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Comment by rkomorn | Hacker News Reader

Not every behavior has an evolutionary advantage.

If anything, "evolution" filters out disadvantages (eg: can't survive because your neck's too short and that pesky giraffe is eating all the leaves you could reach).

Evolution kills what doesn't work.

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but every behaviour has a cost. In cast of flight altitude its energy and distance to food, water, mating zones.

Darwin started with survival of the "fit". It changed to "fittest" in later editions.

People focus on the wrong issue so most quotes about evolution are highly misleading: the keyword should be about reproducing. Survival is almost irrelevant. Darwin awards in particular should never be given to anyone with kids (unless they kill their kids too).

"Most grandkids" is good but not catchy.

Or Idiocracy "evolution began to favor those who reproduced the most".

I agree to some extent but I don't think you can really separate the two. You have to survive long enough to reproduce enough. For almost all species, reproduction implies a non trivial amount of survival.

Edit: actually, "almost all species" is not right. Maybe "almost all interesting species"... which is admittedly too subjective a take.

Having a cost and being too costly aren't the same thing though.

Going up there's currents, going down... gravity. Sure it costs energy, but there's bound to be a tradeoff. Travel distance? Sight range?

It costs something metabolically to be able to survive that high up.

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