History Main / GoalOrientedEvolution

* Creator/TerryNation, who was responsible for the Skaro-related ''Series/DoctorWho'' examples above, also used this in his ''Series/BlakesSeven'' episode "Terminal", in which Federation scientists have created an artificial Earth with somehow "accelerated" evolution to predict how humans will develop in the far future. The show does not depict this as a stupid idea, and the results are heavily implied to be genuine in-universe confirmation that the series is set in a CrapsackWorld.

* ''Series/{{Space 1999}}'': The show features one of the oddest theories of evolution: ''everyone'' is evolving, and will eventually become perfect (apparently ignoring that pesky old mortality). Even worse, there is a mirror universe where evolution works backwards, and people gradually turn into piles of primordial soup, and traveling to this dimension will cause you to start evolving backwards as well.

** In keeping with its nature, the show thoroughly mocked the "evolution is improvement" idea with several episodes featuring the super brain-powered Observers. A race so evolved that we "are as amoeba" to them, they have evolved beyond bodies (which still have to carry their brains around in their hands) and communicate only with their minds (by using the mouths on the bodies they've evolved beyond).
--->'''Gypsy:''' Wouldn't it be more convenient to just leave the brains in your heads?
--->'''Observer:''' Convenient? Why, our brains are fully functional from our bodies for up to fifty yards.
** Also referenced in the final host segment of the last episode of the Comedy Central years (a ''2001'' parody), when the SOL crew evolves into energy. They decide to regain their bodily forms at the beginning of the first episode of the Sci-Fi Channel years.

-->'''Sheldon:''' Your doctorate is in neurobiology. I fail to see the distinction.
-->'''Amy:''' I'll make it simple for you. I study the brain, the organ responsible for Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Bernadette studies yeast, the organism responsible for Michelob Lite.
* ''Series/BabylonFive'': In one episode a super-powerful psychic has reached "the next stage" ahead of everyone else and evolves into an energy being. At the end of the series we're shown humans a million years down the line, who have all become beings of pure thought. WordOfGod is that any species that achieves the right level of enlightenment will evolve into an {{Energy Being|s}}. He further states that humans [[spoiler:and Minbari]] do eventually reach that state, [[spoiler:while the Narn and Centauri do not]].
** Even more, in one episode Kosh flat out states that the Narn and Centauri are ALREADY doomed races without any chance.
* The premise of ''Series/TheOuterLimits1963'' episode "The Sixth Finger." A scientist develops a procedure for putting an individual through future stages of evolution by [[HollywoodScience using radio waves]] [[ArtisticLicenseBiology to destroy his weaker cells]]. As seems to be common in these cases, the man in question ended-up a telekinetic, telepathic super-genius with an oversized bald head (which he claims is how all humans will look after a million years of evolution). It's implied that, if he had continued, he would eventually have become a being of PureEnergy.

* In Edmond Hamilton's 1931 short story "The Man Who Evolved", a scientist sets out to discover where the evolution will stop. He does so by inventing an "evolution chamber" and trying it on himself (which makes this also an example of EvolutionPowerUp). [[spoiler:Subverted when he turns into protoplasm because evolution apparently goes in circles -- still scientifically wrong, but at least it's a twist on the usual take on this trope.]]

* ''Franchise/StarTrek''

*** The episode "The Omega Glory" also used the 'path evolution is supposed to take' idea in order to show a planet who ''evolved the American flag and Constitution in parallel to Earth''.
*** In "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" Spock explains:
--->"The actual theory is that all lifeforms evolved [[EvolutionaryLevels from the lower levels to the more advanced stages]]."

