In article ,
 "Representative Trantis"  wrote:

> Why is it so frowned upon to propose the idea that an animal can get worse,
> before it gets better. It is not inconcieveable that an animal could get
> worse at doing a job, but because there are no predators, etc, it doesn't
> die out.
> 
> Or is it the case that in the wild a creature will only get enough food to
> be able to survive, so must be the best it can be at it's job?
> 
> [moderator's note: I have thought about this myself: the adaptationist
> ideal is that mere adequacy must be optimized -- that is, one must be
> optimal just to persist. Is this true? - JAH]
> 
> 
> 

If there's no longer any selective benefit for a particular ability, 
then the animal will get 'worse' at that particular task. For example, 
if all the fast-running herbivores in africa were to become extinct, 
cheetahs would probably lose their speed over time as they switched to 
prey on slower animals at which their optimization for speed was 
unnecessary (assuming that the cheetahs themselves did not go exinct, 
considering that their niche -- feeding on animals too fast for all the 
other predators to catch -- would have therefore been eliminated.

-- 
|                 Andrew Glasgow                   |
| "The barbarian is the man who regards his passions as their own excuse |
| for being; who does not domesticate them either by understanding their |
| cause or by conceiving their ideal goal."   -- George Santayana        |
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