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And I know there's a monkey in the future for you
And there's nothing modern science can do
Keeping the thumb but I'm getting dumb
I'm devolving, I'm devolving
I am de-evolving
And now, out among the stars, evolution was driving toward new goals.
According to Darwin, evolution is slow, filled with dead ends, and is grossly inefficient. Science Fiction tidies it up a bit.
In fact, Science Fiction writers love the notion of evolution, especially when it irritates their critics. Ironically enough, they often make quite a few faith-based assumptions themselves.
One popular misconception seems to be how the entirety of evolution is preprogrammed, past and future. Evolutionary states that don't exist yet are just waiting in human DNA to be triggered by rather simple means, as opposed to the culmination of little changes brought on by passing down genes over hundreds of generations. Goes hand in hand with the idea that a certain evolutionary path is "supposed" to happen.
Likewise, it's easy to regress in evolution. A Mad Scientist or a Negative Space Wedgie can hit humans with rays that will turn them into Neanderthals or modern monkeys, regardless of the fact that humans evolved from neither. Our ancestral lineage goes back to a genus of apes, not monkeys; apes and monkeys having split off from each other a long time ago; and neanderthals are a cousin species of ours, not an ancestor species.
One problem (which applies almost every time evolution is mentioned in fiction, not just in this trope) is the misconception that biological evolution is a sort of process of continual "improvement", making everyone bigger, faster, stronger, and smarter all the time, with the inevitable end result that we're all super-powered deities. This is not the case; while evolution certainly can make things bigger, faster, stronger, or smarter, those are secondary to the real process. Evolution is actually the result of adapting to survival in your specific environment through the preservation of the genes that are best for reproducing in that environment. It is also quite possible for a creature to evolve to be smaller, slower, weaker, or stupider when (say) its muscles or brain are consuming unnecessary energy and are more than it really needs to reproduce, and thus individuals born with "handicaps" in these areas are more successful and have more descendants.
An excellent example of this would be blind cave fish, which have evolved to lose their sight; while by most standards and in most environments eyes would be considered a big advantage (and their loss a severe disadvantage), to a species of fish that has lived for generations in complete darkness they are purely a disadvantage — they're vulnerable to disease or parasites, they require energy to grow and keep functional, and so forth. Thus, over time, they lose their sight. Those who are born with a mutation that makes them naturally eyeless (who would have been outcompeted and starved under lighted conditions, thus weeding out the trait) become predominant in the gene pool, as they waste less effort growing something useless.
Another common evolutionary misconception has to do with the so-called intermediate stages. Evolution is presented in science fiction as a cycle of stable periods punctuated by periods of high mutation where the "leap" to the next stage happens all at once, within the span of a few generations. If you happen to be an individual born during one of these intermediate phases, the story might even have you spend part of your life in the old form, then spontaneously mutate into the new one (see Energy Beings for some examples). This could conceivably be based on the theory of punctuated equilibrium (though it's usually more to do with the theory of three minutes until the episode ends), where long periods of stability in which not much evolutionary change happens are interrupted by shorter periods of flux where a lot of evolutionary change happens. However, in reality, the "short periods" of change are still measured in millions of years and do not involve spontaneous transformation within an individual's lifetime. With only hypothetical exceptions, the only non-transitional forms are extinct forms (and there are plenty of those).
Relatedly, in Science Fiction, evolutionary mutations are usually triggered by a change in the environment (aka Lamarckian Evolution). In real life, it's not that the earth flooding causes people to start growing gills — a small number of people were growing gills all along, but it was a lot harder for them to get dates before the flood made those people more likely to survive long enough to bear children than the ones who weren't.
Evolutionary Levels also have a strange tendency to suddenly affect large populations at once. For example, Mutants all around the world suddenly have the same mutation at the same time. In real life, mutations happen rarely and are then passed on to a greater share of the population, generation by generation.
Evolved humans often have gigantic heads that house massive brains, often giving Psychic Powers along with increased intelligence, and are physically weak. However, this has slowly slid into Discredited Trope territory over the past few decades. An overevolved human will typically be described by the specific term homo superior ( X-Men, The Tomorrow People, Red Dwarf, Babylon 5, Time Trax, David Bowie's "Oh! You Pretty Things"). However, the concept of future generations of humans transferring their brains or their minds into machines or robotic bodies is slowly gaining popularity over the evolved human trope.
This has been a popular misconception since Darwin started publishing his theories, making this Older Than Radio.
However, note that Science Marches On; Scientists at Princeton University have suggested that some organisms may have the capacity to direct their own evolution. This hypothesis, coming as it does from only one set of experiments, is hardly widely accepted by the scientific community. Time will tell.
Subtrope of Hollywood Evolution. See A God Am I for one end result of sufficient hopping through Evolutionary Levels. See Ascend To A Higher Plane Of Existence for another. For super power inheritance, see Lamarck Was Right and Superpowerful Genetics. When each generation is on a higher "level" than the previous one, get ready for some Goo Goo Godlike action. For villains using this, see Darwinist, Evilutionary Biologist and Evil Evolves.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- Most of the titular critters in Pokemon have stronger forms they can "evolve" into under the appropriate stresses and circumstances. (To their credit, though, the official backstory is that Pokemon evolution "isn't like Earth's other organisms.") A better term might be metamorphosis, considering Pokemon was inspired by a rather imaginative idea of insect collecting.
- The word "metamorphosis" was probably considered too big and complicated for the target audience.
- Pokemon also has a straight example, in that vaguely foetus-like Mew is supposed to be the evolutionary origin of almost every Pokemon in the traditional evolutionary sense... and evidences this by having their DNA integrated into its own — the "hardcoded future evolution" misconception not just writ large, but in 50-story flashing neon pink letters.
- It's technically not incorrect, all living things share a similar genome, the major differences segmenting off different branches and within the branches, different genes are expressed. For example, all mammals share a majority of their DNA. In this sense, Mew is the Last Common Ancestor for all Pokemon, that is, all species are descended from it.