*** A humanoid named "John Doe" encountered by the crew was part of a minority of his species that were "evolving" (actually, undergoing metamorphosis, but they called it "evolution") into EnergyBeings.
*** In the episode "Pen Pals", Riker actually invokes the concept of a "cosmic plan" as supporting the Prime Directive in justifying a decision to not save a pre-warp alien civilization about to be destroyed by a massive natural disaster. The apparent logic being that some species are "meant" to become advanced, space-faring civilizations, while others are likewise fated to become extinct, and that it is "hubris" to interfere in this process...as if they somehow stand outside the cosmos with the planner, which is most definitely hubris. Pulaski and La Forge argue vehemently against this position.
*** A later episode, "The Chase", reveals that all life in the Alpha Quadrant had descended from microbes seeded by a race of precursors billions of years ago. Somehow, because the microbes came from the precursors' homeworld, they were able to develop into multiple humanoid species on hundreds of different planets. At the same time. Who can interbreed with each other. It makes more sense than any other explanation no matter how much FridgeLogic is applied. It was implied that the DNA they seeded the universe with was somehow programmed to evolve toward humanoid lifeforms that were genetically compatible. Never mind how this means every ''non''-humanoid organism in the universe, no matter how widespread or prosperous, is doing it "wrong"...
** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': The [[CanonDiscontinuity infamous]] episode "Threshold" [[PlayingWithATrope plays with]] this trope. Tom Paris undergoes "accelerated evolution" after traveling at [[LudicrousSpeed trans-warp speeds]], and eventually reaches humanity's evolutionary goal -- he turns into a giant newt (he got better). The episode's writers later revealed that their idea was to show that the final "goal" of human evolution could turn out to be something seemingly primitive, rather than the "advanced", hyper-intelligent forms of life that this trope usually results in. They also admit it didn't turn out the way they had hoped.
** ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'': The episode "[[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS01E13DearDoctor Dear Doctor]]" showcased the "path evolution is supposed to take" misconception. This was Captain Archer's justification for refusing to ''cure a plague'' he had a cure for (he believed the civilization suffering from it was "supposed" to die out to make way for another species).

** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E4GenesisOfTheDaleks "Genesis of the Daleks"]], Davros worked out what the Kaled race ''was going to evolve into'' as a result of the centuries-long ABC war they'd been having with the Thals (apparently it was a green blob that would require a motorised dustbin if it was going to get around).
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E6TheLazarusExperiment "The Lazarus Experiment"]] has the bad guy of the week use a molecule-rearranging room to de-age himself... with the side-effect that he would occasionally turn into a hulking beast that had to suck the life essence out of other people. The Doctor explains it by saying the genetic rearrangement had accidentally activated genes from evolutionary paths humans passed by and never used. Of course, given the Doctor's [[TimeyWimeyBall way of explaining things]], this is likely just the best he can do to explain a much more convoluted concept.

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E3ImageOfTheFendahl "The Image of the Fendahl"]] had a skull from the Core of the Fendahl, an altered humanoid that served as part of a malevolent life-draining entity. The skull had, over millions of years, subtly altered a life form on the planet it landed on until that life form was suitable for creating a new Fendhal and had a subgroup manipulated into actually creating it. The human who learned he and his species existed only to spawn the rebirthed Fendahl was '''not''' happy.

*** A later episode, "The Chase", reveals that all life in the Alpha Quadrant had descended from microbes seeded by a race of precursors billions of years ago. Somehow, because the microbes came from the precursors' homeworld, they were able to develop into multiple humanoid species on hundreds of different planets. At the same time. Who can interbreed with each other. It makes more sense than any other explanation no matter how much FridgeLogic is applied. It was implied that the DNA they seeded the universe with was somehow programmed to evolve toward humanoid lifeforms that were genetically compatible. However that works.

* In ''Film/SuperMarioBros'' it is possible to put the DevolutionDevice on an inverse setting to increase somebody's intelligence. Koopa tries it on his dumb-as-bricks henchmen, failing: they become intelligent, but remain just as ineffective as before. [[spoiler:They start getting their ''own'' ideas and plan a revolution to overthrow him.]]

* The modern neo-Darwinian synthesis is in fact one of the very few evolutionary theories that forbids this trope. Until the mechanism of heredity was understood, many scientists actually supported explicitly teleological interpretations of evolution. The two best-known are Lamarckism, which is the inheritance of acquired characteristics, and orthogenesis, which holds that all life is driven to evolve in a straight path, either becoming human or going extinct in the attempt. The earliest versions of these theories rejected common descent and assumed spontaneous generation to explain the existence of “lower animals”, which only shows how hard it is to reconcile this hypothesis with what is actually known about evolution. Once Darwinism and genetics were harmonized, these theories died off because there was no evidence to support them, [[LamarckWasRight but they persist in the popular imagination]].

