A butterfly is just a strange kind of moth

[John Grehan]

Mark Walker wrote

If dog breeds prove anything with regards to transforming a fish into a
>beaver, I guess I AM missing something.

In one sense fish never transformed into a beaver or anything else. Beaver's
are just a strange kind of "fish" - a fish that lost "scales", evolved fir
(fir being
a modified "scale"), fins that support the body, etc. In the same way moths 
never transformed into butterflies since butterflies are just another form
of a 
"moth". The mixing of taxonomic category with concept of ancestor sometimes
makes it seem as if there is a fundamental threshold to be transgressed, when
there is not - hence the quotes around some of the above terms. At least
that's how it is in my understanding of evolution (which is not orthodox so
one need not lose sleep over it).

John Grehan