Re: Evolving Senses
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Actually many plants can "see" light and shift toward it. I realize they don't have eyes, but they can react to light and move.
It seems like something similar could have happened at the outset of animal vision. First it was simple reactivity to light and dark, and then to different wavelengths of light, and then to specific boundaries in the source of the light (edge detection), etc.
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That's pretty much it. There are tons of animals and cells out there that have 'light sensitive' areas that influence them to move towards lit areas. *EDIT* Considering that prehistoric bacteria were factories for photosynthesis, it is no surprise that having a sensory organ that attracted it to light became a huge advantage. It all started out with that, but it evolved because other necessary pieces of equipment evolved with it.
The most important thing to remember about mammalian senses is that they evolved along with the development of the cortex in the brain. Our sensory organs just provide us with a means of obtaining sensory information, and their evolution will always be limited to the capacity that our neocortex has for deciphering that sensory information and creating recognizable and understandable patterns with it. So these organs kind of always evolved at the same rate neocortex evolved at.
And Lestat, the reason why lots of those unhealthy foods taste good is because back in the old days (pre-human and early human days) our ancestors had to work hard for their food, and evolved to love foods that had loads of sugar and fat in them for energy. Our bodies are built to adore calories.
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