* The modern neo-Darwinian synthesis is in fact one of the very few evolutionary theories that forbids this trope. Until the mechanism of heredity was understood, many scientists actually supported explicitly teleological interpretations of evolution. The two best-known are Lamarckism, which is the inheritance of acquired characteristics, and orthogenesis, which holds that all life is driven to evolve in a straight path, either becoming human or going extinct in the attempt. The earliest versions of these theories rejected common descent and assumed spontaneous generation to explain the existence of “lower animals”, which only shows how hard it is to reconcile this hypothesis with what is actually known about evolution. Once Darwinism and genetics were harmonized, these theories died off because there was no evidence to support them,[[LamarckWasRight but they persist in the popular imagination]].

* The modern neo-Darwinian synthesis is in fact one of the very few evolutionary theories that forbids this trope. Until the mechanism of heredity was understood, many scientists actually supported explicitly teleological interpretations of evolution. The two best-known are [[LamarckWasRight Lamarckism]], which is the inheritance of acquired characteristics, and orthogenesis, which holds that all life is driven to evolve in a straight path, either becoming human or going extinct in the attempt. The earliest versions of these theories rejected common descent and assumed spontaneous generation to explain the existence of “lower animals”, which only shows how hard it is to reconcile this hypothesis with what is actually known about evolution. Once Darwinism and genetics were harmonized, these theories died off because there was no evidence to support them, but [[TwoDecadesBehind they persist in the popular imagination]].

* Wiki/SCPFoundation: [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1585 SCP-1585 ("Red Queen Island").]] Creatures that live on or under the TurtleIsland SCP-1585 evolve at an extremely high rate. In only a few generations animals have developed highly advanced mutations that make them much more effective in their ecological niches.

[[folder:Comics]]
* Creator/MarvelComics:
** ''Comicbook/XMen'': Many characters (particularly the villains) believe that mutants are the next stage of humanity or its successor. In fact, it appears mutants, humans, Comicbook/TheInhumans, and other species were experiments towards some vague goal set up by the Celestials.
** ''Comicbook/{{Galactus}}'' is, [[DependingOnTheWriter sometimes]], said to target worlds at the "apex of their evolution" to devour. For evolution to have an "apex", it has to have a goal.
** ''[[EvilutionaryBiologist The High Evolutionary]]'', a man who has made a career of accelerating the evolution of various species — which, naturally, all happen to be anthropomorphic afterwards.
*** At one point, a ragtag group of Avengers goes in to bust up the High Evolutionary to stop him from being... evil or something. The climax involves the villain and an Avenger both hyper-evolving into major godhood and right out of this realm. The kicker was the Avenger was Hercules, who already ''was'' a PhysicalGod.
*** In his first appearance, he hyper-evolved a wolf. This evolution came complete with knowledge of martial arts from the future.
*** This is trumped by him fighting Hulk [[ItMakesSenseInContext so Hulk would kill him]], when he changed the "evolutionary levels" of the ''Earth'', converting the ground beneath Hulk into tar (like tar pits, you know, because tar pits are like stone age, man?), then lava, then ''gas''.
*** In "What If The Avengers Lost The Evolutionary War?" (''ComicBook/WhatIf'' v2 #1), all mutant and otherwise empowered superpeople have their powers enhanced in all kinds of ways (Cyclops can now control his blasts and doesn't need a visor; Spider-Man grows four extra arms) while ordinary humans (including non-evolved heroes and villains such as Iron Man and Doctor Doom) become bigbrained superintelligent psychics.
* The "Superman of the future" (100,000 years in the future) in Action Comics #256, [[http://www.superdickery.com/even-more-time-traveling-bell-jar/ as seen on Superdickery.]]

