If evolution is a result of random combinations, how do we explain birds talking?

Question

Birds don't have vocal cords like humans have, which is very important for talking. But when trained by a human they start learning to speak. But actual evolution theorem says that for a major change to happen it requires millions of years. Even pets become more smart as we train them while wild animals of similar species remain as they are. How is it possible?
I think a better explantion of evolution could be given using the concept of soul.
I think it would be simpler if I define soul as it is mentioned in scriptures. This is the true concept of soul. There is only one eternal soul with infinite capabilites. And its true self is eternal bliss. It can multiply itself if it feels too confined or get back to its origin by detaching whereever it has been wandering. This is what is the actual unaltered concept of soul.
A soul starting from single celled ones feeling too confined starts multiplying itself and ultimately formed many species due to its infinite capabilities. But soul...

due to its nature of getting illused as a part of what it embodies(again as mentioned in scriptures. Never mind which ones) it remains in a specific species as long as it does not realize that it is still confined. Once it realizes it begins to evolve to better forms.
It would be more hard accepting evolution by means of random combinations. It is even disputed that DNA would ever have been a result of random chance at all.

Well I am not confusing nature with nurture. I am trying to disprove the basis of evolution( not that evolution hasn't happened, but its defintion of how it happened) that it is due to random combinations. Moreover as per evolution, for animals to adapt some new things it requires millions of years. But I see some pets getting smarter every day. How is that possible?

I admit that I learnt today that its all about mimicing. But you can't trash out the core points suing that as a base reasoning. You haven't given a proper reasoning for why pets tend to be smart so fast. Can nurture contribute to evolution as per its originial theories. It has been to be millions of years for an animal to change its livinf style. Some carnivore pets simply live with vegetable habitat. Isn't that too fast evolution?

Answer 1

To previous responders:

1) Evolution is not a fact. Fossils are facts. Anatomy is a fact. Evolution is a theory. (A very, very well supported theory.)

2) Evolution is partly random. Selection is a non-random process, but evolution and selection are not equivalent concepts. Evolution is any change in allele frequencies in a population over time. Those canges can be caused by artificial selection (non-random), natural selection (non-random), genetic drift (random), bottling effects (random), founder effects (random), and other factors.

3) Whether birds are "talking" or "mimicking" is irrelevant in WorkForTruth's question. WFT could have asked the same question about chimpanzees, who can learn communication behaviors much more complicated than simple mimicry. The central issue is not "talking" vs. "mimicking". More essential are the issues of "genetic" vs. "phenotypic" and "individual" vs. "population".

To WorkForTruth: Now, on to your question. (I thought that secretsauce already did a great job answering this, by the way.)

The evolution that you refer to -- the spiritual evolution of a soul or lifeforce -- is distinct from the evolution that scientists speak of. In biology, evolution does not happen to individuals. It happens to populations. It also does not deal with changes that happen during an animal's lifetime, because they are not inherited.

Elsewhere on YA you asked this same question, with the following additional info: "If you are saying what one nurtures during a lifetime has got nothing to do with evolution, then could we assume that a person who happens to become a very smart one by all his efforts during one's lifetime will not give his/her children any smartness he acquired?"

You can indeed assume that. Non-genetic changes are not inherited. It is true that humans can pass certain non-genetic traits (wealth, education, culture) from one generation to the next, but these traits are not present at birth in the new generation. If you take two people with average intelligence levels, isolate them in a library for 20 years until they've mastered various disciplines of human knowledge, get them to have a child together, then take that child as an infant and place him with another average family, the child will be no more likely than a control child to show above-average intelligence.

Or think about exercise. If a person from a family with a long history of average physical strength spends his life working out to become stronger, his child will not inherit his new strength. His cells will contain the exact same DNA that they did when he was born, and his sperm cells -- which will, along with an egg from a female, become his offspring -- are unaffected.

More examples: A friend of mine lost three of her fingers in a car accident. And yet she later gave birth to a child was born with ten fingers. Jewish men have been removing a part of their reproductive organs at infancy for thousands of years, and yet every male baby born to Jewish parents still has a foreskin. Non-genetic changes are not inherited.