- It gets better, though, with the two kinds of Shellos and Gastrodon in the Generation 4 games.
- Also, some of the higher stages of evolution lose traits that they had in their previous forms; usually it's a decrease in speed, like when Scyther evolves into Scizor, or the ability to learn certain abilities (although if they learned them before they evolve, they can still use them no problem).
- Others like Eevee has a wide open backyard to go into. A total of 7 evolutions says a lot especially when they all differ from the primary pokemon.
- Then there is Shedinja which... comepletely defies the laws of evolution by having one creature become two completely different ones.
- The funniest example of course comes in the form of Porygon. All of its evolutions are all upgrades of the former which means that it is really is not evolution, you are just updating Porygon.
- Likewise, various nonhuman denizens of Digimon, although they jump back and forth between the various stages of evolution. This is lampshaded a few times, explaining digimon at best can form "complex mimic proteins" from digital information, but thus not really animals.
- The third season, which provides the above explanation, actually frames it in a completely logical manner: Digimon originated as computer simulations of evolution. Thus, it would make perfect sense that they can rapidly "evolve". For the level backsliding, that's an oddity only experienced by the main character's partners - all wild Digimon only go "forward", especially those in the digital pets on which the series is based.
- In Gao Gai Gar, Guy Shishio and his girlfriend Mikoto are transformed at the finale of the series into Evoluders, which is stated as the pinnacle of human evolution. As shown by Guy in the later OVAs, Evoluders are able to run as fast as a bullet train, are incredibly strong, can fly, and can survive in the vacuum of space thanks to a nifty green aura they can generate. That's quite a step up from what we can do, if this editor does say so himself!
- Mikoto specifically also has regeneration and telepathy to an unknown degree. Really, FINAL just uses Evoluder as an excuse for Guy and Mikoto to do awesome and dramatic things at every turn.
- Of course, they do seem to be at least partly technological in nature, as evidenced by the green circuitry that can be seen glowing through their skin when they do something particularily impressive. It's probably based on the prediction that humanity will eventually use Nano Machines to take control of their own "evolution".
- There's also the fact that the "evolution" is probably less biological evolution and more Guy's body literally fusing with the Green Rocks that the entire show runs on.
- Cowboy Bebop features an episode where eco-terrorists develop a virus that acts on the 2% difference in DNA between humans and chimpanzees. The virus would revert humans into apes but leave everything else in the environment untouched.
- Newtypes in Mobile Suit Gundam were originally written as the next stage of human evolution, but later series distance themselves from this conception, and the finale of Gundam X explicitly debunks the notion.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has this as a major theme. Spiral Power is apparently the spirit of evolution found in all naturally evolved creatures. Humanoid forms are the best for channeling Spiral Power, which is why a) Humans Are Special and b) Humongous Mecha are actually effective weapons of war. Also shows up in a one-off example, when Team Pet Boota spontaneously evolves, Pokemon-style, into a speaking humanoid form for about an episode and a half before he goes back to normal. Through sheer force of willpower, no less.
- It's actually like Nietzsche's concept of "The Will To Power", drenched in GAR. What it really is, is the distilled form of the desire to overcome all obstacles. Since evolution is how life itself overcomes obstacles, it's a major part of that, but it goes much deeper.
- Boota doesn't really evolve into Humanoid Boota, though. It's a dream-universe created by the Anti-Spiral like everyone else's; Boota's dream was that he could evolve into a form to help Simon fight. But then, the only reason Boota had a dream-reality of his own was because he started manifesting spiral energy of his own, which the Anti-Spiral didn't think he should be able to do, so he was evolving through willpower in a sense.
- A mid-90s Black Jack movie featured groups of people who had developed incredible and highly advanced abilities in a variety of fields, including athletics and art, used the "next stage" terminology. They developed extremely dangerous side-effects also, and it was eventually revealed that, apparently, limited exposure to chemicals found only in a remote desert migrated across the world and advanced certain individuals by accentuating their natural and pre-existing talents.
- The reasoning behind humans suddenly transforming into monsters in the anime adaptation of Go Nagai's Devilman Lady is that they are flukes in the first stages of humanity's next evolution and based on the transformee's talents and personality (e.g. a talented swimmer grows gills and scales, someone with severe A God Am I might become an angel, etc.) The main character is a frail young model that represses all feelings, thoughts, and urges unsuitable for a Yamato Nadeshiko. She transforms into a violent, muscular demon with no inhibitions.
- Shido Fuyuki of Get Backers has the ability to take on the characteristics of about 100 different types of animals. They try to reason that, since humans are the most evolved species on Earth, they also have the DNA of all the lower animals. Shido only has the ability to tap into the dormant DNA. Riiiiight.
- The chimera ant queen of Hunter X Hunter transfers the "most worthy" DNA of whatever she eats to her progeny, resulting in every batch of eggs giving more powerful (and human-like, since humans are obviously the best food) ants than the last, culminating in the King being the supreme being. Obviously, this makes no damn sense from a scientific point of view.
- A major theme of Getter Robo, since the energy that powers their Humongous Mecha is the spirit of evolution itself, or taken another way, the embodiment of life/survival itself.
- The Diclonius in Elfen Lied.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion has a one-off example in the form of the Eleventh Angel, Iruel. The Angel has the ability to rapidly adapt to its environment (arguably justified by the fact that it's a colony of single cell organisms, allowing it to reproduce with greater speed) and it gets defeated when NERV manages to convince it to self-destruct by creating an environment where death is the most sensible adaptation.
- Akira and Tetsuo, if the movie's handwave is correct.
- Sort of subverted in Monster Rancher. Although the concept of evolution is never delved upon, a large variety of monsters appear to come from the same species, but evolved slightly different physical characteristics. For example, compared to the character Tiger (a blue wolf-like monster with curved horns), there are also the reptilian-like wolf monsters and even an insect based variety. This is the same for all the other characters (minus the humans).