* ''Literature/TheAdventuresOfTheRatFamily'' by Creator/JulesVerne: There's an explicit hierarchy of life-forms (with rats somewhere around the middle, above invertebrates and fish but below birds and most other mammals), and the aim of every living thing is to evolve into the highest form of life, which is Man.
* In Andrew M Greely's ''Angel Fire'' the protagonist has won the Nobel Prize for discovering goal-oriented evolution in fruit flies.
* ''Literature/ChildhoodsEnd'' by Creator/ArthurCClarke: The entire story is fundamentally about most of humanity evolving beyond their corporeal forms into a [[HiveMind mass consciousness]] and [[AssimilationPlot merging with a universal psychic gestalt]]. The story also features the Overlords, alien creatures that are an evolutionary cul-de-sac of sorts, who can shepherd other species on the road to psychic oneness, [[spoiler:but cannot achieve it themselves, and were in fact seriously considering species-wide ''suicide'' out of sheer ''boredom'' before the galactic gestalt contacted them and proposed the alternative]].
* ''Literature/CradleSeries'': It's mentioned that the human form is better at channeling [[{{Mana}} madra]] than any other. Because of this, as sacred beasts (and in rare cases, sacred ''trees'') advance, they tend to modify themselves into a steadily more human form. This is entirely a conscious choice, not a result of random mutations. Seshethkunaaz, the King of Dragons, lives almost exclusively in the form of a young human boy, but if he really wanted to he could shift to dragon form.

* One of Creator/KurtVonnegut's short stories tells of astronauts that start to evolve into huge-headed telepathic freaks after being exposed to otherworldly radiation. They're saved from this predicament by their test animals, who have been exposed longer and evolved past them and into energy beings. This trope was nicely averted in his book ''Literature/{{Galapagos}}''. The evolved humans resemble seals, and natural selection lowers their intelligence to that of animals. It's a bit misanthropic, though.
* In Edmond Hamilton's 1931 short story ''The Man Who Evolved'' a scientist sets out to discover where the evolution will stop. He does so by inventing an "evolution chamber" and trying it on himself (which makes this also an example of EvolutionPowerUp). [[spoiler:Subverted when he turns into protoplasm because evolution apparently goes in circles -- still scientifically wrong, but at least it's a twist on the usual take on this trope.]]
* Philip K Dick:
** In "Strange Eden", a man falls in love with godlike alien woman who warns him to stay away, as merely being in her presence too long will shoot him to the highest levels of human evolution. He is not dissuaded by this, sticks around and becomes the very highly evolved [[spoiler:large cat]].
** ''Literature/TheThreeStigmataOfPalmerEldritch'', set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, features "evolutionary therapy" becoming popular among the rich. It makes your [[MyBrainIsBig cranium large and bubble-like]], and increases your intelligence, although in rare cases it can backfire and ''de''-evolve you into a monkey-like state. The best part? It works by stimulating the ''gland that controls evolution''. However, evolution is at least somewhat affected by environment. The evolved people also develop hard ridges on their heads to combat the intense heat of the Earth (which will kill any normal person who isn't literally carrying an air conditioner on his back). Later on, one character runs across people from the future, who look more like TheGreys because the Earth is undergoing an Ice Age.
** In his early short story "The Guinea Pigs", a trio of astronauts is hit by a form of unknown radiation and evolve into big-brained, super-smart and physically weak beings. [[spoiler:They then discover that the [[TitleDrop Guinea pigs]] in the ship lab received a stronger dose of radiation and evolved into EnergyBeings]]. {{Lampshaded}} by one of the protagonists, who notes that evolution is not expected to have a direction and therefore their situation just proved that theory wrong.
* ''Literature/{{Slan}}'' by Creator/AEVanVogt: The titular Slan are mutants that are faster and stronger than ordinary humans, and have enhanced healing ability and psychic powers.
* Literature/TheSpaceOdysseySeries: The series discusses the "evolution" of the {{Sufficiently Advanced Alien}}s who brought TheMonolith to Earth. Read literally, it's an example of this trope, but is actually a case of a species [[TheSingularity reaching a point technologically]] where they can perform BrainUploading into machine bodies and then finally turn themselves into EnergyBeings — self-directed evolution rather than natural.
* ''Literature/TheTimeMachine'', by Creator/HGWells: Averted where the future evolutions of mankind are an innocent race, apparently less intelligent than modern humans (the Eloi) and TheMorlocks. This was influenced by Wells' early socialist ideas. The Eloi and the Morlocks represent the cultured, wealthy bourgeois people of leisure and the lower-class proletarian manual laborers, respectively. Taken to extremes over thousands of years, the Eloi are witless sheep with no spark of creativity or ambition (or even the ability to defend themselves), and the Morlocks are mechanically-apt but brutal cannibalistic savages. A little bit [[StrawCharacter Strawman Political]], to be sure.
* Averted and discussed in ''Literature/TimeRiders: Day Of the Predator'' - History has been changed so that dinosaurs never went extinct, but dinosaurs still resemble what they looked like 65 million years ago. The characters hypothesize that without any competition and by extension, any reason to adapt, evolution for the dinosaurs has 'dead-ended'.
* Parodied in ''Literature/TomorrowTown'' by Creator/KimNewman: one of the claims made by the futurists who have set up shop in Tomorrow Town is that they have evolved beyond their 1970s contemporaries, or '[[FantasticRacism yesterday men]]' as they are called. Like most things to do with their "futopia", they're quite, quite mistaken.
* In ''Uncle Brucker the Rat Killer'' by Leslie Peter Wulff, rats have this ability - they're capable of breeding up new rat breeds including a "detector" rat who's enhanced senses are capable of finding regions where other-dimensional rifts exist.
* Averted in Creator/DavidBrin's ''Literature/{{Uplift}}'' verse. Most clans believe that a species can't even develop sentience without genetic engineering (the exceptions being the mythical {{Precursors}} and maybe humanity).

