I hear folks saying bugs are dying off because of changes in the environment, but shouldn’t bugs be some of the best equipped to handle changes? I imagine they reproduce faster than humans, and so I’d think their genes could adjust faster as well. You’d think we’d be having a worse time than bugs as the environment changes?
In: Biology
They will evolutionarily adapt faster than humans.
That’s still too slow for the multiple rapid changes we’re causing to their environment. It took the peppered moth about 50 years to fully adapt to the soot from industrialisation ruining their camoflage. The pressure we’re applying to insect populations is stronger and more multifaceted, making it harder to adapt.
Most human adaptation isn’t evolutionary but technological. We can live in places that are too cold or too hot because we have heaters and air conditioning, not because our bodies are capable of surviving those environments. We can survive in places with no easily accessible food because we can move it around in trucks, not because we adapted to eat the food that is avaliable.
It is quite likely that within this generation, climate change will cause populated areas of the world to become uninhabitable for significant parts of the year without relying on air conditioning, as sweating simply won’t be enough.
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