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From: rlh@cvl.UUCP (Ralph L. Hartley)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: RE: Predation, Sort Of
Message-ID: <347@cvl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 26-Apr-85 10:02:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: cvl.347
Posted: Fri Apr 26 10:02:06 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Apr-85 05:09:00 EDT
Organization: Computer Vision Lab, U. of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 26


>> [Mike Huybensz]
>> I explained this in a note I posted just yesterday.  Briefly, modern life
>> such as toads, flies, and bacteria does not arise spontaneously because of
>> their complexity.  This complexity is required to survive in a competitive
>> world.  The hypothetical first life forms that arose spontaneously could
>> be extremely simple because they could survive in an environment without
>> oxygen, without predation.
>
> [Paul DuBois]
> What makes you think there was no predation then?  (I'm not saying
> that I don't believe it, I'm just wondering why you say this.)

And no competition either. Think for a minute. What would prey on the
FIRST life form? If there were other life forms around, it wouldn't be
the first.

Now, the second life form is another matter. The evidence from the
universality of the genetic code is that only ONE organism arose
spontainiously (the recently discovered variations are irrelivant to
this point. They are changes in one or two symbols out of 64). All the
life formes that later evolved under the presure of compitition and
predation (amongst each other) were dicendents of the first one.

				Ralph Hartley
				rlh@cvl