* In ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' the narrator believes the Martians represent a "more highly evolved" form of intelligent life, reduced to a brain and hands, without "animal" functions like a digestive system. (They feed by sucking other animals' - including humans' - blood directly into their own bloodstream.)
* Spoofed in the SF "Worlds Apart" by Richard Cowper. The hero eats fishsticks for the umptieth time and begins to fantasize how square fishes evolved by escaping through the square fishing net openings.
* ''Literature/DaystarAndShadow'' has the revelation that autism is the next stage in human evolution, as it comes with abilities such as {{telepathy}} and water dowsing.

* ''VideoGame/FossilFighters'' ends up using this as a plot twist. It turns out that humanity and Earth's lifeforms were an accident. The Dinaurian started the process of evolution in order to make more people like themselves, but the device they used to do this broke and stopped guiding evolutionary process which resulted in Humans. It should be noted that[[spoiler: this becomes an [[TheUnreveal unreveal]]. The device they set up worked exactly as they intended it to but the lifeforms it made died off soon after. Humans evolved on their own shortly after this took place.]]
* ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry5'' provides a darker example, showing various demons that are evolved forms of more basic enemies, with the main examples being the Lusachia and Fury, the evolved forms of the Baphomet and Riot respectively, with the former evolving with more mouths in order to cast more spells and the latter evolving something between SuperSpeed and TeleportSpam so [[BloodKnight it can kill faster.]] It also explains [[spoiler: Nero's Devil Trigger, as it gives him spectral wing arms that reflect his desire, in the moment of awakening his demonic power, to reach the summit of the Qliphoth and stop Dante and Vergil from killing each other, hence grown a combination of wings and arms, though the latter might also be a reflection of his trauma over having his arm torn off.]]

* The closest thing to this trope from mainstream science may be [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution convergent evolution]] -- some body shapes are so useful (within a specific environment, that is) that many species will evolve them independently: look at the similar shape of dolphins (mammals) and sharks (fish). One of the body plans evolution likes the most (so to speak)? Crabs. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation No, really]].

Moreover, it's important to understand that this entire process can only happen when many small adaptations, each having a short-term advantage, have a cumulative effect over time. Evolution ''cannot'' generate a certain trait if the development process towards that trait only starts paying off later down the road. Evolution, essentially, works like a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_algorithm Greedy Algorithm]], which means that not only certain blunders might happen during its natural course (the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision) blind spot]] in vertebrate eyes sends its regards), but also particular features like the humanoid shape -- as successful as they might be -- may be nothing but the result of historical accident, unlikely to show up if things had gone a little differently.

[[folder:Other Sites]]
* Wiki/SCPFoundation: [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1585 SCP-1585 ("Red Queen Island").]] Creatures that live on or under the TurtleIsland SCP-1585 evolve at an extremely high rate. In only a few generations animals have developed highly advanced mutations that make them much more effective in their ecological niches.
[[/folder]]

** ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'': The episode "[[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS01E13DearDoctor Dear Doctor]]" showcased the "path evolution is supposed to take" misconception. This was Captain Archer's justification for refusing to ''cure a plague'' he had a cure for (he believed the civilization suffering from it was "supposed" to die out to make way for another species) leading some like WebSite/SFDebris to accuse him of genocide.

