Evolution And The Worm

I recently visited my father’s house.
I was outside talking on the phone and after the conversation, as I was walking back into the house, I saw an earthworm on the sidewalk inching along.
The earthworm looked so neat crawling slowly that I wanted to pick him up and watch him extend this way and that like a snail’s eyestalk. I’m sure some of you know what I’m talking about.
Before I type what happened next I’d just like to say that I love fishing, I play with bugs, and I am familiar with earthworms at least as much as anyone else who isn’t squeamish about touching and experimenting with slimy things, sharp things, or crawly sticky things.
I went to pick up the earthworm and as my finger barely grazed it, the earthworm started thrashing around violently. I’ve seen earthworms move before. I’ve seen them move after being pierced with a hook for god’s sake. And not when they’re all refrigerated and sluggish, but when they’re freshly caught and put into an empty mason jar for bait.
I’ve never seen an earthworm thrash around the way this one did.
The way it moved was almost alien, even ignoring the fact that earthworms look like they were invented by science fiction writers.
I kept thinking about the worm and how it moved all night.
I thought about all of the times I’ve seen a tiny bug that I’ve never seen before. Maybe one that hovers in midair in a strange fashion, or has brightly coloured markings with a strange pattern I’ve never seen.
I thought about evolution.
I remembered an article I read about how we might be able to fight cancer in the near future by using frog venom. (http://www.adelaide.edu.au/lumen/issues/16381/news16387.html)
If you aren’t interested in reading the article, I’ll basically say that researchers have found the cellular equivalent of James Bond(frog peptide) tricking his way into an enemy spy plane(cancer cell), strapping on a parachute, blowing open the side of the plane, and parachuting to safety as the plane crashes into the mountains.
All of my thinking and theorizing (I think about evolution much more than any normal person should) boils down to this:
Even though we don’t allow ourselves to evolve through natural selection anymore because of technology, it is this very same technology that will save us by allowing us to STEAL EVERY OTHER SPECIES’ DEFENSE MECHANISMS.
So what if a lot of us need corrective lenses of some kind? So what if some of us are born without the use of our limbs? So what if NOT A SINGLE HUMAN BEING can fight a gorilla hand-to-hand and come out on top?!
It ultimately will work out because… we don’t give our technology to other species.
Granted, we do engage in charity work and save other species when they themselves are too apathetic to go extinct (Panda, I’m glaring directly at you), but we don’t give frogs glasses.
We don’t give frogs antibiotics, or iron lungs, or guns to help them even the playing field against their predators (and help against frog intruders breaking and entering their little frog homes).
So let’s say there’s a horrible disease that comes along and wipes out a LOT of the insects in the world, but doesn’t affect anything else.
Then it mutates and affects a LOT of reptiles, amphibians, and platypuses, but still leaves us alone.
By the time it mutates to start killing humans, we’ll have all the research we need on how it works, why it does what it does, and how all the lucky insects, reptiles, and tiny mammals survived.
Oh, it seems the lucky ones had a special enzyme that blah blah blah…
We’ll simply take a shot, or a pill, and BAM! Not an issue for Homo sapiens (at least, not the ones who can afford the shots and pills, anyway).
So why did I bring up the earthworm?
Well it seems to me that there are a lot of archaic ways of thinking still existing in our world (religion, I’m glaring directly at you now).
There seems to be a general consensus that evolution takes FOREVER to happen.
In reality, it’s this simple: you have a toxic factory that kills off almost all the moths in the area. A boy moth and a girl moth aren’t affected. They have a baby. Evolution just happened (did you catch it or did you blink?). By nature of genetics, that moth baby will be fine.
So why, when humans are evolving at an exponential rate (and we are because technology is how we evolve now, did you know that?), why do we not expect the same from nature?
Hell, we’re changing the planet fast enough; although scientists aren’t sure Earth isn’t just changing on its own because planets are unpredictable.
Regardless of THAT jury being out, we are changing the landscape of cities and urban and slightly rural portions of the Earth.
So wouldn’t all the lifeforms in that climate be swept up in the evolution hurricane? Does a squirrel in the middle of campus walk up to you and pester you for food?
Wait, aren’t squirrels as a species afraid of humans?
Isn’t it just conditioning, where student feeding is giving a Pavlovian/Skinner response and training the squirrels?
Well, what’s to say that the squirrels aren’t breeding themselves to be friendlier to humans from birth and thus evolving into a new species of FriendlySquirrel®?
I have no evidence to support any of this one way or another, but it’s something I think about.
And it’s something I hope you’ll begin to think about too.

***Addendum***
check this out: http://io9.com/5315841/unidentified-biological-goo-15-miles-long-creeps-down-alaskan-coast