A TV station in Texas is reporting that a fisherman caught a fish with "human-like teeth." A photo of the fish does indeed show small but distinctly human teeth in the lower jaw.
Assuming the story is not a hoax, I wonder if it has any relevance to an idea sometimes floated in evolution - that a variety of advanced characteristics are built into the genes of even the simplest organism, and that it is only a matter of "turning on" the appropriate gene in order to "express" these characteristics. Thus, human-like teeth are potentially available to fish or salamanders or whatever, but ordinarily the relevant gene combinations are not activated. Of course, this raises the question of how and why genes that can produce advanced features would preexist in the earliest and simplest organisms ...
On the other hand, the fish could be a fake. Some people will do anything to get on TV.
You can't really trust some fishermen.
What advantage would human-like teeth give a fish anyway?
Posted by: Althusius | July 20, 2006 at 01:07 PM
Well, they wouldn't. But the idea - called "front loading" posits that evolution is a process of "unfolding" the inherent potential in organisms, rather than a random walk through an essentially infinite design space. These guys talk a lot about this idea: http://www.telicthoughts.com. Micheal Denton has also explored it, in a roundabout way.
So, as Micheal said, this could be a case of the genes for mammalian teeth - existant in the fish even though there are no direct relationships between them and mammals - getting switched on by some sort of mutation. Or it couild be a fake. Probably the latter...
Posted by: jimbo | July 20, 2006 at 06:40 PM
If it's a fake, (which is highly likely) then forget the whole thing.
What I meant in my comment is that evolutionists can't say it's proof of evolution, because there would be no "natural selection" favoring the "human-like teeth gene."
The trait would not be passed on.
Posted by: Althusius | July 20, 2006 at 07:02 PM
Another thing: Those teeth look fairly white. Do fish use Crest or Colgate, do you think?
Posted by: Althusius | July 20, 2006 at 07:04 PM
I don't think there ARE any genes "for" teeth.
Rupert Sheldrake talks about the relationship between genes and morphology here. I strongly suspect he is correct, that morphogenesis is a field behavior mediated by resonance from morphogenesis processes in previously developed organisms.
Posted by: Matthew Cromer | July 20, 2006 at 07:20 PM
>Do fish use Crest or Colgate, do you think?
They use Aquafresh, naturally.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | July 22, 2006 at 12:35 AM