humans are evolving right now..into what next?

Question

flying beings?

Answer 1

Human beings don't have to evolve into anything - other than better human beings.

Evolution is based on adaptation to environment... if our environment starts to change and we are unable to keep it constant with technology then over millions of years we may evolve to adapt to the change. For example, if global warming becomes a reality then thinner people with a greater surface area to body ratio for cooling may become more common.

Current trends in human evolution are difficult to identify because we have only a tiny proportion of our history to look at. Evolution takes millions of years and our history and archeological research really only takes us back a few thousand years.

Nevertheless, some possible trends include:-
+ Increased height. 500 years ago the average height of an adult was about 6 inches less than it is today
+ Increased skull volume. This is a trend that has been going on since the first humans evolved (with fluctuations up and down along the way)
+ Deteriorating eyesight. As poor eyesight is no longer penalised because it is compensated by spectacles, contact lenses and laser eye surgery genes for defective vision may become more common in the population. If they reach a majority there may be a time when all humans have defective eyesight.
+ The fashion in countries like China for favouring only male children introduce distort gender-related abnormalities into the population either by permitting more male-linked mutations or by masking the fact that the males are carrying female-linked mutations because female fetuses are so often aborted.

Evolution into flying beings seems extremely unlikely - there is no environmental pressure to fly unaided, especially as we routinely fly using machines.

Answer 2

LOL, No. I don't think we'll ever become fliers. That isn't really how evolution works. It takes millions of years for old features to change, and new features to appear. There also has to be a purpose to the change. Take chins, for example. The original Homo sapiens did not have chins, just a jaw. They emerged because chins are aethetically pleasing.

I've heard that the pinky finger and/or the smallest toe are getting smaller over time, so they might one day disappear in humans altogether -- IF we're even still around by then.

EDIT: By the way, is it just me, or do most of the people who see evolution as idiotic not even really know what it is, or how to define it properly? What is that? >_> Ignorance breeds ignorance, I suppose.

Answer 3

Well... there seems to be a new 'critical thinking' gene... but it only seems to be present in about 5% or less of the population, and there do not seem to be any natural environlental stressors that will select for it. So, unless there is direct intervention (UNnatural selection), I fear that humanity is doomed to remain stupid and religious, overall.

Once mankind establishes long-term orbital habitats, though, where people can be born and live out their whole lives, things will change due to the physiological changes that will arise from microgravity. I predict that humans will evolve into a beach-ball body shape, with spindly arms and legs, and a tube-like, muscular, articulating anus. They will subsist on a diet of cabbage, peas, beans and beer, and will propel themselves about their weightless environment via controlled flatulence.

Oh.. and their sense of smell will atrophy... and they won't have very many visitors.

Answer 4

Detectable evolutionary change takes many thousands of years, and only works if nature is allowed free reign with death.

We're keeping people alive now who would have died in the natural state, so there's almost no selection pressure.

Like me: I should have died decades ago when my appendix burst - but instead I'm still around to reproduce my lousy appendix genes.

CD

Edit: If you want to fly, go to the moon. A big astrodome-sized chamber full of air and some small wings on your arms, and bingo!

Answer 5

There is a good argument that we are reversing evolution by our focus on keeping people alive and allowing them to breed when they are incapably of doing that without hitech medicine. So the cyborg thng is probably where we are headed - not in the sinister sense you may be thinking but in the augmented human sense, where we naturally have artificial joints lenses and heart valves when they wear out. I expect to live to see the sort of silicon interface to give us access to banked infomation that William Gbson described in the ealry 80s in neuromancer. Read that and think how it predicted much of what is here now and you will se where we coudl go.

Answer 6

Hopefully into more intelligent beings who realize that religions are no longer necessary.
Imagine a world full of enlightened people and no more superstitious Christians, Jews or Muslims. It will be like heaven.

Answer 7

Homo Superior:

Look out at your children, see their faces in golden rays.
Don't fool yourself that they belong to you,
they're the start of the comming race.
Life is a b-tch you've finished you new,
Homo Sapiens have out grown their use.

All the nightmares came today.
Looks like there here to stay.

Oh you pretty things!
Don't you know you drive your mothers and fathers insain.
Let me make it plain
Gota make room for the Homo Superior.

Answer 8

This is the second stupid freakin' question I've seen today. We're already evolved, we're humans. No, we're not going to turn into flying monkeys dumbass!

Answer 9

Just more of the same forever. you will have to get in a plane or ballon or ect.to fly as always.

Answer 10

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