- The video game version describes the monsters as defined by a primary breed (which defines its basic form and abilities) and a sub-breed (which defines its color scheme, modified appearance, and slightly alters its statistical abilities).
Comic Books
- All of Marvel Comics' "mutant" comics dub mutants "homo superior", the "next step" in human evolution. A biologist probably wouldn't even go as far as to label mutants a sub-species of humanity, let alone a new species. (To be fair, however, this was originally a label created by the militant mutant-superiority villains for their own propaganda.)
- In the movies, despite insistence from Magneto that they are "homo superior," it's established that mutant powers are actually a result from a simple genetic carrier, "the mutant gene".
- And then there is Mr. Immortal, who is so evolved that he's not just "homo superior," he's "homo supreme".
- If one pokes around Marvel lore enough, this all is "justfied" by having been the result of tampering by Sufficiently Advanced Aliens called the Celestials on early humans. Thus, mutants (and most superpowers triggered otherwise) are an artificial result, rather then any natural evolution.
- One issue of Excalibur (written by Chris Claremont) says that all mutants are just a bit more in every department. Nightcrawler, for example, healed from his broken leg a bit faster then a regular human would. Nightcrawler doesn't have healing powers, he's just That Awesome because he is a mutant.
- Similarly, in the Silver Age, Professor X was an accomplished athlete merely because he was a mutant. Not because he used his Psychic Powers, just because of his mutant physique. (Although being able to monitor his opponents while running track helped... somehow.)
- The cartoon series takes it a step further, with Apocalypse declaring to a non-mutant character that "I am as far beyond mutants as they are beyond you."
- A more modern-age interpretation is closer to real biology: the radical mutations present in mutants aren't always going to make them "superior"; in fact, it seems the vast, vast majority are, in fact, Blessed With Suck
- Sometimes, Galactus is said to target worlds at the "apex of their evolution" to devour. For evolution to have an "apex", it has to be a finite process with multiple levels, and a highest, "best" level.
- It could be refering to rate of evolutionary mutation (quantity not quality) and the tendency for society and science to reduce or eliminate "survival of the fittest" thus impeding or outright eliminating evolution. I.e. humanity is significantly less likely to have major evolutionary changes since we have societies that protect and assist the weak and technologies to allow them to function, therefore we are "done" changing.
- On the other hand, the human experience is changing more rapidly now than ever, and it doesn't seem like the concept of competition will become obsolete any time soon. We may not need to continue the arms-race with lions, but we're still constantly one-upping eachother.
- Transformers, of all things, gets it somewhat right, despite its main race not even being organic. Ironically, this is due at least in part to the Merchandise Driven nature of the thing. New gimmicks in the toys often manifest themselves as new technology in the fictions.
- A key example is the binary-bonding process that created the Headmasters, Targetmasters, and Powermasters. The processes had varying degrees of success, and the Headmaster process could be especially problematic if the personality of the smaller organic lifeform that became the head clashed with that of the robot that was its body.
- One recent comic book series implies that the smaller, more energy-efficient Micromasters that were so sorely mistreated by their larger comrades-in-arms on both sides of the war eventually became the Maximals and Predacons that replaced the Autobots and Decepticons.
- And no discussion of this would be complete without the Marvel Universe's 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 Physical God.
- Easily the most absurd thing the HE ever managed was in his first appearance, where he hyper-evolved a wolf. This evolution came complete with knowledge of martial arts from the future.
- This is trumped by him fighting Hulk so Hulk would kill him, when he changed the "evolutionary levels" of the Earth, converting the ground beneath Hulk into tar (like tarpits, you know, because tarpits are like stone age, man?), then lava, then gas.
- During Marvel's Kree-Skrull War, Ronan the Accuser busted out the old monkey-making de-evolutionary ray as part of his plan against Earth.
- Speaking of the Kree, one of their subplots involved them being "unable to evolve" and needing Half-Kree Hybrids to further their "evolution", suddenly turning the whole race into the "self-evolving" Ruul.
- Zot! has the Church of De-Evolution, a gang of ranting nutcases armed with Transformation Ray Guns that turn whoever they shoot into chimpanzees. It's played almost entirely for laughs. McCloud says this is because they represented what he considered the least plausible outcome of our relationship with technology. (The other end of the scale is 9-Jack-9, if you're interested.)
Film
- The aliens in the movie Evolution started out evolving to fit the ecological niches they found themselves in, but were eventually shown as evolving along a fixed path, becoming dinosaur-like things and then primates for no reason. In addition, despite the rapid evolution that was the point of the film, there was no sense that the creatures were going through multiple generations particularly rapidly. (There was also a cartoon series based on the movie that made the same mistakes, only more so.)
- One interesting aversion, however, is that the final form achieved by the creatures when forced through rapid evolution was essentially a giant amoeba. It's explained that this is the most efficient form for its particular environment so it can be considered the best adapted even though it's one of the simplest.
- Of course, that's both physically impossible and not true in the least. If it was, then there would already be giant amoebas on Earth and multicellular organisms would never have evolved.
- On the other hand, dragons.
- One thing it did get right about real evolution is that many individuals of a species died in the process. I mean there was that scene with the corpses of those flying reptiles littering the desert that died by asphyxiation in the foreign atmosphere that was the Earth until one of these reptiles spitted out an egg that hatched one that can breath this atmosphere mixture and survived to wreak havoc at a nearby mall.
- The creatures in the movie were meant to be evolving in an extremely screwed up way whilst mimicking the evolution of our own planet. It Makes Sense In Context.
- In Time Traxx, humanity is depicted as being on the cusp of an evolutionary advance granting some (almost realistically) minor abilities such as greatly enhanced agility and the ability to "time stall" (Nothing strange and extratemporal: the term refers to an ability to alter the way the brain processes sensory data giving the perception of time slowing down).
