Evolution in a nutshell: Random mutations that somehow benefit the organism to survive and live long enough to reproduce will be carried on in its offspring, and over time the less successfull 'versions' of the organism die out leaving only the 'enhanced' version. Like a giraffes neck enabling it to reach tall leaves or a whale's fins.
Anyway, i just read this cas ein the newspaper about a Finnish cross-country skier who won 2 gold medals in the 1964 winter olympics. It had long been rummored his performance was 'super-human' and that he had to have cheated somehow.
It turned out they were right. But he hadn't cheated on purpose. Evolution had given him an edge. The Skier, Eero Mantyranta had a random mutation in his DNA that causes his body to crank out much more red blood cells than the average athlete. He was getting several times the amount of oxygen to his muscles that other atheltes did, giving him the edge to win. If it were a life or death thing, the other atheltes would have died, and Eero would have passed on his DNA mutation to future generations. Over time, we'd all have this mutation to give us an edge in life.
I thought this was an interesting case of modern evolution, anyone have any comments?