When evolution gets weird...

[Warpy]

3. While I also appreciate the less attractive creatures

I don't think mutations are particularly random. I think DNA is "smarter" than that, for want of a better word, different sections switched on and off to respond to environmental stress, something that seems to have been confirmed in experiments with fruit flies, where severe stress produced many groups of genes suddenly switched on.

How else could we explain bacteria living at extreme depths in caves, drawing energy from acids or tube worms around deep sea volcanic vents, or anything that lives in deep water, for that matter? It seems that where there is an environment that doesn't incinerate DNA and RNA, life will adapt to it.

ETA: fruit flies, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/03/not_so_simple_f083491.html