- An episode featured protagonist Darien Lambert meeting a young boy with enhanced athletic skills similar to what's described above. Darien wondered if this boy might be the "missing link" between the present humanity and future humanity. In the end, it turns out the boy is himself from the future, brought there by his father when he was very young.
- Creature From The Black Lagoon had the titular creature as "the missing link" between man and fish, being a clawed, super strong, bipedal amphibious dinosaur from the Paleozoic. In the third movie they even try to "evolve" him into near human, and educate him. This ends badly.
- The Super Mario Bros. movie features an evolution/de-evolution gun (actually an SNES Super Scope with a paint job), which is used several times throughout. The most extreme use of it comes when it's used to de-evolve Koopa, turning him first into a T-Rex and then eventually sludge. The "evolve" setting apparently just makes you smarter. (Of course, this setting was used on the Quirky Miniboss Squad, so it didn't really make them any smarter in practice, just gave them a bigger vocabulary.)
- The film Teeth comes close to averting this trope, with a biology teacher explaining how evolution works in terms of gradually developing proto-organs. Then it turns around and throws this all away, claiming that in fact, it would be entirely possible for an entire organ system (a rattlesnake's rattle, or the heroine's Vagina Dentata) to appear in a single generation, fully functional and ready for use. Surprisingly, a biological system which actively prevents conception has some analogues in nature: some species of duck and hyena have adaptations to their genitalia that allows the females to block conception (spotted hyenas can do this for several hours after intercourse), allowing them to be more selective about breeding partners.
- Also works the other way around, by the way. The males of some species are capable of, uh, "plugging" the female after intercourse, to make sure that his genes are the only ones that will be used for fertilizing the offspring. This is most common in insects and, curiously, some species of birds.
- Planet Of The Apes has non-human primates "evolving", thus getting intelligent and with the ability to speak, in only 2000 years (although some could say the nuclear wars inbetween helped). The remake tries to handwave this, both by never saying when Leo's ship crashes on the planet and starting out with genetically improved simians (but that works only for the planet Leo crashes on, not Earth in the ending). The original novel (and possibly the remake) halfway averts this trope: on the planet the hero first lands on, simians developed intelligence while humans didn't. And then it plays it straight when the hero returns to Earth to find intelligent apes. The sequels to the original movie simplify the matter using a Stable Time Loop: the "first" talking ape is the child of two time travelers.
- But then goes back an ruins it in the 4th movie by having all apes humanoid by the time the time travelers child reaches adulthood and his wife learning to speak, in basically 20 years.
- To be fair to the original (though not the 20 year part) apes today are already showing fairly advanced tool use (weapons even) and the capacity for some degree of speech (thanks to sign language studes) and, with the exception of guns, the movie apes were still largely primitive (unlike in the original books, which had far more advanced apes justified by a completely different twist, the movie apparently figured it'd save money by not displaying too advanced technology), and even the guns and other questionably advanced technology could be explained by their predecesors or certain members of the theocracy having reverse engineered human artifacts. The only parts that seem really far fetched is that the apes became bipedal, which was a costume thing, and that it happened to three species, when the most likely candidates are really just chimpanzees (and maybe bonobos, though they aren't really all that well known for tool use). The special differences were also annoyingly based on mythology (wise man orangutan, fierce warrior gorilla, and kind happy chimpanzees) rather than actual ape behavior (gorillas are mostly gentle, while chimpanzees tend to be agressive).
- Averted by The Descent. The creatures in there were once cavemen, but that tribe stayed in the cave and evolved into creatures that suit the cave pretty well — but are, of course, blind.
- In the 1997 film Mimic scientists in New York City engineer a "Judas Strain" of cockroaches, intended to infiltrate and wipe out the normal, disease-carrying cockroach population which is spreading a fatal illness among NYC's children (note: real roaches, while disgusting little scavengers, are not carriers of illness). Unfortunately, this Judas Strain does not die out after one generation (as engineered), instead evolving into a breed of giant insects that is capable of mimicking (hence the title) and preying on human beings (in only three years — but as the movie points out, we have to think not in terms of years but rather generations).
- The recent Will Smith movie I am Legend suffered from this with the changed ending. The original ending showed that the vampire-like creatures that Robert Neville hunted were developing societal improvements (a clear leader, compassion for fellows, the need to protect their own from being captured and killed, learning and repeating traps, etc.) and that Neville himself was the monster for not seeing these as anything more than sick and damaged monsters he needed to kill and/or save. Test audiences balked at the idea that the vampires were anything but monsters for Neville to kill, refusing to accept the possibility for the mutation to be beneficial, so the ending was rewritten with Neville sacrificing himself against the monsters to save the last humans...
Literature
- One of the early-90s Tom Swift books took this trope to the limit — a human being was hit with an evolution ray, and was turned into a specific person, with his own memories, from the far future.
- Philip K Dick's book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, set Twenty Minutes Into The Future, features "evolutionary therapy" becoming popular among the rich. It makes your cranium large and bubble-like, and even 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. I wish I had a gland that controlled my evolution.
- There is also a short story by Philip K Dick, called "Strange Eden" that successfully manages to make pretty much every mistake about evolution mentioned here. Its about an astronaut that finds an attractive and immortal female Goddess-like alien on a far-away world. Immediately he wants to sleep with her, but she warns him that in doing so he will magically begin to rapidly evolve. Thinking that this will lead him to become a superior being like her (and for the obvious reason), the astronaut accepts the offer. However, it turns out that humanity's set evolutionary is designed that we will evolve into bestial cat-creatures - exactly why is never stated - and so the astronaut is stuck as the alien woman's pet forever.
- Arthur C Clarke's Childhood's End is fundamentally about most of humanity evolving beyond their corporeal forms into a mass consciousness and merging with a universal psychic gestalt. (If this sounds familiar to anime fans, Hideaki Anno has cited the novel as a major inspiration for Neon Genesis Evangelion.) The story also features the Overlords, alien creatures that are an evolutionary cul-de-sac of sorts, who are apparently unable to achieve this level of evolution for some reason.
