Which came first? (pertaining to Biology/Evolution)

[Muffin Man]

alright everyone, I got an open question for you:

Which came first evolutionarily (there is no known answer at this point), Eyes (photosensors), Ears (in particular the balancing aspect, hearing did not come around for quite some time), Touch (Mechanoreceptors) or Taste/smell (Chemoreceptors)? and feel free to argue it out a bit, I posed this question to my Invertebrate Zoology teacher today, and he said he would come back with as many theories as he could, and I told him I would do the same.

I will tell you my theories after I hear some of yours!

-Drew

p.s. also a thread for:
Chicken or the Egg
Pancakes or Waffles
Cake or Pie

- chicken
- waffles
- pie

 

[Trotter]

Mmmm... pie.

 

[Oreo]

That is not true Oreo. They move. It is just that they are so small you dont see it. Take a look at a Ameoba under a microscope, are they sitting still? Heck no. They are in constant motion. They dont stay on the same surface their whole life. The whole point of Evolution is that we started off as single celled organisms and EVOLVED from there to the complex things we are today.

So to follow that line of thinking, we started off in the water as single celled organisms. Cause if you know anything about the history of Earth you will know that there was a time when it was fully covered by water. So we had to start off there. From there we evolved into complex fish, upon which wondered onto land and stared to evolve further.

It is at that point that things in the Evolutionary chain took all its turns. Where Dinos came from and eventually cave men. That is the whole point of Evolution. Evolved from a lower life form.

The scale i am talking about goes beyond what Apok said. Cause he is right. It isnt just a simple process. the process i am talking about is one that took MILLIONS of years. If Evolution is to believed, then the Earth itself is 4.5 Billion years old. So this evolutionary process could have easily taken place as it was not until the last 4 million years that man came to be known. It is only the last 2000 or so years that man gained consciousness of ourselves and our surrounding in order to question such things.

So i have taken what Apok and said and strecthed it back to the beginning. All this stuff sprouts up if you watch some Discovery Channel, science Channel and History Channel. Just about everything i have said, comes from watching those shows and listening to what they have said. In terms of evolution you cant use a year or even a life time as a scale. It would take generations. Basically from the time our known consciousness started to now, would be just a drop of water in the ocean for comparison.

I know what evolution is

Very few microbes live long though, seconds, minutes, hours, maybe a few days at most. Which is my point.

For instance, you will undoubtedly have bacteria on your keyboard - there is no way the bacteria are going to crawl the entire length of your keyboard onto the table before they die - atleast i doubt it. They will live on the plastic, and die on the plastic. The only way they move is from larger species of animal moving them from surface to surface, and as we are talking about the first organisms on earth, there was none.

Surely this is true of nearly all organisms, they move such tiny amounts they will never get anywhere which is a drastic change of surface before they die.

I just can not see the logic and reason behind touch developing until organisms that can atleast move a few meters in there life are around - hence i see it unlikely that touch developed first. Just my opinion, ofcourse

I mean, if you were going to be chucked into some foreign world to survive, you would not choose touch. You would choose sight, hearing, or even taste. But touch ? it doesn't really serve much purpose to any animal that does not have limbs etc to grasp and hold things.

 

[KSoD]

Sorry but your point is null Oreo. First off, we are talking about which senses are developed first. Even in a child, that is touch. They first touch a person before they see, hear or taste. Even Humans develop touch first.

A babies eyes are the last thing to actually develop and be used. They hear then taste then see. They feel first because, well the doctors slaps them on the butt to make sure they are breathing. They feel that long before they open their eyes for the first time.

Now if a full grown adult, already beyond the point of that earliest stage of evolution, of course would choose a different sense when put into a situation where they were in some foreign land to survive. But that is beyond the scope of this talk. We are talking about the FIRST sense developed. Not the first sense you would use given certain criteria.

So given that touch would be the first sense. Even though the bacteria may not move far, they still have to feel the area where they are located. Be it your keyboard, underwater or whatever. Touch would still be the first sense developed.

Your talking from a totally different aspect than what the original poster asked and what we are discussing here. You are talking as if you were taken and thrown on Mars as you sit right now. The OP asked:

Which came first evolutionarily

This is well before what you are talking about. The very first thing developed would be touch because at that time, eyes, ears, gills, throats and mouths were not developed. They were still a long time away. The first organisms on the planet were single celled simple organisms and did not have such items.

You are right, if i was thrown on Mars or some other foreign land i would not choose touch. But that is not what has been asked.

 

[Apokalipse]

In the case of bacteria, they could easily take advantage of other aspects of nature to move. Wind, moving water, other animals, etc....

 

[septic]

I might be in-line w\ trotter. And I try to always keep in mind.....Eve ate firstjj laddies. For me I always thought that evolution was parallel to the big bang theory. The only thing I ever create from an explosion is a hole in my bucket from ripping through a burried power line.

 

[Apokalipse]

I might be in-line w\ trotter. And I try to always keep in mind.....Eve ate firstjj laddies. For me I always thought that evolution was parallel to the big bang theory.

Evolution is a completely different process to the big bang, explaining two completely different things.

The only thing I ever create from an explosion is a hole in my bucket from ripping through a burried power line.

The big bang is not described as an explosion. Explosions are chemical reactions; and big bang theory states that there were no atoms to form chemical reactions until a while after the big bang. The Big Bang was at the quantum level.

Also, evolution is not even supposed to explain how life first began; only how it changed.
Scientists currently accept Abiogenesis as the theory behind how life began. (basically, the formation of amino acids, and eventually self-replication under the conditions that early Earth had.)

 

[Slaymate]

Eve ate firstjj laddies.

You have to touch it before you can eat it.

 

[kimsland]

Huh, I can finally post here. Even though the thread stated minimum 40 posts, I could not post at post count 40, I had to wait until I was above 40.

Anyway, I just wanted to mention about the Chicken and Egg syndrome (someone posted something about it ages ago but I couldn't reply then)

A long time ago
Some type of creature laid an Egg, we'll call it a prehistoric bird
The egg which was laid, was a prehistoric bird egg, as it was laid by a prehistoric bird
Then the prehistoric bird egg hatched it was some type of mutant prehistoric bird, we will call it a chicken

Therefore, the chicken came first
And this is the end of a long debate over this small issue
I waited for that It doesn't seem so exciting anymore!

 

[Muffin Man]

You have to touch it before you can eat it.

you have to see what it is before you eat it >.<