Recent Comments

1. 8 days ago on Herman

   The natural world is far from anybody’s definition of “perfect”. Ask anyone with back problems from the fact that our spine is a hack on what we had when we first stood upright – whatever works long enough to reproduce. Is the antelope fast because some designer wanted to starve the lion? Is the lion powerful because some designer wanted to kill antelopes? Or is it simply the case that the lion will catch the slowest antelope and the strongest lion will catch something? Look at the rocks of the earth. Almost every plant and animal that ever lived eventually went extinct and died. Not a good track record for a supposedly omniscient designer.

2. 8 days ago on Herman

   There is no thinking. Water just runs downhill.

3. 9 days ago on Herman

   Nobody “decides” anything. If early markings that might be mistaken for eyes chances to make them slightly less likely to be eaten, they will be slightly more likely to survive to pass genes for those markings on to their progeny. Any further mutations that chance to make the markings more convincing to predators will build on that.

4. 9 days ago on Herman

   Of course it didn’t just happen. Mutations cause markings on animals to vary. If a variation is useful for survival, that organism is a bit more likely to live to reproduce. Of course, mutations tend to happen repeatedly, so even if one occurrence doesn’t “take” it will likely happen again and get another shot (which is useful when environmental changes happen). In this case, each change which looks more like “eyes” will improve the situation. Eventually, you get to a point where eyespots get good enough that they become strongly adaptive and then are even more strongly selected. Such runaway processes can produce really amazing effects.

5. 17 days ago on Non Sequitur

   That’s “unauthorized equine relocation specialist” thank you very much!

6. 19 days ago on Monty

   Oh, okay, yeah, I see what you mean now. It does look like he’s rubbing his teeth with his tongue in the previous panel. Thanks.

7. 20 days ago on Monty

   He’s breathing into his hand to see if he can smell his breath on it.

8. 21 days ago on Sherman's Lagoon

   FROGS GOT TEETH!!

9. 22 days ago on Lio

   She has a class with Lio, so for her it’s just business as usual.

10. 22 days ago on The Flying McCoys

    NCDRAs – catchy