morderkaine t1_ivft4pw wrote on November 7, 2022 at 5:37 PM

Reply to comment by fastspinecho in We know about viruses, bacteria and other microorganisms evolving to better infect other organisms. Consequently, diseases change too to some extent. Are there any examples of human bodies evolving to fight against these disease causing agents? by ha_ha_ha_ha_hah

I would say that is not so - an individual doesn’t evolve, evolution is the change over time of a gene pool of a population of breading individuals. An individual human didn’t evolve the ability we have to sweat glands all over, but the slow change of offspring with better sweating abilities was selected for over a long time giving us the endurance advantage we have over most other mammals.

The change in an individual compared to parents would be more of a variance or mutation depending on what it is, it is only evolution when that change continues on in the population.

fastspinecho t1_ivfug13 wrote on November 7, 2022 at 5:46 PM

My point is that not all evolutionary changes occur throughout a species, so it is wrong to say that evolution "caters to the whole species" with "no regard" for individuals.

In the comments, you can find a discussion of the evolution of the human sickle cell gene. It evolved in a relatively small group of individuals to provide those individuals protection against malaria. Those individuals are not a separate species, and if evolution were actually catering to the species as a whole then the gene would never have evolved.