What does evolution answer?

Answer 1

The theory of evolution explains how life changes and diversifies. All life has a common ancestry. That is, the three clades of life - the bacteria, the eukaryotes and the archaebacteria- all have a single origin and diversified from there.

Evolution makes use of the fossil record along with examination of comparative anatomy to describe the sequence of morphological forms life has taken. Fossil-wise fish precede amphibians, and synapsid mammal-like reptiles precede true mammals. In the case of morphology, whales have tiny limb bones showing an ancestry of being four limbed and thus presumably terrestrial. Evolution uses geology, continental drift and rising and falling sea level data to explain life's past and present biogeography. Rising and falling sea levels can leave land bridges for species to cross from continent to continent, for example from North America to Russia. Evolution can be described as the 'underpinning of all Biology'. In other words, what evolution 'answers' is life itself.

The base-unit of evolution is the gene. To draw evolutionary trees, modern taxonomists and phylogeny constructors use DNA and RNA data to compare species. In this way, it was discovered that shrews and bats are closely related and pangolins are closest to the Order Carnivora (cats, dogs, mongooses, bears, seals etc).

Evolution thus even unifies genetics with anatomy and all other zoological aspects one may think of. Evolution really is the answer to all life.

Answer 2

Behavioural tendencies are largely governed by innate instincts, in animals even more than in humans. And since innate instincts are in turn affected by inherited genetic factors, evolutionary theory can be used to model how these traits develop over time, just like it can be used to model the development of other inherited traits.