Chasing The Red Queen
Hamilton was an early proponent of the Red Queen theory of the evolution of sex, first proposed by Leigh Van Valen. This was named for a character in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, who is continuously running but never actually travels any distance:
- "Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."
- "A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" (Carroll, pp. 46)
This theory hypothesizes that sex evolved because new and unfamiliar combinations of genes could be presented to parasites, preventing the parasite from preying on that organism: species with sex were able to continuously "run away" from their parasites. Likewise, parasites were able to evolve mechanisms to get around the organism's new set of genes, thus perpetuating an endless race.
Read more about this topic: W. D. Hamilton
Famous quotes containing the words chasing the, chasing, red and/or queen:
“You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn’t kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Put in hours and hours of planning, figure everything down to the last detail, then what? Burglar alarms start going off all over the place for no sensible reason. A gun fires of its own accord and a man is shot. And a broken-down old house no good for anything but chasing kids has to trip over us. Blind accidents. What can you do against blind accidents?”
—Ben Maddow (1909–1992)
“they burned Joan
and many, and many,
burned at the stake,
peeling their skin off,
boiling their good red blood,
their hearts like eggs....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“They’re here, though; not a creature failed,
No blossom stayed away
In gentle deference to me,
The Queen of Calvary.
Each one salutes me as he goes,”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)