- His 2001 series (quoted above) discusses the "evolution" of the Sufficiently Advanced Aliens who brought The Monolith to Earth. Read literally, it's an example of this trope, but is actually a case of a species reaching a point technologically where they can perform Brain Uploading into machine bodies and then finally turn themselves into Energy Beings — self-directed evolution rather than natural.
- Wilmar Shiras's fixup novel Children of the Atom is based on the notion that after an accidental release of radiation at a nuclear power plant, several dozen female employees give birth to children, absolutely normal in every way except that all of them have IQs of over 300.
- A.E. Van Vogt's Slans.
- One of Kurt Vonnegut'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 Galápagos. The evolved humans resemble seals, and natural selection lowers their intelligence to that of animals. It's a bit misanthropic, though.
- Subverted in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. On Mono Island (featured in The Last Continent and Darwin's Watch), the abode of the God of Evolution, life-forms (especially plants) evolve at the speed of the blink of an eye. When there are humans near, they will promptly bear fruit that are useful for human consumption, like pencils, cigarettes, bandages or boats. Research wizard Ponder Stibbons postulated they evolve so quickly because they want to get off of the island as soon as possible.
- Note that the reason for the island's name is that there is only one of each species on the island — the God hasn't quite got the hang of sex yet. The God complains at one point that the plants are trying to do sex on their own — but he can't quite vocalize the problem, since neither he nor they have really got it. That's what the rapid evolution is for; they know they need to spread and they know that the best way to do this is to make themselves useful in ways that will mean that bits will get left lying around, but the only way they can do that is by taking three minutes instead of three million years to the point of usefulness.
- Another Discworld example: In Carpe Jugulum, Lord Magpyr refers to fairies and Igor as evolutionary cul-de-sacs, although he was probably just being arrogant and mean, rather than making any thoughtful judgements on their place in the world.
- The climax of H. Rider Haggard's She has the title character take another bath in the life-giving flame, which takes away her youth. Her dying form is described as being like a monkey. Darwin's theories had only recently entered the public consciousness when the book was written and the whole story is about the fear of "devolving" since people were scared that it might work backwards at the time.
- Averted in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, where the future evolutions of mankind are an innocent race, apparently less intelligent than modern humans (the Eloi) and what amounts to Mole People (the Morlocks).
- This was influenced by Wells' early socialist ideas. The Eloi and the Morlocks represent the cultured, wealthy bourgeoisie people of leisure and the lower-class proletariat manual labourers 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 Strawman Political, to be sure.
- As well, in the original story, the Eloi and Morlocks live in symbiosis, unable to live without one another.
- In this example, an evolutionary process resulted in speciation, but the core mechanism was not natural selection, but social selection. The significance of this idea seems lost on Wells, but modern readers benefit. Society placing greater reproductive pressures on human beings than the natural environment is well within the bounds of evolutionary theory and Wells' novel provides a pretty lucid, believable example of "evolutionary levels". The distinction between the Eloi and the Morlocks, however, isn't really hierarchical or based on complexity (i.e. the distinction between humans (complex) and earthworms (simple)). Rational adaptations, expressed by genes, is the key to evolutionary processes and this example is actually pretty much in line with mainstream evolutionary theory, which by definition completely rejects "evolutionary levels", except as arbitrary distinctions drawn by humans... usually for dramatic effect, as this article proves.
- In Odd John, by Olaf Stapledon, the titular character is one of a new species of supermen who happen to be born here and there around the world at roughly the same time. This story is apparently the origin of the term "Homo Superior" for such beings.
- Ea Cycle has levels of spiritual evolution. In it, humans can "evolve" step-wise into angels and into arch-angels and then into beings capable of creating universes.
- That really just sounds like "evolution" is being used in a non-scientific sense altogether. The word evolution has several other meanings one of which is "the gradual development of something to a better or more complex form" which is probably the meaning Darwin had in mind when he called it the Theory of Evolution. If the book suggested biological changes it would be a false notion of evolution, but as it is its probably just poor word choice.
- The whole premise of Edmond Hamilton's 1931 short story "The Man Who Evolved". In the story, a man uses cosmic rays to evolve himself in minutes. In the end, he eventually evolves into protoplasm, since, for some reason, evolutionary levels apparently go in a cycle.
- He also wrote "Devolution", which proposes that bacteria are the highest form of life and everything else is a step downwards. In both, he thought evolution was the result of radiation, so Science Marches On.
- So, you're saying that background radiation isn't the root cause of the random mutation that provides the genetic variation to be selected from by evolutionary pressures?
- Actually, our DNA replication systems alone make enough mistakes to be a big contributor to those random mutations. Our buggy meiosis is our recipe to evolve (or fail trying, about 30% of pregnancies end in a miscarriage, according to The Other Wiki. Most of them because of those mutations).
- Greg Bear tries to justify this in Darwin's Radio. A species that evolves "Darwin's radio" makes abrupt and massive changes in its genome when faced with a significant problem. The radio in question has evolved so that it essentially "knows" what changes are necessary to deal with a particular crisis. One character describes this as "Evolution evolving. Species with a radio can evolve faster and better than species that can't," which almost makes sense if you think about it.
- In the early science fiction novel Last and First Men. After leaving a dying Earth and settling on Venus, humanity goes through eighteen stages of evolution, each adapting to their unique evironment. For example, the dwarf "Ninth Men" who are limited by size due to excessive gravitation, the flying "Sixth Men" who live a harsh existence competing their seal-like relatives, and the "Tenth to Seventeenth Men" whose sentience reemerges after the "Sixth Men" civilization crumbles into savagery.
- Parodied in Kim Newman's "Tomorrow Town"; one of the claims made by the futurists who have set up shop in the titular town is that they have evolved beyond their 1970s contemporaries, or 'yesterday men' as they are called. Of course, like most things to do with their 'futopia', they're quite, quite mistaken.
