If a human being is born with more limbs then necessary would that be considered a deformity or evolution?

Question

With current headlines of a newborn being born with extra hands and extra legs. Would you consider this a sign of evolution or rare deformity that would have to call for extreme measures. Would you consider the human race still primitive due to our own fears of the unknown and evolution?

I know the question does not follow well with what I was asking, they were two seperate questions. I was just curious & it wasn't necessarily pertaining to the newborn that recently made headlines.

Answer 1

I would consider it evolution in a sence.

Answer 2

If in 1000 years from now everybody had an extra limb that wasn't necessary, I would say that the human race had evolved with a gross deformity. I think they will look back in 1000 years and consider the people living in 2007 to have been primitive by the year 3007 standards. And, I think there are some people on this planet today that are still living by primitive means compared to the most modern of today's cultures. And, I cant help but think that your questions are a little bizarre.

Answer 3

Today itself I saw a picture of a 2 years old Indian girl, Lakshmi, in the morning newspaper. She has four legs and four arms, extra limbs attached to the lower part of her body. That really is no evolution. It is a deformity when the foetus (twin) started to divide itself abnormally and stopped at extra limb formation for whatever reason.

Its true the cases of abnormalities are increasing but that cannot be termed as evolutionary for humans. There's more to it than meets the eye.

p.s. The capable surgeons perfomed gruelling 27 hours surgery on the child and successfully removed the extra limbs.

Answer 4

If the extra limbs provide some kind of advantage (ie if they make life easier, and make it more likely that their owner will live longer and reproduce)

AND

If the extra limbs are inheritable (ie if her offspring also have extra limbs)

AND

If you wait 100 000 thousand years or so and can still find people with these extra limbs

Then, sure, I'd say it was an example of evolution. But given our lifespans there's really no way to tell.

I can give you a much better example of evolution. The very fact that you are alive and contain an amalgamation of your mother and father's DNA, and are capable of producing offspring, says that you are capable of passing on your own genetic information. This is evolution in action.

Answer 5

If the sudden change helps the organism reproduce more successfully in nature, it would be considered a beneficial evolution. But at the same time society would consider it a 'deformity' because then you're different than everyone else.

A freak. A monster. A misfit. Alien. Scary. Repulsive. So it better be pretty good, or you won't get many dates.

And stop asking questions from movies. ;-)

Answer 6

That depends on whether it helps them adapt to their environment and increase their odds of surviving and reproducing and passing on their genes (that's evolution in a nutshell).

Evolution is best undestood from the present looking backward. The attempt to determine where evolution is heading looking forward to the future, however, is futile. Basically, at present, humans are very adapted to their environment. The only real threat we face is the ability to change our environment so fast that we don't even understand the consequences of what we're doing. I am not sure how a couple of arms helps in that regard. I'm not sure it really how it hurts either so if your happy with extra arms or legs I don't see anything wrong with it.

However, the fact that we rarely see this sort of thing, makes me start wondering if it is due to some kind of exposure to something, a toxin of some sort, that may be having all kinds of effects we don't realize.

Answer 7

According to the most modern theories on evolution, evolution is actually deformities that work.
99,99 percent of the time or more, a deformity (mutation is the scientific term) is a bad thing. So they tend to be weeded out. That other 0.01 percent of mutation actually give you an advantage. So you get to pass on that advantage to your offsprings because you're more likely to live to have them.
So since extra limbs usually prove to be a disadvantage (they don't really work and actually take up resources) evolution would tend to weed out that kind of mutation.
Of course, other factors could explain increased mutation rates, such as pollution, the presence of radiation, etc...

Answer 8

I think it totally depends on whether the limbs were able to be utilsed to improve the efficiency of the person. Evolution dictates that a change is brought about because of need, and I can't think of why you would need 4 extra limbs. She has no funtion in those extra limbs either.

Answer 9

It's not evolution because it's not an inheritable trait. She was a Siamese twin, but the twin simply stopped developing while still in the uterus.

Yes, humans are still quite a primitive and immature race, still driven more by our emotions and beliefs than our rational thought.

Answer 10

It depends if the person can move it perfectly and it doesn't negatively affect the persons body structure then evolution

if it doesn't work and it is harming the person than it is a deformity

Answer 11

no, its a deformity, its a mix up with the genes, evolution requires that characteristic to be able to be passed on and useful, furthering the ability of the individual organism to reproduce