The Ugly of Evolution (the Egret and the toad)

I love birds, like the Florida egrets. I love frogs and toads, always have since early childhood. But to watch an egret impale a toad like I just did minutes ago, see it walk off, then drop the poor amphibian to stab it again and again, just... I know, if the bird didn't do that daily, with toads, lizards, frogs and who knows what else, it would starve and die. A terrible death. But so is being carried off and stabbed to death by a large monster.

That's the part of evolution I've always hated. Adaptations to changes in the environment, adaptations in predator-prey relationships is not about life it's about death. On individual levels it's often random. That toad may have been more capable at evading prey than its siblings, either by speed or by hiding, yet they'll live to reproduce instead of it. The egret may have been slower physically or neurologically than its siblings, yet it caught its food while while the others may starve, or are killed some other way. But the accumulation of several generations is not random. Those more likely to survive will spread their allels throughout the population precisely because those even slightly less well-adapted have died. And when evolution does not happen, it is because there is pressure to stay the same instead of adapting. That too is a process of death more than life, as those individuals that are slightly different are either less able to survive or are less likely to be chosen as mates. Or both.

Evolution is an amazing phenomenon when I see what its results are. I can understand why many have a need to believe that a creator-god exists to make it all happen. After all, plants and animals look so well designed! And many of them are spectacularly beautiful. They had to have been designed by someone, or by someones, such I used to believe (angels, working under the direction of Michael, Jehovah's firstborn son. The same mind cannot have designed both butterflies and wasps). But the truth is, as best as we can determine, is that they were designed from the bottom up, from individual groups and species by blind, impersonal  forces of selection, instead of top-down, by master architects.

I also love mice. And I have great affection for cats.
*groan*