Molded by circumstance

We watched March of the Penguins the other night. I'd seen it at the dollar theater, but it was definitely worth watching again. Anyway, it got me thinking. When the movie came out, creationists came out of the woodwork to declare the movie as evidence of design by a benevolent creator. I honestly didn't see that (not surprising). What I saw was natural selection at work. It was at times beautiful, and at other times terrible. But it was all there.

Penguins are funny-looking birds who live at the South Pole and perpetuate themselves every four years. It's really an amazing thing to see. Every fourth March, all the penguins come from their own little corners of the ocean to the middle of an ice mass to mate. Why? Because long ago, some penguins figured out that the middle part doesn't melt. Well, not all the way. The one who didn't figure that out naturally died off. So now, ages down the line, this is where they come to. Why? because they're the distant offspring of the first to figure it out.

Of course, some penguins don't make it. They lag behind and don't get there in time. They, too, die off. Natural selection.

After laying their eggs, the females transfer them to the males who keep the egg warm under belly fat. This is because the females' need to eat is more urgent than the males'. Some couples (penguins are annually monogamous) rush the transfer and the eggs freeze and die. Again, natural selection. Then the mothers walk off to look for food (i.e. an opening in the ice where they can swim and eat) while the fathers keep the chicks warm. Some of the mothers don't come back. Why? They get caught by predators. Seals gotta eat too, right? Naturally, the ones who don't come back and get eaten are the ones who, for whatever reason, allow themselves to be caught, for example by not swimming fast enough. Not only does the penguin die, but the penguin's chick dies as well (of starvation). Again, it's natural selection.

The fathers, meanwhile, have figured out that their chicks won't die if they regurgitate some kind of edible milky substance and feed it to the chick. The ones who didn't figure that out died off long ago. Eventually, the chicks are big enough to go out on their own and socialize with other baby penguins. Unfortunately, some are picked off by predators. Can you guess which ones? Yes! The ones who can't get away. Once the mothers get back, the fathers go out to search for food. They take turns getting food until the chicks are old enough to fend for themselves. When that happens, the parents go their separate ways and head back to their own little corners of the ocean. The new generation of chicks eventually goes off and finds its own little chunk of ocean to call home. Four years later, they'll come up and march back to where they were born, hoping to get lucky.

It's all a beautiful process. Nature selects which birds live and which birds die. It's not a planned selection. There's no intelligent force behind it. There doesn't have to be. The ones who live propagate the species, while the ones who die fade away.

Consider now that penguins continue to evolve. Well, they do. How? Natural selection, genetic drift, the occasional beneficial mutation. They didn't show any mutation in the film, mind you, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. In fact, that's the point. The film is just a cross section of the evolution of penguins. 100,000 years down the road, they may have changed drastically. We don't know.

My overall point it this. Penguins aren't special. They're unique, as we all are, but they aren't special. There aren't any natural laws that apply only to penguins. They are just creatures molded by their circumstances. We all are. No one on this planet is the end result of evolution. We're all just another generation in a seemingly endless continuity of life.

Of course, some people just can't accept that.

- Naval Gym Locker