Likewise, a parrot that learns to mimic human speech (or a chimpanzee that learns to use human sign language) will not pass on this ability to its offspring. No biological evolution is occurring.

Significant changes can and do happen to indivudals in a relatively short amount of time, but significant evolutionary changes (genetic changes in an entire population) take much longer.

I hope this helps.

Answer 2

Since some birds can talk, we must assume that they have mechanisms in place that will allow this. You can see an explanation of it here:

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/pic/article.cfm?aid=574

It makes perfect sense for a bird to talk if it has the physical ability to and is surrounded by an environment of talking humans. Birds are specialized communicators and rely heavily on vocal communication. All those pretty song bird chirps you hear on a warm summer day communicate everything from territory to where a tasty meal might be to where a friend might be. Some birds will often mimic territory calls of other species of birds to trick birds of that species into accepting it.

So the ability to reproduce sounds very accurately is very vital to the existance of most birds. By the way, birds don't neccisarily just mimic the sound. There is evidence to suggest that certain parrots know what they are saying.

Other animals can't speak because they do not have the physical ability to do so. Chimps and gorillas who are raised in captivity may try to form a word or two but their larynx sits too high in their throat and they probably do not have the fine motor control in their tongue that is needed to form word. They end up making a bunch of huffs and grunts.

Answer 3

I have to admit that birds talking does just seem like animals mimicking sounds as best they can.

More to the point would be the old questions of:

If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?
Why so much diversity if its survival of the fittest?
How can DNA spontaneously contain so much new information?

Remember evolution has not been conclusively proven - that's why its called a theory and not a law, like gravity or thermodynamics.

I can accept that evolution would work but only under the influence of some external force - perhaps evolution was the process God used to develop life on this planet.

Answer 4

Birds that learn to talk do not have a vocal tract of the form humans have, so it's not an issue of evolution.

Nor do we make them smarter by training them, we simply shape their natural instincts into forms we consider 'less wild' and thus, as some biased humans perceive it, 'more intelligent'.

In short, you might want to go read a biology book or two, because it's clear you have no clue what you're talking about.

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added: It doesn't matter what you're TRYING to do... what matters is that your fundamental understanding of evolution is in error.

Evolution is not random. The closest it gets to 'random' would best be described as stochastic.

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added: Yes, you ARE confusing nature and nurture. You're looking at behavioral changes in an individual and trying to view it in an evolutionary perspective. The two have nothing to do with each other, not directly at least.

Answer 5

Evolution is not random. Mutations are random.

Evolution is the result of successful mutations entering a species' gene pool. It is randomness filtered to only those parts which allow a creature to survive.

Birds don't have vocal chords, but that doesn't mean they can't make and mimic noises. There have been, for example, documented cases of birds dumbly duplicating car alarm sounds as calls.

Don't even get me started on that last 'concept of soul' bit. That's not even pseudoscience - it's theology, plain and simple. It might be a 'better explanation' to your ears, but it's still the wrong explanation in absolute terms.

Answer 6

You don't ACTUALLY think birds can talk, do you?

Birds mimic. They've evolved that means of communicating over millions of years. It's the means they have of alerting others to their presence. They do it with or without "training" by humans. In urban areas birds have been known to mimic car alarms.

I REALLY wish people like you could know what you're talking about before you hit that Submit button.

Answer 7

Birds have a vocal organ called the syrinx, which serves as a vehicle for issuing mating calls as well as warning of hazards. The evolutionary value of this should be obvious. The theory of evolution, which has been established science for a hundred years, is now a proven fact (details on request). As for soul, you may define it however you please; proving that there is any reality behind the concept is another matter altogether.

Answer 8

Well, since your subject line assumes that evolution is a result of random combinations, you obviously don't know what evolution really is. Therefore, I'm not even going to read the rest of your question.

Answer 9

They are able to mimic the sounds that they hear. That helps them several ways. The talking is just a really neat extension of that. They don't really "talk" per say.

Answer 10

What a load of rubbish. Birds mimic-to them it's just the same as mimicking another bird's call. Get lost with your facile nonsense.