Moreover, it's important to understand that this entire process can only happen when many small adaptations, each having a short-term advantage, have a cumulative effect over time. Evolution ''cannot'' generate a certain trait if the development process towards that trait only starts paying off later down the road. Evolution, essentially, works like a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_algorithm Greedy Algorithm]], which means that not only certain blunders might happen during its natural course (the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision) blind spot]] in vertebrate eyes sends its regards), but also particular features like the humanoid shape -- as succesful as they might be -- may be nothing but the result of historical accident, unlikely to show up if things had gone a little differently.

* ''Series/RedDwarf'': The Cat looks almost perfectly human, but is the descendent of Lister's pet cat after millennia of evolution. The unspoken assumption is that animals evolve "towards" human. Taken further in the RPG, which includes stats for humanoid races who evolved from other animals that might be found on spaceships (dogs, rabbits, mice, rats, and iguanas).

* ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'' has SEELE believe that human evolution has reached its "pinnacle," which is their justification for the Human Instrumentality Project: [[spoiler:forcefully turning humankind into a single unified consciousness.]]

* Daniel Milo argues a lot of biologists essentially treat natural selection this way (including Darwin himself to some extent), viewing it as a mechanism that maximizes fitness, treating this like a goal it's directed toward. He and biologists whose work he cites believe this is wrong, that many organisms are mediocre and even ''mal''adaptive (dodos are a famous example-it worked just fine when they had no natural predators, although they quickly went extinct once that changed). Rather, they only need to not be ''so'' unfit that they die out. He thus titles his book as ''Good Enough: The Tolerance of Mediocrity in Nature and Society'' to reflect this. As the latter part of the title indicates, his view is that this "selectionism" also supports implicit SocialDarwinism. He thinks this has been socially destructive (even if not openly stated anymore), as it's frequently cited to support unfettered capitalism and other social practices with the idea that will leave the fittest surviving.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

Moreover, it's important to understand that this entire process can only happen when many small adaptations, each having a short-term advantage, have a cumulative effect over time. Evolution ''cannot'' generate a certain trait if the development process towards that trait only starts paying off later down the road. Evolution, essentially, works like a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_algorithm Greedy Algorith]], which means that not only certain blunders might happen during its natural course (the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision) blind spot]] in vertebrate eyes sends its regards), but also particular features like the humanoid shape -- as succesful as they might be -- may be nothing but the result of historical accident, unlikely to show up if things had gone a little differently.

* Daniel Milo argues a lot of biologists essentially treat natural selection this way (including Darwin himself to some extent), viewing it as a mechanism that maximizes fitness, treating this like a goal it's directed toward. He and biologists whose work he cites believe this is wrong, that many organisms are mediocre and even ''mal''adaptive (dodos are a famous example-it worked just fine when they had no natural predators, although they quickly went extinct once that changed). Rather, they only need to not be ''so'' unfit that they die out. He thus titles his book as "Good Enough: The Tolerance of Mediocrity in Nature and Society'' to reflect this. As the latter part of the title indicates, his view is that this "selectionism" also supports implicit SocialDarwinism. He thinks this has been socially destructive (even if not openly stated anymore), as it's frequently cited to support unfettered capitalism and other social practices with the idea that will leave the fittest surviving.

* In 2014, a strain of the Ebola virus, which causes hemorrhagic fever in its victims and, like many similar viruses, spreads only through direct contact with bodily fluids, arrived in the United States via a person who had recently been in Liberia. Immediately, people worried vocally that the virus would "become airborne" and wreak havoc on the population. The problem is that viruses do not "evolve to become airborne". The necessary changes would be no more likely to occur in random mutation than any other, and to date, no known fluid-transmitted virus has ever mutated in that particular way. Indeed, this would be very unlikely because airborne ebola would be ''too'' effective a disease. [[DoWellNotPerfect Any disease that is both highly virulent and highly deadly would swiftly wipe out all its potential hosts and go extinct before having a chance to spread.]] This is an example of how people's intuitive notions of "advanced" don't always line up with what is evolutionarily most beneficial.