urbanek2525 t1_j9if8nu wrote on February 22, 2023 at 4:47 AM

Reply to comment by PJHFortyTwo in What are more accepted hypotheses that similarly explain the aspects of hominid evolution that the "pseudoscientific" aquatic ape theory does? by KEVLAR60442

Also, there are many ways that things in our biology are interconnected and entantangled for no discernable reason. There are a lot of adaptations that have some good and some bad impacts. As long as the good outweighs the bad, it tends to stay.

For example, there is a drug that suppresses a man's body's ability to produce a particular protein. While that protein is suppressed, the man produces very little sperm. A near perfect male contaceptive. The thing is, in addition to enabling sperm production that protein also contributes to alcohol metabolism. So, alcohol makes the user very ill. There's no rhyme or reason that these two operations would be using the same darn protein, but they are. There are thousands of these overlaps that have developed over the millenia.

This is because there's no plan behind evolution. It's too complex to draw straight lines. It's a random mess.

Treadwheel t1_j9ik046 wrote on February 22, 2023 at 5:33 AM

That's not quite what's going on there. The drug in question worked by inhibiting aldehyde dehydrogenase, which is an enzyme which handles the direct metabolites of alcohol, but which isn't specific to just ethanol metabolism. All sorts of aldehydes are produced and consumed by the human body and need to be dealt with.

ALDH is involved in the conversion of retinol to retinoic acid, which is necessary to produce sperm, but the relationship is more of a general purpose tool having many applications than a bizarre coincidence of evolution.