Live Action TV
- More than a few episodes of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits involved persons getting hit with odd radiations and "evolving".
- The chief example from The Outer Limits would have to be The Sixth Finger, featuring David McCallum as a scruffy laborer / guinea pig in a scientist's evolution experiments, who is turned into a "typical human" from various points in the distant future with a lever (helpfully marked "Forward" and "Backward"). Among other effects, the evolver ray alters his accent and ability to play piano.
- Ironheart from Babylon 5 was pushed all the way into a case of A God Am I.
- Something of a subversion, as this was not "natural" evolution or "the next step for humanity" or anything claiming to be real, rather the end result of genetic experimentation, biological modification, etc. all attempting to "improve" Ironheart's already impressive psychic abilities. Human telepathy in and of itself is not a natural evolution, but rather the result of Vorlon genetic tinkering for the purpose of creating weapons against the Shadows. Same goes for most other races with telepaths among them.
- There's also a very odd instance that feels like a subversion. Late in the series we meet Lorien, the first sentient being in the entire universe. He happens to be so powerful and intelligent that the Vorlons and Shadows felt threatened by him.
- Evolution in Babylon 5 also seems to head toward becoming an Energy Being.
- Naturally, there are several Star Trek examples — "Where No Man Has Gone Before" from Star Trek The Original Series comes to mind, as does "Genesis", an episode of The Next Generation where the crew began "devolving" into various lower animals with no rhyme or reason.
- The TNG episode mentioned above attempted to justify the stock "devolution" story with Techno Babble about "activating the introns in the genetic code". At the time, the idea of introns as "fossil" or "junk" DNA left over from a species' ancestors was still in vogue. (Introns actually are "junk" DNA, but they seem to be mostly deactivated viral code instead of fragments of other species. And sometimes they're salvaged by transcription errors and become something useful to the organism; it's believed that the mutation that prevented the mammalian immune system from rejecting the placenta of a fetus might have come from such viral junk, for example.)
- Which doesn't quite negate the fact that cats are not descended from iguanas.
- Nor does it negate the fact that humans are not descended from spiders.
- Star Trek Voyager took considerable fire for "Threshold" (an episode so bad that this troper wishes he could delete its very reference here), in which a flight test caused a character to "evolve" rapidly (just enough technobabble was applied to work around the fact that individuals do not themselves evolve; technically, he "experienced mutations consistent with the pattern of human evolution"), whose end-state was to turn him into a giant salamander with a fu manchu. The fact that so many fans complained that "That's not evolving; it's devolving!" shows that TV has corrupted our understanding of evolution — there's no such thing as "devolving": evolution does not lead inevitably toward bigger, smarter creatures who would necessarily seem "more advanced" by human standards. Brannon Braga says this was the idea he tried to get across, but admits he failed spectacularly.
- The ultimate problem with this idea was that the 'final' form of humans was so arbitrary that it could've been anything. Insanely rapid reproduction, back on all fours, no mammary glands, loss of tool-using hands... and the fact that Tom Paris's intermediate forms hinted nothing at the final form other than pink skin. You may have well had said that humanity's final form would be flying neon armadillos the size of skyscrapers. Brannon Braga's point would have gone over better if he had shown, say, long-limbed naked hunchbacks with huge heads and prehensile tails. Just as strange but at least people could imagine the path better.
- Another Voyager episode had the characters asking the computer what a hadrosaur would look like had they "continued to evolve"; it matches up perfectly with an alien race who are really from Earth but just don't wanna believe it.
- Another Next Gen episode had an alien developing Healing Hands and other superpowers because he himself, not his species, was on the verge of an "evolutionary leap".
- That example actually wasn't that bad. He wasn't so much evolving on his own as his species was evolving the ability to become energy beings, and he was the first one to manage to do it. It was like the first fish-with-leg-like-fins stepping out of the ocean, except that the other fish were trying to kill him for it.
- The Star Trek Enterprise episode Dear Doctor showcased the "path evolution is supposed to take" misconception.
- The entire premise of The Tomorrow People revolved around "the next step in human evolution".
- In the Farscape episode "My Three Crichtons", an alien probe produced both "de-evolved" and "super-evolved" versions of Crichton. The crew also assumed the "de-evolved" caveman was hostile and savage, while the "super-evolved" Chrichton turned out to be the self-serving and dangerous one.
- Deconstructed when the probe explains that the two extra Crichtons are just two of the millions of alternate versions of humanity that the probe was simulating and cataloging. They just happen to be a caveman and big-brained superhuman.
- In the Doctor Who story "Ghost Light", a clergyman is turned into a monkey by a Sufficiently Advanced Alien; it is justified, however, by suggesting that this is not "de-evolution" as such, because the alien could have turned him into anything and only chose the monkey form to mock the clergyman's anti-Darwinist beliefs. (Another character, for instance, is transformed into stone instead.)
- Another episode had 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 way of explaining things, this is likely just the best he can do to explain a much more convoluted concept.
- The Mutants involved the Solonians mutating into new forms within their lifetimes, something which happened whenever their planet entered a new millenia-long "season". The Doctor at least noted this to be a unique lifecycle.
- The voiceovers at the start and end of Heroes talk a lot about how the next stage of evolution comes about. If you listen closely during these, you can actually hear Charles Darwin turn in his grave, as we are to believe a mutation has suddenly occurred for people in Japan, Haiti, and America all at once.
- Word Of God says that the narrations are true and everyone does indeed get their powers by being on higher Evolutionary Levels.
- Eclipses are involved too!
- Even worse, in the very beginning of Season 2 it is said that having super-powers actually makes you more vulnerable to a certain disease. The "evolutionary biologist"'s conclusion? The scientific community must destroy the virus so that "evolution can continue unimpeded." Natural selection, indeed...
