| Question Home |
Position:Home>Genealogy> How did biological viruses evolve?Question: How did biological viruses evolve?If computer virus are created to take advantage of the flaws in the software(eg. OS), then applying the same logic are biological viruses due to flaws of nature? Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I would not look at it as "flaws" per se...A better term would be variation or some even say mutation (but because science fiction....variation is more appropriate). This is how anything evolves...viruses are simply runing hundreds, even thousands of generation in year allowing us to witness what we think of as "fast" change (humans have only had thousands of gererations and we can see the glorious veriety in the end, but we did not see the process). It is simple...a veriation comes into existance....if it works in its environment at the time, it is able to pass the genes on and on until it can no longer survive in that particular environment...it either has another variation, adapts or dies. If the variation is not viable in a given environment during a certain time...it dies away... Think of it like this...we know the variations of the common squirell are viable because we can se the little buggers running around (The Flu Virus as well)....we also know that the variations of the T-Rex no longer worked...because it is no longer here. As for viruses...these can remain dormant until such time as the environmet can sustain them again...this is why they are so dangerous to living organisms...a population may build a tolerance to a certain virus, and then go dormant until he population looses much of its defence after several generations. wow...this is too much. sorry. |