Survival of the fittest

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

So I was at the shop to buy some vegetables and I happened to see a stray dog walk by, quite normal around here but....it made me think about something..

Dogs and cats.. Probably the top losers of their respective groups... If I'm not wrong it's said that dogs are descendants of wolves. Compare a dog to a wolf and the difference is big or compare cats to the "big cats" like lions and tigers and such.. A wolf can probably kill a dozen doggies and a lion can probably kill all the cats in the world if it wanted.

Yet, where is majestic lions and wolves? They'll go extinct.. Dogs and cats will outlast them by a long shot precisely because they can be domesticated and they are capable of living in our industrialized environment. We praise these qualities now yet many years ago they must've been the biggest losers in the animal kingdom eating the leftovers of the "top dogs". But fate took a u turn, it decided to screw the strong and favor the weak. Survival of the fittest? 😏 time managed to change their weakness into a strength.
Just goes to show even if someone's having a hard time right now and feels like the world's biggest loser with time those weaknesses will turn into strengths. So everybody has a chance.

I just found it pretty amazing. Then I payed the bill and went home.

[Anomalocaris]

Throughout natural history, the apex predator in any ecosystem are usually one of the most susceptible to extinction. There is a price to be paid to live like kings. It is the loss of ability to live like paupers.

[The Grand Nudger]

So I was at the shop to buy some vegetables and I happened to see a stray dog walk by, quite normal around here but....it made me think about something..

Dogs and cats.. Probably the top losers of their respective groups... If I'm not wrong it's said that dogs are descendants of wolves. Compare a dog to a wolf and the difference is big or compare cats to the "big cats" like lions and tigers and such.. A wolf can probably kill a dozen doggies and a lion can probably kill all the cats in the world if it wanted.

Sure..the difference is immense, as you noticed.  Wolves and big cats teeter on the edge of extinction while you can't throw a rock without hitting a dog or a cat. Personally, I;d put my money on the dog and cats, because there's just no scenario in which they;d be fighting wolves or lions without the presence of their companion species..us....and we all know how that went for the wolves and the lions.

 We praise these qualities now yet many years ago they must've been the biggest losers in the animal kingdom eating the leftovers of the "top dogs".

The ability to exploit human beings hardly made them losers then or now. They we're already apex predators and have remained so since. We were the ones..particularly in the case of dogs...that weren't -quite- on the top of the pile yet. The dogs helped us get there..so we moved on them like a bitch. The cats made civilization as we know it possible. They were so important...wars were fought(partially) over their theft. The dogs and cats helped us to effect the near extinction of the species above and the total or near extinction of a great many others as well.

But fate took a u turn, it decided to screw the strong and favor the weak. Survival of the fittest? 😏 time managed to change their weakness into a strength.

What is or is not fit or "fittest" changes depending on the environment.  For example, in the environment of my house..a small dog with low food requirements..a big nose and ears..a loud bark....energy for days, and the aggressiveness to course and kill under gunfire has a distinct reproductive and survival advantage. Easy will be the Mother of Puppies.

Just goes to show even if someone's having a hard time right now and feels like the world's biggest loser with time those weaknesses will turn into strengths. So everybody has a chance.

Yeah, no...and you couldn't have gotten this from the above.  It;s a comforting deepity, but time doesn't inexorably change weakness into strength.  If you're having a hard time, and you're the worlds biggest loser..change yourself in the present.  Time isn't going to do that for you.  What time does...is kill the ones that don't improve in time..and....ultimately, even the ones that do.  

[Brian37]

So I was at the shop to buy some vegetables and I happened to see a stray dog walk by, quite normal around here but....it made me think about something..

Dogs and cats.. Probably the top losers of their respective groups... If I'm not wrong it's said that dogs are descendants of wolves. Compare a dog to a wolf and the difference is big or compare cats to the "big cats" like lions and tigers and such.. A wolf can probably kill a dozen doggies and a lion can probably kill all the cats in the world if it wanted.

