Timeline for How could polycephaly evolve as a byproduct of natural selection?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
3 events
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| Feb 11, 2018 at 10:35 | comment | added | N. Virgo | (2) limbs - suppose this planet's equivalent of vertebrates managed to evolve with only two legs and one head. Now if a species needs to manipulate objects in any way (or have an extra weapon, etc.), it will need another limb. In this situation a mutation that duplicates the head will provide a selective advantage, and you would expect it to evolve into many species with several heads each, with the heads tending to be specialised for different tasks. | |
| Feb 11, 2018 at 10:32 | comment | added | N. Virgo | I think this is basically the right answer, so I'll confine what I have to say to comments here rather than posting my own answer. Here are some other reasons to have multiple heads, given an architecture where the brain is (mostly) not in the head: (1) redundancy - you can lose one and still be able to eat. | |
| Feb 8, 2018 at 21:04 | history | answered | Corey | CC BY-SA 3.0 |