Are bacteria more highly evolved than humans?

[oujij]

There's definitely something to argue over the specifics of the definition of "evolution" but, in general, which do you think is more highly evolved?

[Zandy]

I'm going to go with the generic answer that humans are more evolved than bacteria.

It's highly speculated that eukaryotic organisms, such as ourselves, evolved from the phagocytosis of prokaryotic organisms and forming endosymbiotic relationships. With that in respect, it would only seem as if eukaryotic organisms such as ourselves could be seen as more evolved with that respect.

Though I could totally see how some could argue that bacteria are more evolved considering the fact that they have the ability to reproduce and adapt at a much faster rate than humans can (and hence, respond to environment adversity much more quickly as seen through antibiotic resistance). Of course, it would take hundreds of thousands of years before we end up growing a third arm or something like that before humans through stigmatic oppression would allow such deformity to become normalcy.

[Grae]

Evolution is heritable change through time in an organism, from any source such as genetic drift, selection pressures from the environment or sexual selection to name a few.

There are a couple of problems inherent in your question that I will address first:

Since Plato and Aristotle came up with the concept of 'Scalae Natura' or the ascendance of man, people have tended to think of themselves as some divine or pre-destined outcome of evolution. Today we have to change how we think about these concepts to accommodate our understanding of the mechanics of evolution. The process neither works towards a higher goal nor groups organisms toward 'more' or 'less' evolved species.

The other is that you are comparing 'humans' (a single species) to an incredibly diverse group of organisms that have been around evolving and changing for about 4 billion years, give or take.

So there are two answers to this. 1. If you want to look at the evolution by pure amount of change accumulated, bacteria have out evolved humans by sheer time to evolve, they inhabit a range of environments greater than we do, subsist on more varied food sources, and are more capable of adaptation to new environments because of sheer diversity.

2. If you pick a single species of bacteria, as far as we are able to distinguish species (not trivial!!) and you want to compare it to humans, you have a very different set of problems. The first is humans have a much longer time between generations than bacteria. In the time it takes you to brush your teeth and go to sleep, the ones in your gut alone have already produced several generations and have been able to adapt better to what you ate for dinner. So, I'd say they evolve faster than we do, and again, still beat us.

Evolution doesn't care what mechanism you use to survive (smarts, some great chemical secretions) it only matters how many offspring you leave, how fast, and how quickly you can get beneficial genes throughout your population.

... ninja

[phiepie]

Well, i would say bacteria.
Why?
Basically, bacteria have the ability to adjust in a very short space of time.
Although, you havent said which type of bacteria which makes this a little difficult.
But for example, viruses, e.g. flu changes yearly so that it can fight off medicines we use to stop it.
Many viruses have developed a resistance to antibiotics in a very little time too, causing great damage to many peoples immune systems.
A change in humans to make us immune to a disease without the use of medicines would take thousands of years.

But, the real answer is neither. There is no specific scale to measure how evolved a life form is. One thing cannot be more evolved than the other, as a species evolves, earlier forms of the species simply die out, e.g. early humans. There are many branches of evolution too, like humans and apes.
There's a high chance that humans will fail to evolve any more due to the way that we chose to control the environment around us.

[Mooby the Golden Sock]

Generally levels of evolution are understood in terms of complexity. In this sense, humans are more highly evolved than bacteria.

In terms of reproductive success, bacteria is the most successful organism on the planet, and insects are the most successful animals.

[ColtynPhD]

There are two levels of evolution that has to be considered here. First the microevolution part that says that humans and bacteria are evolved to the fullest of what they have been given (used freely in this sense without going into the full evol biology of the issue). The second level is the macroevolution that would be arguable that bacteria are more evolved that humans because of the number of evolutions that occurs more easily between bacteria than humans. Just think of the antibiotic resistance of bacteria for example.

To place it into more context, HIV evolves at a rate far more superior than that of humans because their genetic material is RNA instead of DNA.

[Suicidesoldier#1]

It depends on what you mean on evolved, but if we're referring to how many changes to our genome have occurred over time, say, how many base pairs we have, I guess I'd have to say that some are, and some aren't.


I know humans have about 3 billion and some kind of hagfish has like 25.

So who knows?


I guess more genes = more potential complexity.

Less complex animals tend to have smaller genomes.

[Olafmikli]

I'm sure someone can explain this better than I can, but there is nothing in science that says anything is "more evolved" or "evolved faster". Humans might be smarter than every other known living thing, and we may be the only species with the capacity to cause or prevent a mass extinction, but you are correct (in your context, at least) that bacteria are much more successful than we are from a purely primal standpoint. If the point of living is to survive long enough to reproduce, bacteria, insects, and many other small creatures are doing much better than we are. Chickens, for example, number in the tens of billions simply because they feed us. They live long enough to reproduce, then are slaughtered. That makes them successful since they're protected by humans long enough to breed.

Though humans are on a different level than this. We have conscious thought and conscious thought lets us choose our own goals for life, we -don't- have to live our lives solely to eat, sleep, and mate.

[Conservative Encyclopedia]

To call any organism "more highly evolved" is to show a complete ignorance of what evolution is. Evolution is change over a span of time. To say that something is more highly evolved is to imply that evolution is like a staircase, constantly moving up. This is a flawed understanding of the theory. Rather, it is the adaptation of a species over time to be better suited to their environment. Bacteria is not "more evolved" than humans. They are simply better suited than humans if you were to put both in the bacteria's natural habitat. You might be able to argue whether or not bacteria is more highly adaptable, but this is not the same as being highly evolved.

[Iris Solia Aurora]

If highly evolved means have they evolved faster over the same number of generations and/or the same amount of time? Then yes. Over one year bacteria will have changed and adapted much more than humans.

Adaptation to environments is a type of evolution. It is an evolution for specific cells (each cell is living, so each cell in itself can evolve). Cells can take on changes in the human body and can become completely replaced as the new, dominate, evolved cell. There are also non-evolution adaptations.

[God Emperor Baldur]

Bacteria do evolve a lot faster than humans. They just happen to be not that impressive.

[Ask Jappleack]

nmarsh

There's definitely something to argue over the specifics of the definition of "evolution" but, in general, which do you think is more highly evolved?

whichever specie contains the most dna, or th elongest dna sequences/most chromosomes i woudl argue is th emost evolved.

most evolved doesnt necesarily mean most succesful however.

So just the one with the most complex dna.

bacteria doesnt have super duper long dna strands I assume, but lets find out.

http://earthsky.org/earth/winner-for-largest-number-of-genes-in-any-animal-known-so-far-a-water-flea

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organisms_by_chromosome_count

[Heimdalr]

It's true they had a culture long before ours.

[dxnobodyx]

In terms of cellular complexity we are pretty up there, but an infection can still mess someone up.

[FlySammyJ]

Heimdalr

It's true they had a culture long before ours.

Har.