Genetic potential

Genetic potential brings together both the functioning data and the adaptability of a species. The adaptability of the individual or species to new constraints thus knows limits that cannot be transgressed without consequences.

Human beings, thanks to their intelligence, can create situations that exceed their own adaptability and also endanger other species. Since the conquest of fire, many individuals have had the opportunity to burn themselves, and yet our resistance to burns has not changed compared to that of the higher monkeys, we more easily present infections or other complications.

For each human activity and invention, it is necessary to consider whether it does not involve new environmental constraints beyond the genetic potential of the species concerned. This is at least a heuristic way of predicting the possible effet-pervers of any new situation, and of overcoming the occultations to which they may be subjected.

For example, at the outset, plastic debauchery in the oceans could have been restrained by the question of how marine species could react to the microparticles they disembowel by decomposing. While no one has thought of the possibility that these microparticles, incompatible with the metabolic potential of vertebrates, will be found in the liver of our favorite fishes, and finally in ours…