Fun fact: Is it possible for humans to grow wings?

I have nothing to do today, so I want to talk to you about a mind-blowing question, which is, if everyone in the world jumps off a cliff, will humans evolve wings and fly like birds?

First of all, let me tell you the answer, it is impossible;

Secondly, some netizens mentioned that it can be achieved through exercise, which is also impossible. I think this is a misunderstanding of epigenetics.

Today I want to talk to you about the fact that humans have wings.

01. Mutation comes first, selection comes later. Don’t confuse them.

I find that many people understand the theory of evolution in the opposite way. They think that selection leads to evolution. In fact, this theory has been overturned at least in the 1960s.

Selection is not a necessary and sufficient condition for evolution . Even without selection, evolution is still ongoing. This theory is the neutral evolution theory.

We now believe that the human body is constantly mutating randomly, and that mutations are also randomly fixed. Most of these mutations do not cause significant benefits or harms. For example, the size of our earlobe is a classic central trait.

It’s impossible that a person’s life and reproduction will be affected by his earlobe, right?

In fact, in many cases, as long as it does not affect reproduction, the trait is very likely to be inherited and form a gene pool.

02. Exercise to grow wings?

As some netizens have mentioned, can you grow wings through exercise? This is even more unfeasible. There is a saying: Some things are already there when you are born, and if you don’t have them, you will probably never have them in the future.

The same is true for human wings. We don't have the genes for wings, so it's impossible to train them. Even if you jump every day, you can only train your legs well, but you can't train your wings.

Epigenetics does talk about some things that are inherited through training, but this does not include wings.

Moreover, epigenetics still acts on genes. It is a kind of gene modification. If the gene itself does not undergo fundamental changes, even if you control the entire epigenetic structure, at most you can silence it instead of turning it into wings.

If a mutation or even a gene for growing wings is trained, it would be no different from a monkey randomly typing out the complete works of Shakespeare.

Finally, of course, if we modify some of the housekeeping genes of humans, it is still possible to make human limbs become webbed, such as the HOX gene, which is related to the development of limbs. If the expression is wrong, it will cause syndactyly and polydactyly in humans. However, this gene has already realized its function in the early development stage, and if it is interfered with, it may cause serious deformity or even death.