- The nasty team of MIB after Dr. Jackman in Jekyll want him because he is "the next stage in human evolution". In this case, it is implied that the original Jekyll had hundreds of kids, becoming responsible for many, if not all cases of identical twins and so forth. This seems to bear a better relationship to real evolution than most on the page.
- Red Dwarf, "DNA": Lister uses a genetic transmogrifier to temporarily hyper-evolve himself to fight a vindaloo monster. He turns into a midget Robocop.
- That example is not stated to be evolution. Lister tells Holly to use the machine to turn him into "a super human" by manually altering his DNA.
- In "Pete", a pet sparrow accidentally regresses back to what it evolved from, a Tyrannosaurus rex.
- "He evolved from cats, he's descended from cats, he is a cat."
- The cat thing is semantic more than anything. "Humans" are a subdivision of "apes", who in turn are a subdivision of "primates". Just like humans are mammals, Cat is a cat. (And also a mammal, obviously.)
- In Stargate SG-1, all sentient species apparently evolve "towards" ascension. Just before evolutionary ascension, people will have all kinds of Psychic Powers, such as mind-reading, telepathy, healing powers and some kind of super-intelligence.
- Technically all sentient species are capable of ascending, provided individuals can 'release their burden'.
- Not all. The Asgard, we are explicitly told, ended up on an evolutionary path, thanks to their use of cloning, which precludes ascension.
- The trope also has some aversions though. For example, while O'Neill is supposed to be the most advanced human being on Earth, evolutionary wise, the Asgard say he is still not advanced enough, which would realistically imply many small steps in evolution. Similarily, the genetic degradation of the Asgard happened over the course of 30.000 years.
- Space 1999 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!
- Mystery Science Theater 3000 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.
- Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory fails biology forever because he believes "[he] is farther down the evolutionary line" than the rest of humanity, and has smaller incisors and pinky toes than everyone else. You'd think an theoretical physicist who has been shown to be interested in
all most areas of science would actually bother to learn how evolution works.
- You could justify this as him just being incredibly childish. This is the same character who attempts to blow up people's heads with his mind.
Video Games
- The Commodore64 game Dino Eggs had as a hazard the possibility of getting bit by a spider and suffering "devolution" into a spider due to genetic contamination. Seriously.
- Despite being used as the trope picture, Pokemon actually manages to avert this somewhat in that Pokemon's evolutionary levels are more like phases of growth in a single species than evolutionary 'steps.'
- Kane in the Command And Conquer series believes Tiberium holds the key to the next stage of human evolution. However, this is closer to actual evolution; rather than just being more powerful, the Tiberium mutants in the series are more capable of surviving in the Tiberium-infested regions of the world (about 90% of it).
- E.V.O.: The Search for Eden. In each chapter, you start as a "basic" version of whatever the chapter is about (fish, amphibian, reptile, mammal), and you gain "evo points" by eating other animals, which you can then turn in to alter your body parts. Oh, and whenever you evolve a body part, you get the helpful message "MYSTERIOUS TIME STREAM EVOLVES YOU." Also, occasionally (say, when you're a reptile or mammal and have to do a water stage), you'll get the message "CHANGE IN CIRCUMSTANCES CAUSES EVOLUTION", followed by your characters feet becoming fins. Even if you're a mammal, or a bird.
- The creature stage of Spore is E.V.O. with better graphics. Oddly enough, Will Wright had intended Spore to be more scientific in its conception and presentation, but marketing won out, leading to massively bad reviews from the biology community for the missed opportunity.
- Mitra from Treasure Of The Rudras created an "Eternal Engine". Every 4,000 years, the weaker races are replaced by stronger ones to prepare for the return of the invaders that Mitra and her allies fought long ago, when Mitra was defeated, the need for the Eternal Engine is no longer required.
- In Super Robot Wars, Alfimi was created to be the "apex of human evolution".
- Psaro the Manslayer from Dragon Quest IV is revealed to be after the Secret of Evolution in order to build an all-powerful monster army to help him easily conquer the world. One of his generals, Balzack, showcases the fruits of Psaro's discovery; he's almost pathetically easy to beat in your first encounter with him, but one chapter later, he's gained about 150 kg, some nasty new attacks, and an extra "a" in his name.
- Amazingly enough, Geneforge manages to justify this. All the game's monsters are the result of genetic engineering, and the super-powerful ones were created when basic designs were modified. (These modifications are random, so you encounter a few screwups that are insane or slowly dying.)
- Much of the art work of the game is various schematics and plans for the Mons. Many have notations to things like lack of this causes mutation leading to death or including this gives fire breathing...
- The Big Bad of Star Ocean: The Last Hope seems to think that it's possible to create a "better" evolution that will save humanity from violence and sadness. Even worse, the heroes believe that it's necessary to "make our hearts worthy" in order to evolve.
Western Animation
- An overly long couch gag sequence in The Simpsons features the evolution of Homer. A tadpole goes from a lizard to a dinosaur, down to a rat, to an ape, to a neanderthal and finally to the modern Homo Sapian before showcasing several historical eras ending in modern Homer walking into his house. This showcases the supposed evolutionary levels misconception.
- A Mighty Max episode had a human villain "force evolved"; at the end, he "evolved beyond good and evil" and left. There was a subversion along the way, as he became a
chicken fowl-like humanoid similar to Max's Obi-Wan Virgil, who mentioned humanity will find the form enjoyable, much to Max's surprise.
- Mighty Max used this a few times. In another episode, a mad scientist named Dr. Zygote develops a ray that devolves anything to their prehistoric state. A bunch of human tourists become apes, Max's pet lizard becomes a dinosaur, and Virgil (a lemurian who is supposed to be the next step in human evolution) gets turned into a pterodactyl (?!) Later it's used by Dr. Zygote to turn a bunch of devolved mutated monsters into primordial ooze. He surmises that the ray "reversed their evolutionary path to the final quagmire, an evolutionary dead-end"—which really makes no sense at all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owZqBj0vLXU&feature=related
- Then in another episode, Dr. Zygote uses the ray again to further evolve himself into a more advanced form, from a big brained alien, to a lemurian, to a floating giant brain, and finally into a flash of light. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmB5NDeziMk
- Parodied in an episode of Futurama: the characters find the lost city of Atlanta, in which the human inhabitants have evolved into mermaids. When Bender points out that this should have taken millions of years, the mayor's daughter explains that the caffeine from the Coca-Cola bottling plant sped things up.
