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Painting_Agency t1_j50grma wrote

Reply to comment by deadcommand in Given that reproduction is difficult or impossible when both animals have different numbers of chromosomes, how did so many species evolve to have so many different numbers of them? by MercurioLeCher

> “we’re not entirely sure.”

As someone with a moderate biological education I always assume "if the chances of something are low, just remember evolution has a LOT of time and a LOT of DNA replication events to work with" is the answer to weird questions about evolution.

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deadcommand t1_j50l18n wrote

I both like and dislike that. Because on the one hand, yeah, you’re not wrong. On the other, it feels a bit like it discourages exploration as a kind of “yeah it just be like that” sort of thing.

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Painting_Agency t1_j50w1ap wrote

The thing is that with science we CAN explore how things happen. There isn't really a "why" in evolution though. I mean, there is a why in the proximal sense, but there's no plan. Alleles either propagate in a population or they don't. With good data analysis we can map how that happened, when it happened, and we can postulate and test what causes it to happen.

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