Status: News
Cy the one-eyed kitten, whom
many people refused to believe was real, has
found a permanent home at the
Lost World Museum, a creationist museum that will be opening later this year in Phoenix, NY. John Adolfi, owner of the museum, will use Cy to support his argument that mutations can not be the driving force of evolution because
"The mutations I have seen, like Cy, are either neutral or negative." Evidently Adolfi has never bothered to read a Biology textbook (or he only reads creationist-approved ones) because every explanation of evolution that I've read states quite clearly that the vast majority of mutations are negative. But the more I think about it, the more appropriate it seems for a blind, one-eyed kitten to be a symbol for the Creationist view of the world. So maybe Cy has found the right home. (Thanks to everyone who sent me links about Cy. I got quite a few emails about this.)
Comments
I've noticed the creationist/ID people do that a lot.. they hold up some small quibble and say 'because *this* bit here is unknown or wrong or we chose to interpret it that way, your entire logical reasoning is false, and therefore, all of science is false!'. Pointing out the fact that Cy is likely a birth defect rather than bona-fide mutation isn't likely to sway them either.
Mutations are those which can be passed on genetically. Had he survived to breeding age, Cy might have passed on his fur color, but probably not his good looks.
Yes, 99.999% of all mutations are either neutral or harmful. It's a random process. But every so often, a critter will get an extra fold of tissue that makes it possible to store food a little longer than its buddies, and will survive a famine, or that annoying fungus kills off all of a certain species of plant except for one or two particularly resistant specimens.
Evolution isn't instant. Mutations are subtle, small, and only really come into play when the entire rest of the species gets wiped out because they lack it, or at the very least, they don't do nearly as well.
Don't forget DEAD!