Quote:
Originally Posted by drowkcableps
Ill follow suit though and say that: I thought (perhaps wrongly?) that evolved traits were in fact evolved because they had evolutionary utility.
Sometimes evolved traits has evolutionary utility, and sometimes they don't. Evolution isn't a finely-tuned process by which only good traits are passed along.
I'll create a hypothetical example just for clarity of making the point. Suppose that a particular mutation improves the probability of surviving early childhood by 1%, but also causes instant death at 40 years of age. This mutation is likely to persist because children are surviving more frequently and living long enough to reproduce, but it's not immediately clear that the "utility" of this mutation is a net positive for the species.
A common mistake is to pick a random feature and declare that the feature exists for some evolutionary benefit. Sometimes, it's just a random feature that showed up.