They Key to Copying Errors

If you copy a key, there are slight errors in the copy. If you copy the copy, and do it again and again and again, this is what happens. By generation 60 or so you get a blank key.

 

This is one of the basic tenants of evolution. Of course, our DNA has much better copying fidelity than a key machine, but mistakes are made, and they carry forward and something new results. Most of the time, the change is detrimental, but very occasionally the change accidentally gives the host an advantage in some way. It is these advantages that are selected for by the environment and the ones who posses them will have more offspring that the ones who don't, and all those offspring will carry the new key, er, gene mutation.

 

It's all pretty simple at this basic level. Do that over a period of millions of generations and you get, well, everything you see in the natural world.

 

Using a key is a vast oversimplification of course, but it's an interesting way to visualize copy errors.