Evolution-what If we evolved to the point where we no longer need air

[IzisviAziria]

Put the blunt down, turn yourself in to the police, and read a biology textbook while you are in prison.

Put the high horse down, go learn some tolerance, and read up on the laws while you are learning it.

You don't go to prison for smoking pot. You have to be carrying enough to be considered a distributor to warrant prison time. Otherwise the most you'll do is a small stint in county or something. Most times it's a fine/probation, if that. In a lot of liberal areas, cops won't even write you up for it. Just confiscate what you're carrying and send you on your way.

I'll give you one thing though, this topic was certainly poorly thought out. I guess what he should have asked for was a hypothetical discussion that had no basis in current science. That's really the only feasible way I can see generating a discussion out of this that doesn't immediately end in "not possible, read a book."

Ok here me out
We have come along way from tiny single celled organisims.
And we have evolved to the point where we are sentiant and we have been for awhile now.
Now would it be possible for the human race (give or take a billion years) to one day evolve to the point where we no longer needed air or to breathe.
It would redifine evrything.

Thoughts?


(capatcha I can't read arabic -.-)

Word of advice, if you're going to try and stir up some kind of theoretical, semi/pseduo-intellectual conversation, do a bit of spellcheck first. Presentation is important and misspelling half your pertinent words ruins the presentation. It feeds the fire for guys like the above-quoted to throw out judgements about use of illicit substances, regardless of truth.

*hear, not here
*a long, not along
*organisms, not organisims
*sentient, not sentiant
*redefine, not redifine
*everything, not evrything

Perhaps you can edit up your initial post and get something akin to the discussion you actually wanted.

For my bit of it, I'm calling moot point anyway; humans won't live nearly long enough for any significant evolution to happen.

 

[Sandernista]

simply put, thats not how evolution works.
A species evolves to best survive IN ITS ENVIRONMENT. While theoretically life could evolve to the point of sentience without ever needing to breathe, a species that lives in an atmosphere with oxygen and already makes use of that oxygen will not evolve to stop using oxygen.

Thank you, you cannot evolve in advance to what your environment will be. If that would happen, evolution would be intelligent.

And look at the human body, it needs oxygen, all mammals need oxygen.

All Eukaryote's need oxygen!

 

[ACman]

No. Even "Methane breathing" microbes need a source of oxygen to react with the methane which really makes them "methane eating".

You could evolve a form of life that was adapted to rarefied atmospheres but it's metabolism would have to be glacially slow; like a state of perpetual hibernation nor would it likely be more complex than a microbe.

 

[JesterRaiin]

It would redifine evrything.
Thoughts?

I don't think that we have enough time for natural evolution to kick in and change us that much. No, really, i think we are on a very fast train to extinction and the green light is always lit. However it is possible to stimulate natural processes, accelerate evolution. On small scale we can do it even now, change hair color or something like that. And i don't think we're gonna sooner than maybe thousand years from now on...

Would such mutation redefine everything ? Yes and no.
"Everything" is reeeeeeeeeeealy big word. Even without a need for air we'd still be awed and inspired by art, music, drama. Some things are either universal or really close to. We'd need to leave our bodies, change them into completely different form, with different set of senses to separate us from "everything".

Would it change our lifestyle ? Hell yeah ! Just take a look at Internet - how much it changed humanity.

BTW : Pay no attention to close minded people. Their predecessors laughed at the idea of banana shaped Earth.

 

[J.J]

Ok here me out
We have come along way from tiny single celled organisims.
And we have evolved to the point where we are sentiant and we have been for awhile now.
Now would it be possible for the human race (give or take a billion years) to one day evolve to the point where we no longer needed air or to breathe.
It would redifine evrything.

Thoughts?


(capatcha I can't read arabic -.-)

Don't hold your breath on this one kid...

Don't hold your-- DAMNIT!

Ironically enough, I'm taking a break from Biology homework. Only to realize I can understand the smart responses on this thread. Aww yeah! Basically reiterating what was already said: There is no need to evolve/adapt to a non-O2 state. But, if we did go beyond O2 somehow I'd think we'd just switch to some other gas intake? This is all ridiculous guesstures, though.

Damnit Jim! I'm a business major, not a scientist!

 

[Thaluikhain]

Its impossible to evolve to the point where we could live without Oxygen simply because Oxygen is one of the basic building blocks of life. Even the tiny single celled organisms that first spawned on earth millions of years ago didn't do so until the atmosphere had oxygen in it.

