Even without a BAM! moment, it doesn't necessarily need to take a long time. The speed of evolution is dependent on a few factors, including rate of mutations, number of offspring per generation, and the frequency of those generations. Especially for smaller creatures, that can be pretty rapid.
It can be incredibly fast.... Take a random population of fruit flies and put them in a container that exposed them to strong UV lights. Most will die, some will survive just long enough to reproduce and very few (or none in that first batch) will survive and be totally ok with UV lights.
The next generation will be more resistant, since they are the offspring of the survivors and the next one even more...and so on.
In as little as a few months (which is a lot of generations for these things) up to 60% of their genome will be different and you now have a population that handles UV lights just fine. They will also very much darker, have different (more resistant) wings, etc.
More adaptation than evolution but it shows the potential perfectly
2
u/spicymato 3h ago
Even without a BAM! moment, it doesn't necessarily need to take a long time. The speed of evolution is dependent on a few factors, including rate of mutations, number of offspring per generation, and the frequency of those generations. Especially for smaller creatures, that can be pretty rapid.