I think it’s funny when botanists explain that flowers are
of different colors, shapes and smells to
attract insects – as if the flowers are making a conscience decision on how
to look and smell to draw the insects’ attentions. Do flowers even know that
insects exist? They have no brains…right?
Botanists are correct to a certain respect –
the flowers that require the attraction of insects do so because of their
shape, color, and smell, but it’s not unlike flowers whose shape, color, and
smell do not attract insects. For
example, if one placed a certain flower in a new, closed environment where the
insects were not attracted to the flower, the flower would not change its shape, color, and smell to the fancies of the
insects. If the flower should happen to in fact begin to attract insects, it
would only be because the insects – organisms capable of making conscious decisions,
modified their own preferences to those of the flower’s attributes. Survival of
the fittest, as applied to flowers, is the flowers that survive are those that
just happen to have favorable shapes,
colors, and smells that attract insects, nothing more.
I think it's funny that someone like me had to point this faux pas out to the educated botanists.
I think it's funny that someone like me had to point this faux pas out to the educated botanists.
