Derma balls

[Morphie]

Just like the tasmanian devil, they were dying off with some sort of cancer at an alarming rate, and therefore they evolved and started breeding at a younger age. I believe they were breeding at 3 to 4 years before and now they are breeding succesfully at a year or less. This ladies and gentleman is evolution.

Yes, that's probably a good example of evolution. The ones who were able to breed early were the ones who were able to pass their genes most effectively, and now more of the ones you can see are doing it.

Evolution is the weeding out of failed genetics through selection. It's a never-ending cycle of genetic bottle necks and re-distributions, mutations and lucky breaks -- or missed chances.

Unfortunately for the derma-ball, his mutation isn't likely to put him in any kind of advantageous position in a wild population. Honestly it's more likely that he'd be at a disadvantage and quickly be removed from the gene pool. If there, say, were a fatal disease that started going around in balls that was like... necrosis of the heat pits or something, this python *might* gain an advantage and start changing the face of the species forever by out-competing for resources and breeding opportunities (which would be an example of evolution).

You seem to think that evolution is like climate change - it happens to everyone equally at the same time, which is not really the case at all. The ones who are unfit die off, and the ones who are fit survive to reproduce. A very long series of successfully advantageous mutations are responsible for the great variety of every living thing you see on the earth today.

Cats and rats are mammals

your point?