Life is truly ‘Survival of the Luckiest’, not ‘Survival of the Fittest’

Photo by David Cadenas on Unsplash

To the small number of people that are reading my articles, I’m back with another article. I had heard of the term ‘Survival of the Fittest’, and it’s believed that this is the reason why certain living things thrive while other living things perish. While life could come off as that at face value, I think that being the luckiest, not being the fittest, is the main benefit of survival.

Based on what I had read in books about prehistoric animals, I previously assumed that the main reason why dinosaurs and many other prehistoric animals had died out was because they weren’t fit enough. However, I later started to wonder why turtles managed to survive events that killed so many animals that were stronger, faster, smarter, and overall more fit of creatures by comparison. A turtle’s only defense is not going to protect it from a mass extinction. While ancient turtles could of had enough to eat to make it pass a mass extinction, it wouldn’t explain why so many other reptiles from dinosaur times couldn’t make it through. Even small dinosaurs that could of lived off of plants or insects didn’t make it. Sure, some of the last dinosaurs would evolve into birds, but how come none of the last surviving dinosaurs remain being dinosaurs? It wasn’t like the surviving turtles and crocodilians had largely changed outside of size after the dinosaurs died out. Considering that turtles are unfit when compared to many other reptiles, I think that the main reason behind why turtles survived as long as they had is due to luck. While having strength, speed, endurance, resilience, intelligence, and other natural capabilities can get a living thing and its successors far in life, I think that luck plays more of a role in making it in life than any of those other benefits. It’s rather strange that the best thing that a living thing can have is something that no living thing can control.

In conclusion, I would say that life is truly ‘Survival of the Luckiest’, not ‘Survival of the Fittest’. The long survival of turtles, snails, horseshoe crabs, jellyfish, and sponges are all the proof that you need, because who thinks of those creatures when people think about the strongest, fastest, or most intelligent? No one that I could think of. Have a nice life. The End.