Comparison Of Everyday Math And Evolution By Lewis Carroll

The first theme that impressed me in this book was the comparison of everyday math and evolution. This idea impressed me because the topics of math and evolution are usually never discussed together. After reading about this topic, where Carroll placed math and evolution together into one theme, I do agree with him on this idea. He suggests that chance is involved in evolution over time. I like this interpretation because it makes sense that it is almost up to chance when a certain heritable trait survives. For instance, in the pigeon example in the book, there were pigeons with white patches on their rumps that were attacked by falcons less frequently than pigeons without the white patch. This seemed by chance that the falcons happened to …show more content…
This theme mainly focused on the evolution of opsin genes to improve color vision in mammals. Color vision is thought to have evolved in humans into what it is today because of its’ importance. Mammals with trichromatic vision are more likely to choose food that looks better to eat. This could have been a reason for mammals to adjust their existing color vision alone because the animals with the better food to eat will probably survive better overall. So, I agree with this theme because it is saying that over time humans, mammals, adjusted their color vision to adapt to their evolving environment, and also acquired extra opsin genes to do so. Adjusting color vision over time seems plausible because as the colors change in the environment, the ability for mammals to see those colors should probably change too. This change in color vision was also predicted to help find a mate in certain species. If a female animal is able to see the colors of the two males that are fighting for her better, then she might have an easier time choosing a mate. Overall, the evolution of opsin genes was necessary to allow the color vision of different species keep step with the environmental changes that were occurring as