Yet, where is majestic lions and wolves? They'll go extinct..  Dogs and cats will outlast them by a long shot precisely because they can be domesticated and they are capable of living in our industrialized environment. We praise these qualities now yet many years ago they must've been the biggest losers in the animal kingdom eating the leftovers of the "top dogs". But fate took a u turn, it decided to screw the strong and favor the weak. Survival of the fittest? 😏 time managed to change their weakness into a strength.
Just goes to show even if someone's having a hard time right now and feels like the world's biggest loser with time those weaknesses will turn into strengths. So everybody has a chance.

I just found it pretty amazing. Then I payed the bill and went home.

"Survival of the fittest" is a bullshit term. 

"Ability to adapt" is correct.

Think of it this way. Say a 6 foot tall boulder shaped jock who is 21 and has never had kids, meets a 5, 6 fat guy with 4 kids. The fat guy spills a drink on the jock, the jock gets mad, puffs up, wants to start a fight with the fat guy, BUT, doesn't know the fat guy has a gun. The fat guy shoots and kills the buff fit guy before he has kids. 

But yea, everyone has a shot sure. But attempts are not a given. Fact is, with ALL life, most attempts at reproduction FAIL. For every male emission in that individuals life, you have millions of sperm, but the average male only has a few kids. Same with females, most eggs go to period and do nothing. But same with trees. For every adult tree you see driving down the road, there are far more acorns that rot and do nothing.

Same with gators. They can give birth to several, but far less make it to maturity. 

Domestic dogs and cats survived because they adapted to learning that help from another species was beneficial.  But other life does that too.

[The Grand Nudger]

Technically, the 5'6 guy with 4 kids is "the fittest" in that scenario....regardless of the gun, as stated anyway. The score is 4-0, favor to the fatman.

Dogs and cats didn't adapt to help from us. We domesticated them for -their- help...except cats, those fuckers are only semi-domesticated to this day. What we did for them was more proliferation than domestication...and the small birds of the world will never forgive us for that. WMDs with whiskers. Fun cat fact, they can instinctively hunt something like 300 species of animal. They don;t have to be taught. What they -do- have to be taught..however, is the killing bite...and it;s for this reason that cat mill kittens are habitual torturers who eat small animals alive.

[Brian37]

Technically, the 5'6 guy with 4 kids is "the fittest" in that scenario....regardless of the gun, as stated anyway.  The score is 4-0, favor to the fatman.

Dogs and cats didn't adapt to help from us.  We domesticated them for -their- help...except cats, those fuckers are only semi-domesticated to this day.  What we did for them was more proliferation than domestication...and the small birds of the world will never forgive us for that.  WMDs with whiskers.  Fun cat fact, they can instinctively hunt something like 300 species of animal.  They don;t have to be taught.  What they -do- have to be taught..however, is the killing bite...and it;s for this reason that cat mill kittens are habitual torturers who eat small animals alive.

No, it only means he had kids before the other guy. If the other guy survives and the event never takes place who is to say that boulder jock wouldn't go on to have 5 or 6 kids?

[The Grand Nudger]

You're overthinking it from the starting point of a fundamental misconception. 

In any case, it wouldn't matter if he killed the guy and had 5 kids..dead fatman is already a winner in the "survival of the fittest" game..and the amount of genetic material necessary to drown out fat mans contribution in a 1v1 assessment is larger than we would expect any man..who currently has zero children and may never have any...to father and raise to -their- successful reproduction.

People commonly mistake survival of the fittest for being stronger, bigger, faster, more lethal. The OP did, and that was the underlying assumption in your creating a "jock" to begin with..but also in your putting a gun in the hands of the fatman. That's not what it means, not what it's about, and it's not a bullshit term.

[Minimalist]

Dogs, at least, are examples of "intelligent design."

The same kind of design that gives them hip dysplasia, cardiac disorders, and various cancers.  Good work, designers.

[chimp3]

Richard Leakey states that the life span of a successful species is a million years. We have a way to go. So does the hitchhiking species which attaches itself to our shooting star.

[Anomalocaris]

Dogs, at least, are examples of "intelligent design."

The same kind of design that gives them hip dysplasia, cardiac disorders, and various cancers.  Good work, designers.

The designers of dogs are indeed so incompetent they are not much better than god.