Quotes About Survival

What does complementariness mean for genes? Two genes may be said to be complementary if the survival of each, relative to its alleles, is enhanced when the other is abundant in the population.

To the extent that active germ-line replicators benefit from the survival of the group of individuals in which they sit, over and above the two effects just mentioned, we may expect to see adaptations for the preservation of the group.

An animal moves as a coordinated whole, as a unit. Subjectively I feel like a unit, not a colony. This is to be expected. Selection has favoured genes that cooperate with others. In the fierce competition for scarce resources, in the relentless struggle to eat other survival machines, and to avoid being eaten, there must have been a premium on central coordination rather than anarchy within the communal body.

Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses.

From the viewpoint of this book an animal artefact, like any other phenotypic product whose variation is influenced by a gene, can be regarded as a phenotypic tool by which that gene could potentially lever itself into the next generation.

somebody who thinks natural selection is a theory of chance whereas—in the relevant sense of chance—it is the opposite.

We are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.

Half a wing could save your life by easing your fall from a tree of a certain height. And 51 per cent of a wing could save you if you fall from a slightly taller tree.

Natural selection may usually be safely regarded as the differential survival of replicators relative to their alleles.

We are fundamentally interested in natural selection, therefore in the differential survival of replicating entities such as genes. Genes are favoured or disfavoured relative to their alleles as a consequence of their phenotypic effects upon the world. Some of these phenotypic effects may be incidental consequences of others, and have no bearing on the survival chances, one way or the other, of the genes concerned.

Scientists who use such language, whether at the level of the individual or the gene, know very well that it is only a figure of speech. Genes are just DNA molecules. You'd have to be barking mad to think that 'selfish' genes really have deliberate intentions to survive!

Polls suggest that approximately 95 per cent of the population of the United States believe they will survive their own death.

a group, such as a species or a population within a species, whose individual members are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the welfare of the group, may be less likely to go extinct than a rival group whose individual members place their own selfish interests first. Therefore the world becomes populated mainly by groups consisting of self-sacrificing individuals. This is the theory of 'group selection'

A mutant individual who was prepared to go on just a little bit longer would always win. So the strategy of maintaining a fixed bidding limit is unstable.

It is widely admitted that serious error follows from the uncritical assumption that adaptations are for the good of the species.

Germ-line replicators, then, are units that actually survive or fail to survive, the difference constituting natural selection.

replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.

The genes are master programmers, and they are programming for their lives. They are judged according to the success of their programs in coping with all the hazards that life throws at their survival machines, and the judge is the ruthless judge of the court of survival.

Active replicators have some effect on the world, which influences their chances of surviving.

Animals therefore go to elaborate lengths to find and catch food; to avoid being caught and eaten themselves; to avoid disease and accident; to protect themselves from unfavourable climatic conditions; to find members of the opposite sex and persuade them to mate; and to confer on their children advantages similar to those they enjoy themselves.

It is the effects on the world of successful active germ-line replicators that we see as adaptations.

The rabbit runs faster than the fox, because the rabbit is running for his life while the fox is only running for his dinner.' My colleague John Krebs and I have dubbed this the 'life/dinner principle'.

Natural selection favours those genes that manipulate the world to ensure their own propagation. This leads to what I have called the central theorem of the extended phenotype: An animal's behaviour tends to maximize the survival of the genes 'for' that behaviour, whether or not those genes happen to be in the body of the particular animal performing it.

A stick insect looks like a replicator, in that we may lay out a sequence consisting of daughter, granddaughter, great-granddaughter, etc., in which each appears to be a replica of the preceding one in the series. But suppose a flaw or blemish appears somewhere in the chain, say a stick insect is unfortunate enough to lose a leg. The blemish may last for the whole of her lifetime, but it is not passed on to the next link in the chain.