It seems to me that for Darwin the pulsing of evolutionary rates was a strictly vertical phenomenon.

I feel that one species, mankind, doesn't have the right to exterminate

There is more to biology than rats, Drosophila, Caenorhabditis, and E. coli.

Evolution thus is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection.

According to the concept of transformational evolution, first clearly articulated by Lamarck, evolution consists of the gradual transformation of organisms from one condition of existence to another.

On Earth, among millions of lineages or organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence ; this makes me believe its utter improbablity.

Every politician, clergyman, educator, or physician, in short, anyone dealing with human individuals, is bound to make grave mistakes if he ignores these two great truths of population zoology: (1) no two individuals are alike, and (2) both environment and genetic endowment make a contribution to nearly every trait.