell

      Sam Horrell answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      That is going to depend on a lot of different things. The major factors being the environment around us, if were off on different planets in the future presumably humans on each planet will develop certain charateristics to suit their encvironment.

      Technology will be a huge factor in our evolution too, maybe we’ll even go down the bionic route and start intergrating human biology with technological upgrades. That’s not really natural evolution though.

    • Photo: Susana Teixeira

      Susana Teixeira answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      Evolution tends to select for characteristics that give you an advantage in the present world. It is difficult to know what these characteristics will be, because the world keeps changing… plus with the population travelling a lot now, there are many scientists that think the tendency is for us to all look more and more alike. Hard to guess!

      So for example I could argue that we no longer need to be very strong or athletic nowadays, with all the technology doing the heavy work for us. Yet body building has never been so popular… Intelligence seems to be an advantage always, so I would say it will keep increasing on average. Better nutrition will probably keep improving our longevity, but it seems in terms of height we are now at the top of what our species can do. If there is a pandemic evolution may well select stronger immune systems, so there are also possible causes for a fast selection. For the rest we’ll have to wait a few million years more to know…

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