- One episode of Justice League Unlimited had Gorilla Grodd construct a "devolution" ray (his own words) that turned humans into humanoid gorillas... including Superman, who isn't human. After his plan failed, even Lex Luthor complained how stupid the whole thing sounded and used it as the pretext to take over the Legion sooner than he planned.
- The above was based on a comic book crossover, JLApe, although it was careful not to mention (d)evolution.
- The Saturday Morning Mega Man cartoon managed to take the concept of devolution to the next stage, when Dr. Wily made a chemical that caused robots to "devolve" into more primitive robots. This meant they went from robots designed to look like humans to robots designed to look like cavemen, getting stupider in the process.
- This was Bob the Goldfish's schtick in the Earthworm Jim cartoon. He tried various schemes to evolve himself into a higher form of life, in one instance using a contraption that stole "Evolutionary Energy" from other creatures, turning people into apes & Princess Whatshername into a ladybug & such. Interestingly, Jim's creator Doug TenNapel is apparently a creationist, or at least a believer in some sort of devine intervention in the origins of life, humanity in particular. Fortunately, since it's all Played For Laughs, it's easy for people on both sides of the issue to enjoy.
- In an episode of The Spectacular Spider Man titled Natural Selection, Martha Connors states that lizard DNA is more primitive than humans, to which Curt Connors, the unfortunate victim of his own experiment, responds: "I'm regressing."
- Spider Man The Animated Series actually invoked this trope between two humans when, after revealing to Harry that he was his father, the Green Goblin exclaims, "I am the ultimate evolution of Norman Osborn! Smarter, stronger, able to be more ruthless than he ever was." Wow.
Real Life
- Self-referential example: At one point, this editor had to remove text from another trope description stating that while a One Gender Race was plausible because there are examples of parthenogenesis in real life, this was "rarely seen beyond the reptile stage." Headdesk.
- During the American pioneer days, all sorts of mythical creatures were believed to exist out in the woods, and, for all the settlers knew, they could. Naturally, circus hawkers liked to exploit this, and one such charlatan described his captured "guyascutus" as "The long-sought missing link" between the Mynodon (a type of Pleistocene ground sloth) and the Icthyosaurus (a Cretaceous swimming reptile, resembling a dolphin). There were probably plenty who knew it was bunk, of course. One hopes.
- Metasystem Transition Theory describes evolutionary "levels" as organizational levels of systemic hierarchy, levels that may or may not be strictly biological, e.g. from the cellular level to the social level. Each metasystem evolves to the limit of its adaptive competence, which is defined quite pragmatically as the limit to which it has demonstrated it's capable.
- There's also a Technological Evolution theory, which summed up, implies we've stopped evolving biologically and now do most of our evolving on a technological level—the argument being that while biological evolution takes a few millennia at minimum, we can evolve much faster using our technological advancements now.
- Of course there is no reason these need be mutually exclusive. It's more than possible that even as people evolve technology to suit them they will evolve to suit the technology. Those better able to use the tools will be more successful.
- On the other hand, a rise in socialism that seeks to benefit and feed all people will really allow everyone to be successful enough to breed, so long as they can attract a mate. Sexual selection will only become more and more important.
- Biological systems can and do evolve traits that make it easier to evolve. Examples include aerobic respiration, cellular nuclei, sexual reproduction (resulting in more unique organisms with a higher chance of transcription error and thus mutation), multicellular bodies, technology and genetic engineering... (Sometimes this works in interesting ways, like the Oxygen Catastrophe and the later creation of the ozone layer.)
- Dogs started finding it a lot easier to evolve once they dropped that Natural Selection nonsense and let humans do the selecting for them. Although if you look at certain dog breeds, you cannot help but wonder whether it wouldn't have been better for them if their forebears had bitten their owners' hands more often...
- Some Creationists who reject Evolution, accept Devolution. They believe that after God created life, the mutations make it less advanced and less able to survive, although they can appear to occasionally do good, there is usually a bad outcome making it less advanced (like losing DNA with no apparent way to regain it).
- This actually goes way back before Darwin, even. Many Europeans even up past the Renaissance believed the Ancients were far larger and intelligent than the contemporary men. This seems to mostly stem from a respect for the older civilization, but became a major debating point among intellectuals as late as the seventeenth century when analogies about the history of human kind being equivalent to the life of a man led to two distinct schools of thought. The first thought that this analogy between man and mankind led to the inevitable conclusion that mankind was growing older, weaker and senile. The second group, Francis Bacon a notable member, claimed that unlike a man, mankind would be eternally young.
- There is a set of four siblings in Turkey who walk on all fours (hands and feet). Media frequently refer to this as evolution going "backwards."
- Objection to the idea that mankind would not revert to monkeys if hit by some form of Devolution Ray. While humankind is not descended from Old World Monkeys, having split from them with the rest of the apes a long time ago, we also share a common ancestor with the New World Monkeys (with whom we are more distantly related to than Old World Monkeys), who are also...monkeys. So, if we assume that a Devoltion Ray can be built, and we "devolve" a human back to the point where Old World Monkeys diverged from New World Monkeys, we would end up with a creature that basically looked like...a monkey (with perhaps minor differences due to the creature neither having the derived traits of the New World Monkeys or the Old World Monkeys).
- Overruled; while whatever it would be may resemble a monkey, it would not be a monkey as we define them today. Nor, for that matter, would it be an ape - humans and apes split off from one another millions of years ago from a common ancestor. We evolved along with them, not from them.
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