Is evolution an Intelligent biological process or is it a trial and error process?

Question

for a life form to change in order to adapt to a new environment or physical need (like the feathers of a bird), is this change intellectual on a biological level or is it just luck?
How does the micro-organism know what shape does it need to transform itself into, even if this change takes thousands of years to occure.
Is evolution an intellectual micro-biological process or not?
Just wondering.......

Answer 1

Natural selection has been described as "tinkering". Individuals have random variations, and some of them turn out to be a good match for environmental conditions.

Evolution does not progress with a goal in mind - to fit the water better, to escape predators better, to find more food, etc. Rather, some individuals just have some little difference that lets them survive when others don't. Because the species gets to keep the good variations, these lucky variations can accumulate.

We've all seen variations. I once had a cageful of baby gerbils that were pretty much alike, but one of them ran in a circle day in and day out. As a pet, this didn't help or harm the gerbil, but it's just this sort of chance difference in behavior or structure that can prove to the be difference that helps.

My sister can sing, I can't. Two of my sons are natural mathletes, the third is a high jumper. We all have differences. One day six baby praying mantises ran past me on the front porch. Five kept running by, and one climbed up onto my sock. Would that be the difference?

Answer 2

Evolution is purely the result of luck, be it good or bad. Evolution occurs through mutations or natural selection. Mutations can lead to favorable traits that make survival easier or harder. For natural selection, think "survival of the fittest". Through the elimination of weaker individuals in a species, the gene pool become concentrated with the genes of the stronger individuals and thus stronger individuals are produced. (Think red-tailed hawks eating mice, they catch the mice that are easiest to spot by color and that are slower.)Over time the overall picture of the species will change to look more like the stronger population. (Eventually the mice will be colored more camoflaged and will be faster since these genes survived) This evolution is good for the mice but bad for the hawks, until the hawks evolve to be able to fly faster and see better.

Answer 3

This change is a biological one, and a aindividual can't evolve in a life time, because evolution takes many generations and years to occur in a population, an individual can't evolve only populations do.
Hope that helps!!!!

Answer 4

There's no intelligence behind it.

Those that have features that make them better able to reproduce spread their genes across the gene pool while those that can't die out.

The changes arise by combination of the parents genes and random mutation changing the genes around. Most of the mutations are harmful but some are good.