Podcast
The MeatEater Podcast
The podcast mentioned Gould's book in relation to the discussion on the evolution of salmon and the reasons behind the physical characteristics of male salmon during spawning. Gould's work was referenced as an example of how we may not always understand the reasons behind evolutionary adaptations.
He had a point he made one time in one of his books I was reading where he's kind of getting at something I'm sure you deal with and talk about all the time would be that like, we don't know why thing...
— Episode: Ep. 112: Salmon
Episode: Ep. 112: Salmon
The podcast mentioned Gould's book in relation to the discussion on the evolution of salmon and the reasons behind the physical characteristics of male salmon during spawning. Gould's work was referenced as an example of how we may not always understand the reasons behind evolutionary adaptations.
He had a point he made one time in one of his books I was reading where he's kind of getting at something I'm sure you deal with and talk about all the time would be that like, we don't know why things become the way they become.
he was using an example like, uh, someone might look and be like, wow, bark, right? Bark is Brown. What's the genetic, what's the selective advantage of Brown bark?
Like, why is it Brown? Like, what is the tree gaining from having Brown bark? And he would say, maybe what the tree is doing is that there's an advantage to having very thick bark, something structural in that because it can resist forest fire.
So the advantage is thickness of bark. Um, as over the years it's selected for thicker and thicker bark. It just so happens for, for maybe perhaps no advantageous region reason at all that it's attained a certain color.
But we look and ponder over the color thinking like, why is it that way when it's just, there's no reason it's that way. It's like green leaves. There's nothing special about that color.