zoologicallyobsessed:

snakegay:

the worst authors in the world are pretentious men who write about how human nature is inherently selfish and evil and survival of the fittest every man for himself and think theyre making some profound statement as if a) no one has ever said this before and b) there isnt like literal definite evidence of altruistic care in early humans and like pretty obvious logical conclusions that as a social species we arent like that naturally

also wanna point out that that’s not even what survival of the fittest means. Fittness in biology = individuals ability to survive and reproduce. So a fit animal would be one that has many offspring. It has nothing to do with how strong an animal is. 

it also makes zero sense because animals that are fit aren’t always going to survive for a longer period of time. Many animals actually have a decrease in lifespan with an increase in number of offspring. 

And animals are not more likely to survive based on how strong they are. Rather how well they adapt to the given environment at the time.

In short literally no one in biology ever uses “survival of the fittest” because in context it makes literally zero sense. It’s not a term we ever say, so anyone using it, has zero idea about what they’re talking about.

Within its habitat, a slime mold is more “fit” than a hawk. Try to make hawks live in a slime mold’s habitat and role, and you would have some dead hawks. 

The phrase means “survival of the best suited”, not “survival of the most physically fit/strongest/fastest/etc”.