Erm...there was (and is) only so much oxygen around in the atmosphere because of living creatures producing it as a waste product, mind.

...

I wouldn't actually say that it would be totally impossible for this to happen, only massively improbable. I'd imagine that theoretically it'd be possible, in the same way that I might get struck by lightning twice while an asteroid falls on me before finishing this sentence.

 

[The Dutchess]

There are anaerobic respirators (mainly bacteria and other little organisms) but they just use other things besides oxygen. Actually humans anaerobically respirate when starved of oxygen but it produces toxins (which is why you get a painful stitch in your side when running hard) which are harmful so we can't continue for very long.
Basically if we didn't respirate using oxygen we'd need something else in plentiful supply so it wouldn't really change things that much.
Even if we didn't need ANYTHING (impossible but ok) it wouldn't be that exciting. We could stay underwater as long as we wanted and astronauts might be able to take their helmets off on the moon - that's about it.

 

[ikabodjohn]

Ok here me out
We have come along way from tiny single celled organisims.
And we have evolved to the point where we are sentiant and we have been for awhile now.
Now would it be possible for the human race (give or take a billion years) to one day evolve to the point where we no longer needed air or to breathe.
It would redifine evrything.

Thoughts?


(capatcha I can't read arabic -.-)

What would change?, except scuba diving companies would go bust.

 

[thequixoticman]

Actually humans anaerobically respirate when starved of oxygen but it produces toxins (which is why you get a painful stitch in your side when running hard) which are harmful so we can't continue for very long.

Just to make a small correction on this - your science is a little out of date. Lactic acid doesn't cause fatigue, it acts to lubricate muscles further and assist in strenuous activity. Current theories on muscle fatigue suggest that what we're really seeing is a break-down of tiny bits of calcium causing those cramps and fatigues. Scientists have experimented with mice, giving them genetic attributes that assist them in dealing with calcium build-ups and have dramatically increased their endurance.

Granted, lactic acid is not something the body really likes to have in it. The body has to work fairly hard to break it down once strenuous activity is done. But it is not the cause of cramping.

As to the original post, given that oxygen is a necessary component to how we get the vast majority of our energy, it being a key component in cellular respiration, the degree of change necessary to make oxygen unnecessary in the body would probably be well enough that those non-oxygenated beings would bare about as much resemblance to humans as an electric engine with a face. But - just because I'm curious - why exactly do you think it would "redefine everything?" We wouldn't be able to explore any places more than we already can (we have ways of giving ourselves O2 when away from plentiful supplies). As others have pointed out, we would need to develop a different method of getting energy to the body, and this would change a great deal, but not breathing O2 would be much more a consequence of that than the great change itself.

 

[leonhax]

seriously if humans as a species had to evolve why would you want the ability to not have to breath oxygen (although already stated that is impossible) if anything you would want something a bit more usable like having the night vision of a tiger or a sharks ability to detect electronic fields. thats something i would want the human race to evolve towards (highly unlikely but still something i would wanna see)

 

[Evil Top Hat]

It would not be possible.

 

[Ledan]

Only if we artificially breed humans to not need air.....
Or if we no longer have technology to remove evolution, and thus have to cope with less and less air being available. Even then, you need some for of fuel for life.

 

[Neonit]

rule number one - nothing is impossible. if human declares something as impossible, nature has a tendency to give humanity the finger, and make it possible. some time ago people have thought that nothing can live in acidic environment that has a temperature exceeding the one of boiling water. guess what happened then.

so dont declare something as impossible, because frankly (and i dont intent to offend anyone) a lot of smarter people were surprised by nature.

but yeah, so long we have oxygen, we wont evolve past needing it. doesnt mean its impossible though.

 

[Pat8u]

wait we could mutate then that will become the prefered gene thus eventually making humanity survive without breathing
(Note I might be talking out of my arse but genes can mutate)

 

[Agow95]

Impossible, even if we did need to evolve to survive without air, we could never achieve that seeing as we require oxygen to fuel ourselves, Glucose + oxygen = CO2 + H2O + energy, we can do that without oxygen but it isn't efficient and produces lactic acid which would damage our muscles.

 

[Monsterfurby]

The question is: why would we?

Evolution is a reactive process - we evolve to 'fit' the environment we are in, not to be the 'optimal being' we can be. Without air though - I suppose we wouldn't have a chance to adjust to that. If our atmosphere thinned, yeah, maybe we could adjust to use oxygen more efficiently, but live entirely without it?

 

[JochemDude]

That's not how it works. We evolve towards nature, not against nature.